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Two problems in the article analysis One is the classic hard vs soft sci fi. A classic example in book form is Stranger in a Strange Land reads like a story a

by VLM 10y ago

Two problems in the article analysis One is the classic hard vs soft sci fi. A classic example in book form is Stranger in a Strange Land reads like a story about 60s boomer hippies from India who meditate and get high and die in an allegory of Jesus, because it is. There's a very thin wrap of search and replace science fiction over that hippie story most famously a giant plot hole where the author wrote in video telephone video conferencing without following up on the hole in the plot generated by being able to see the other party. In comparison, hard sci fi takes into account and weaves a story about the human effects of technology... The other problem is in the "The authors polled a range of experts". Asking my plumber about theology or my lawyer about physics is obviously dumb, and in pop culture we accept that asking a 50s dude about the 70s is pretty much a waste of time. However in all fields of human activity if you want an intelligent commentary on contemporary computer programming you have to either hatch or grow a contemporary computer programmer. The opinions of a dude in another field from decades ago are only accidentally going to be correct. Regardless who was an expert in automation in the 60s, I'm pretty sure they weren't being asked because they almost certainly didn't have cool authoritarian credentials because the topic wasn't cool enough at that time, so by definition they were talking to the wrong people. The history of many present day trends and concepts shows they were not very cool before they became cool, therefore asking contemporary experts on the topic of cool will mostly not work.

coldtea 10y ago
>In comparison, hard sci-fi takes into account and weaves a story about the human effects of technology... I find two problems with the above analysis. Oftentimes soft sci-fi (PK Dick for example or even someone like Frederic Brown) identifies the "human effects of technology" far better than someone from the "hard" camp, such as Clark or Asimov. Second, the article specifically covers bad predictions made by hard sci-fi and concerning use and impact of technology itself. >The other problem is in the "The authors polled a range of experts". Asking my plumber about theology or my lawyer about physics is obviously dumb Not that obvious to me. That's a great way to overcome systematic bias and domain blindness and get some outsider insight. You talk about being silly to talk to a "plumber about theology", but I've heard that a carpenter is supposed to have made some great contributions to the field, as did some fishermen.
- VLM 10y ago
  Oh there's some overlap as in all things very little is binary. None the less PKD doesn't really tell "human vs technology" stories. Take for example "A scanner darkly" which is an interesting psychological thriller and story about chemical addiction. To quote the wikipedia: "A Scanner Darkly is a fictionalized account of real events, based on Dick's experiences in the 1970s drug culture. Dick said in an interview, "Everything in A Scanner Darkly I actually saw."" "Man in the High Castle" is alt history action. Its not really a story about technology. "Blade Runner" is film noir action flick with a dose of moralizing about racism and dystopia. I'd say the thing that defines PKD is technology as escapism. Yeah OK "a scanner darkly" is about speed freaks but he wanted to tell a psychological thriller about addiction without people casually tossing it away as "the speed freaks movie" so he invented a whole substance D mythology to prevent people from taking the easy way out in their analysis. Ditto Blade Runner where the technology was a cloak to hide aspects of modernity he didn't want to talk about, not a central part of the story. Sort of like how some fantasy pencil whips away aspects of the modern world the author doesn't like in order to pare down to just what the author wants us to focus on. Technology as a zoom lens, not in the zoom lens. PKD is a cool author but in many ways he doesn't even write sci fi. How about another definition, soft sci fi can be turned into any other scenery with mere cut and paste, and tada "a scanner darkly" is about elves smoking too much pipe-weed in Tolkien world. But hard sci fi requires a major and substantial rewrite to change the scenery, not just cut and paste. KSR's Mars trilogy isn't going to Venus or ancient South America any time soon. The problem with the carpenter you mention is out of millions of pro and maybe a billion amateur/ancient carpenters only that one had much insight. Its a bad odds game.
  - coldtea 10y ago
    Those are his more psychedelic works sure. But take something from Dick like "The Second Variation". Or "The Electric Ant". Or "We can remember it for you wholeseale". Or here's his version of the future of IoT, home automation and subscription payments, which as someone in an increasingly number of "forced on my throat" subscription schemes (Adobe, etc) I find surprisingly prescient: The hero in Ubik tries to get out of his own house: "The door refused to open. It said, "Five cents, please." He searched his pockets. No more coins; nothing. "I'll pay you tomorrow," he told the door. Again it remained locked tight. "What I pay you," he informed it, "is in the nature of a gratuity; I don't have to pay you." "I think otherwise," the door said. "Look in the purchase contract you signed when you bought this conapt." ...he found the contract. Sure enough; payment to his door for opening and shutting constituted a mandatory fee. Not a tip. "You discover I'm right," the door said. It sounded smug." >The problem with the carpenter you mention is out of millions of pro and maybe a billion amateur/ancient carpenters only that one had much insight. Its a bad odds game. I find the opposite. All the important contributions to theology and fields such as philosophy have been made by outsiders. Once degrees and tenures started rolling in, the substance starts rolling out. At best those tenured bores can do meta-analyses.
wslh 10y ago
I think now, in some fields, even experts can't predict. Look at what happened with the game of Go, and probably Poker. No expert, except the real few ones who did the actual job, thought that a computer Go could beat a professional human player. At the same time, even with these surprises, we don't know if the singularity is near or very far.
- hyperpape 10y ago
  It was an enormous surprise that it happened so quickly, but I do think the Go community thought it would happen in a decade or more. Monte Carlo methods had made a lot of progress, and researchers were having good results with neural nets in 2015. http://senseis.xmp.net/?ComputerGo http://senseis.xmp.net/?ComputerGo (Note, I read various things from Go programmers, but don't work on that myself).
paulajohnson 10y ago
"Regardless who was an expert in automation in the 60s, I'm pretty sure they weren't being asked". Very much so. In those days if you wanted to know about the future of telecoms you asked telephone engineers. Those guys thought in terms of voice circuits, circuit switching, and paying for fixed bandwidth (e.g. 64kBit/sec) by the second whether you were using it or not. Even when packet switching came along they were still trying to shoehorn it into their existing technical and business model. There were people thinking about packet switched services, but they weren't "experts". Take a look at Vannavar Bush's paper "As We May Think". It anticipates concepts of hypertext, but the whole thing is shot through with solutioneering about microfilm.

