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Even the "neat" sci-fi ideas are often complete nonsense, such as the whole concept of sophons, which leverage a neat fringe idea of theoretical physics while r
by breuleux 2y ago
Even the "neat" sci-fi ideas are often complete nonsense, such as the whole concept of sophons, which leverage a neat fringe idea of theoretical physics while running afoul of boring, well-established physics.
- ajross 2y agoIsn't that true for basically all speculative sci-fi? The point to the form is to pick an idea with "enough plausibility" and extend it to an interesting implication. Not all "sci-fi" can be (or should be) 2001 or The Martian; Foundation and Dune are kinda good books too.
- breuleux 2y agoTo various extents, yes, but it is easier to suspend one's disbelief about certain things than others. The main issue with sophons is that they routinely have to interact with quantities of energy that should annihilate them: when they are unfolded, for instance, they have to bear the impact of light all over their planet-spanning surface. They are "god-tier" technology, but only because they flaunt basic conservation of energy. I find it harder to suspend my disbelief about that than e.g. faster than light travel. Foundation and Dune's premises are much tamer, and neither story collapses entirely if they turn out to be false.
- asdasdsddd 2y agoAh yes, eating worm poop is the only thing that allows humans to navigate ships moving at light speed is more plausible.
- breuleux 2y agoIt is unironically more plausible than etching a supercomputer inside a proton, yes. It's odd, but it's not broken.
- yongjik 2y agoForget lightspeed: melding your body with worms give you first-person access to memories of your ancestors. Like, your ancestors who lived in Ancient Greece. And all others. Sophon is downright mundane compared to this.
- rendaw 2y agoI like fantasy, and there's "believable fantasy" and "unbelievable fantasy". If you start saying the world has some unusual property X and then show the consequences of that, that's believable - maybe in the future there will be some technology, or physics, or whatever that show how a world with X could actually come to be, but it's the starting assumption of the work. Dungeons and Dragons has magic, but it has a rule system, with some form of thermodynamics-y like stuff, internal consistency. Dune starts with some rules and largely doesn't violate them (and if it does, that makes it less kinda good).
- freilanzer 2y ago> Foundation and Dune are kinda good books too. Kind of?!
- hoseja 2y agoWhat's the well-established inner structure of an electron?
- breuleux 2y agoI'm not talking about the inner structure, I'm talking about the part where they unfold a proton in such a way that it envelops their entire planet and blocks all incoming light from their sun, meaning that it is continuously absorbing quadrillions of watts of power, although it still has the mass of a proton. It's grotesque, like bouncing off asteroids with gold leaf, but what's telling to me is that I don't think the author thought about it at all. And then they send it off and control it remotely using quantum entanglement, except that entanglement, as far as we know, cannot be used to transmit information faster than light, let alone momentum. Furthermore, in order to be effective at anything, the sophon has to observe the world and transmit information back and forth, except that the capture and transmission of any nontrivial amount of information exceeds the mass energy of a proton by several orders of magnitude.