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Are you arguing that advances in science that would look like impossible magic to us today are confined to fiction forever? Why do you believe that (1) and (2)

Are you arguing that advances in science that would look like impossible magic to us today are confined to fiction forever? Why do you believe that (1) and (2) are true at every stage of technological advancement in our distant future, which may be the technological present of our galactic peers? A handful of people today can casually "flick" entire cities out of existence, and enough such flicks could eradicate our species, and even if not it would certainly eradicate many. That would have been an absurd notion to somebody a thousand years ago. But the idea that we'll be able to destroy stars just as easily in a million years is somehow just fiction?

vecter 4y ago
No, I am simply arguing that FTL travel is extremely unlikely since whatever physics we discover in the future will almost certainly not overturn special relativity. This thinking along the lines of "things in the past that were believed to be impossible are now possible, therefore things in the future that we now believe impossible may actually happen" is pretty poor reasoning. In the past, our understanding of the fundamental laws of physics was quite lacking. Today, although it is incomplete, our understanding of physics is considerably more advanced to preclude a lot of physically impossible things.
- rcoveson 4y ago
  > In the past, our understanding of the fundamental laws of physics was quite lacking. Today, although it is incomplete, our understanding of physics is considerably more advanced to preclude a lot of physically impossible things. To me this just sound like a combination of hubris and lack of imagination. Sure, our understanding of physics advanced so much in the last few centuries. Relatively. I'm sure we're at least like 20% of the way towards cracking the puzzle of how the whole universe actually works; there's just some kinks to work out, right? /s The way I view history, in a thousand years everything we "know" now might look like nothing more than once-useful, semi-accurate models for describing the behavior of a tiny little subsystem of what reality actually is. Or, more likely, we won't even remeber why the models of today were ever useful, and the average person (assuming there are still separete "people") will flippantly refer to the scientists of today idiots.

vecter 4y ago

No, I am simply arguing that FTL travel is extremely unlikely since whatever physics we discover in the future will almost certainly not overturn special relativity. This thinking along the lines of "things in the past that were believed to be impossible are now possible, therefore things in the future that we now believe impossible may actually happen" is pretty poor reasoning. In the past, our understanding of the fundamental laws of physics was quite lacking. Today, although it is incomplete, our understanding of physics is considerably more advanced to preclude a lot of physically impossible things.

rcoveson 4y ago
> In the past, our understanding of the fundamental laws of physics was quite lacking. Today, although it is incomplete, our understanding of physics is considerably more advanced to preclude a lot of physically impossible things. To me this just sound like a combination of hubris and lack of imagination. Sure, our understanding of physics advanced so much in the last few centuries. Relatively. I'm sure we're at least like 20% of the way towards cracking the puzzle of how the whole universe actually works; there's just some kinks to work out, right? /s The way I view history, in a thousand years everything we "know" now might look like nothing more than once-useful, semi-accurate models for describing the behavior of a tiny little subsystem of what reality actually is. Or, more likely, we won't even remeber why the models of today were ever useful, and the average person (assuming there are still separete "people") will flippantly refer to the scientists of today idiots.