by VLM 10y ago

coldtea 10y ago

>In comparison, hard sci-fi takes into account and weaves a story about the human effects of technology... I find two problems with the above analysis. Oftentimes soft sci-fi (PK Dick for example or even someone like Frederic Brown) identifies the "human effects of technology" far better than someone from the "hard" camp, such as Clark or Asimov. Second, the article specifically covers bad predictions made by hard sci-fi and concerning use and impact of technology itself. >The other problem is in the "The authors polled a range of experts". Asking my plumber about theology or my lawyer about physics is obviously dumb Not that obvious to me. That's a great way to overcome systematic bias and domain blindness and get some outsider insight. You talk about being silly to talk to a "plumber about theology", but I've heard that a carpenter is supposed to have made some great contributions to the field, as did some fishermen.

VLM 10y ago
Oh there's some overlap as in all things very little is binary. None the less PKD doesn't really tell "human vs technology" stories. Take for example "A scanner darkly" which is an interesting psychological thriller and story about chemical addiction. To quote the wikipedia: "A Scanner Darkly is a fictionalized account of real events, based on Dick's experiences in the 1970s drug culture. Dick said in an interview, "Everything in A Scanner Darkly I actually saw."" "Man in the High Castle" is alt history action. Its not really a story about technology. "Blade Runner" is film noir action flick with a dose of moralizing about racism and dystopia. I'd say the thing that defines PKD is technology as escapism. Yeah OK "a scanner darkly" is about speed freaks but he wanted to tell a psychological thriller about addiction without people casually tossing it away as "the speed freaks movie" so he invented a whole substance D mythology to prevent people from taking the easy way out in their analysis. Ditto Blade Runner where the technology was a cloak to hide aspects of modernity he didn't want to talk about, not a central part of the story. Sort of like how some fantasy pencil whips away aspects of the modern world the author doesn't like in order to pare down to just what the author wants us to focus on. Technology as a zoom lens, not in the zoom lens. PKD is a cool author but in many ways he doesn't even write sci fi. How about another definition, soft sci fi can be turned into any other scenery with mere cut and paste, and tada "a scanner darkly" is about elves smoking too much pipe-weed in Tolkien world. But hard sci fi requires a major and substantial rewrite to change the scenery, not just cut and paste. KSR's Mars trilogy isn't going to Venus or ancient South America any time soon. The problem with the carpenter you mention is out of millions of pro and maybe a billion amateur/ancient carpenters only that one had much insight. Its a bad odds game.
- coldtea 10y ago
  Those are his more psychedelic works sure. But take something from Dick like "The Second Variation". Or "The Electric Ant". Or "We can remember it for you wholeseale". Or here's his version of the future of IoT, home automation and subscription payments, which as someone in an increasingly number of "forced on my throat" subscription schemes (Adobe, etc) I find surprisingly prescient: The hero in Ubik tries to get out of his own house: "The door refused to open. It said, "Five cents, please." He searched his pockets. No more coins; nothing. "I'll pay you tomorrow," he told the door. Again it remained locked tight. "What I pay you," he informed it, "is in the nature of a gratuity; I don't have to pay you." "I think otherwise," the door said. "Look in the purchase contract you signed when you bought this conapt." ...he found the contract. Sure enough; payment to his door for opening and shutting constituted a mandatory fee. Not a tip. "You discover I'm right," the door said. It sounded smug." >The problem with the carpenter you mention is out of millions of pro and maybe a billion amateur/ancient carpenters only that one had much insight. Its a bad odds game. I find the opposite. All the important contributions to theology and fields such as philosophy have been made by outsiders. Once degrees and tenures started rolling in, the substance starts rolling out. At best those tenured bores can do meta-analyses.

wslh 10y ago

I think now, in some fields, even experts can't predict. Look at what happened with the game of Go, and probably Poker. No expert, except the real few ones who did the actual job, thought that a computer Go could beat a professional human player. At the same time, even with these surprises, we don't know if the singularity is near or very far.

hyperpape 10y ago
It was an enormous surprise that it happened so quickly, but I do think the Go community thought it would happen in a decade or more. Monte Carlo methods had made a lot of progress, and researchers were having good results with neural nets in 2015. http://senseis.xmp.net/?ComputerGo http://senseis.xmp.net/?ComputerGo (Note, I read various things from Go programmers, but don't work on that myself).

paulajohnson 10y ago

"Regardless who was an expert in automation in the 60s, I'm pretty sure they weren't being asked". Very much so. In those days if you wanted to know about the future of telecoms you asked telephone engineers. Those guys thought in terms of voice circuits, circuit switching, and paying for fixed bandwidth (e.g. 64kBit/sec) by the second whether you were using it or not. Even when packet switching came along they were still trying to shoehorn it into their existing technical and business model. There were people thinking about packet switched services, but they weren't "experts". Take a look at Vannavar Bush's paper "As We May Think". It anticipates concepts of hypertext, but the whole thing is shot through with solutioneering about microfilm.