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"You could totally re-tell the entire Star Wars and Star Trek" Both of those are fiction, so they are not relevant. I think we all get why people like fiction

"You could totally re-tell the entire Star Wars and Star Trek" Both of those are fiction, so they are not relevant. I think we all get why people like fiction -- it's entertaining and some of the better stuff is educational. But why do intelligent people want to believe that any such coherent stories can actually be told in real life? We all know it's impossible. Even basic questions such as "How old are you" become unanswerable. A person gets in a ship and travels at 1 G to another star, then turns around and comes back to Earth, they've aged 20 years, meanwhile on Earth 200 years have passed and all their friends are dead. Which timeline is real? How would any sci-fi tropes play out, in real life, in a universe of such inconsistencies? Consider the issue of law enforcement. How could a central authority enforce its power, if people knew they could commit a crime, live a long life, and die before any forces from the central authority arrived? The notion of a political entity existing at more than solar system scales is ridiculous. Intelligent people know this, yet many of them still seem to want to believe that such a thing is a possible. Why is that?

stcredzero 8y ago
But why do intelligent people want to believe that any such coherent stories can actually be told in real life? We all know it's impossible. Even basic questions such as "How old are you" become unanswerable. Really intelligent informed people know the relative scales involved. So if all of Star Wars were re-imagined to occur using reasonable tech within the several cubic light years around Alpha Centauri, no speeds where severe relativistic time dilation effects are necessary for normal transportation. "How old are you" is readily answerable +/- a month for just about everyone, even most spacefarers. Heck, even the prequel trilogy makes more sense. (As Plinkett puts it, why are people on the planet of Naboo dying because they lack, "Space Supplies?" It would make a whole lot more sense if Naboo were an icy ball in the Oort cloud.) A person gets in a ship and travels at 1 G to another star, then turns around and comes back to Earth, they've aged 20 years, meanwhile on Earth 200 years have passed and all their friends are dead. Which timeline is real? How would any sci-fi tropes play out, in real life, in a universe of such inconsistencies? Another thing: I'm not an expert myself, but I can already tell that you don't even understand the big abstractions of relativity that well. The "Twin Paradox" is not actually a paradox. There is a global set of spacetime intervals which is consistent among all observers. It's only each observer's view of the spacetime interval which disagrees between observers. I'm probably saying that wrong, but the gist of that should be right. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFAEHKAR5hU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFAEHKAR5hU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YFrISfN7jo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YFrISfN7jo The "Spacetime Globe" by Minute Physics is the most helpful. It's like you're a 2D flatlander declaring that a cube would be seen as a square by one person and a hexagon by another, so the 3D universe must be an inconsistent database. Uh, no. The universe is totally consistent. You, poor finite human, just have a slim, parochial view of it.

stcredzero 8y ago

But why do intelligent people want to believe that any such coherent stories can actually be told in real life? We all know it's impossible. Even basic questions such as "How old are you" become unanswerable. Really intelligent informed people know the relative scales involved. So if all of Star Wars were re-imagined to occur using reasonable tech within the several cubic light years around Alpha Centauri, no speeds where severe relativistic time dilation effects are necessary for normal transportation. "How old are you" is readily answerable +/- a month for just about everyone, even most spacefarers. Heck, even the prequel trilogy makes more sense. (As Plinkett puts it, why are people on the planet of Naboo dying because they lack, "Space Supplies?" It would make a whole lot more sense if Naboo were an icy ball in the Oort cloud.) A person gets in a ship and travels at 1 G to another star, then turns around and comes back to Earth, they've aged 20 years, meanwhile on Earth 200 years have passed and all their friends are dead. Which timeline is real? How would any sci-fi tropes play out, in real life, in a universe of such inconsistencies? Another thing: I'm not an expert myself, but I can already tell that you don't even understand the big abstractions of relativity that well. The "Twin Paradox" is not actually a paradox. There is a global set of spacetime intervals which is consistent among all observers. It's only each observer's view of the spacetime interval which disagrees between observers. I'm probably saying that wrong, but the gist of that should be right. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFAEHKAR5hU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFAEHKAR5hU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YFrISfN7jo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YFrISfN7jo The "Spacetime Globe" by Minute Physics is the most helpful. It's like you're a 2D flatlander declaring that a cube would be seen as a square by one person and a hexagon by another, so the 3D universe must be an inconsistent database. Uh, no. The universe is totally consistent. You, poor finite human, just have a slim, parochial view of it.