this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2025
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Science Memes

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submitted 2 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 day ago (4 children)

It’s why a lot of sci-fi written in the 1900’s takes place in like the 90’s and 2000’s. Writers thought that we would keep on exponentially advancing and have Mars colonies and flying cars by now. They could have never predicted that interest in space exploration would have waned, like people stopped caring about the space shuttle, and that the actual technological revolution took place in the computing space.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 17 hours ago

This is because of the socio-political dimension of things. It’s not just that people just randomly changed their minds, so much technological innovation is driven by war or the threat of war.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

No one predicted phone addiction

[–] [email protected] 4 points 19 hours ago (2 children)

It's weird reading work by authors like Asimov, where people travel between planets as a matter of routine, and we have sentient robots, but not mobile phones.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 hours ago

but then on the flipside there's stuff like star trek, which since it's literally the inspiration for cellphones is remarkably normal

even the fucking tricorders aren't that far off these days, just today i used an app on my phone to identify plants automatically for fuck's sake, that's insane!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 19 hours ago

Or there are phones or cybernetic radio implants but they're just a way to make phone calls.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 21 hours ago

i think a lot of people simply couldn't have imagined computers back in 1900. that is simply because computers are a rapid qualitative progress instead of just a quantitative one.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

To be fait, a lot of sci fi does involve very advanced computing, like HAL in 2001.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

And some even got the cyberpunkiness almost right (Johnny Nmemonic swung so hard!). I think for every visionary piece, we have 100 lost contemporary 'trash' (not trash, more like a picture of the spirit of the time) that has already been lost.

I mean Star Trek was pretty wickedly ahead of it's time for all of the creator's shortcomings. Still can't believe that teleporting doesn't kill you every time.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

Has it ever been proven in any of the shows that the transporter didn't kill everyone that used it and just made such prefect copies that no one realized?

Like it created an extra copy of Riker and there was the tragedy of Tuvix. Though I'd say the former is evidence that it is new copies but the latter might be evidence against it, since they each had memories of their time merged when they separated. Actually, that whole incident kinda brings into question what's going on for a transporter to accidentally merge two people and not in a "horrible teleportation into a wall accident" way and then somehow de-merge them.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

it's just the ship of theseus, at what point do you consider it a new ship?

like think about it, people only start questioning if it's the same person after they learn how transporters work, doesn't that indicate that it really doesn't matter? if people can go their entire lives with neither them nor anyone around them noticing a difference, how could they somehow be a different person?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah, there definitely are some waved away elements that are basically magic. I'm just binging TNG now, but I saw the Lower Decks tribute to many-a transporter incidents.

I mean if you can transport and not at the same time (the copy version), it is not hard to think that once that buffer is cleared on the one side, it's game over man.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

it's only a problem if you think the sole thing defining "you" is an intangible soul that for some reason wouldn't just transfer between or get copied alongside instances of yourself

the line of reasoning you talk about has always been so strange to me, you'd be talking to a person walking out of a transporter and insist they're dead, as they look you in the eye and ask if that's an insult

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

I had a similar argument with a friend, and I think he won that time. It came out of left field and rephrases the whole thought experiment.

Instead of me defending the argument, how would you interpret a clone incident? Would you get 'the other feed' as well? We have the sleep cycle where we don't actively get input (even though our conciousness is present during dreams to a certain extent). So if a transporter clone incident rebuilds the person on the other side, but an original instant could go on experiencing a life that wouldn't be if the transporter functioned correctly.

Hopefully that took the soul out of your argument!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 33 minutes ago

cloning is pretty simple: you end up in both places. there's no magical continuity of experience, both clones are equal and will 100% feel like the original and have equally valid claims to such, and to a third observer it would basically just look like two very confused identical twins who share their memories before the cloning.
You obviously wouldn't end up with a single conscience experiencing both points of view at once, lmao.

it's just like copying data on a computer, it's all the same data so it's nonsensical to call any copy the "original".