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Asking the wrong questions

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Re: Asking the wrong questions

#31

Post by pjc50 »

singham wrote: post #11

I will relate to my observation in Harry Potter books. Harry Potter universe has time machine which we know scientifically are impossible while in the same HP universe, Hermoine has to physically go to the forbidden library to read books. JK Rowling couldn't think of wikipedia or internet which both exist in real world but not time travel.

I think the best one of those I encountered was an SF story where the navigation for FTL was done with slide rules.

But demanding that fiction predict the future is unreasonable and will cause upset for you and the authors. Almost all speculative fiction is based on "what if": imagine if there was something different about the world or or our technological capabilities, what stories could we tell about them?

(That's not even counting the SFF that makes no claim to be about the future or reality, but simply brings in elements for dramatic effect. That's why you can hear things in film space battles, which tend to be organised like WW2 carrier/air battles. That's why Harry Potter books make no attempt at consistency.)

Re: Asking the wrong questions

#32

Post by smhost »

greggyb wrote: post #28
dTal wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The owls aren't that magical - they are established to be obstructed by such mundanities as thunderstorms and glass windows. The communication latency is atrocious. To top it off they're sentient beings, presumably in finite supply, who can die in the line of duty. Interception and denial-of-service are both established to be not uncommon problems with owl communication. Come to think of it, we come across actual mag…

We have strong cryptography and near-instant communication protocols. Why the hell is there a postal service in every country, and why is the quality of the postal service an indication of sophistication rather than lack of development in a country?

No no, you're missing the point. You see, owls are quite adorable.

Re: Asking the wrong questions

#34

Post by mikeash »

smhost wrote: post #32
greggyb wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have strong cryptography and near-instant communication protocols. Why the hell is there a postal service in every country, and why is the quality of the postal service an indication of sophistication rather than lack of development in a country?

No no, you're missing the point. You see, owls are quite adorable.

Superb, even.

Re: Asking the wrong questions

#35

Post by dTal »

greggyb wrote: post #28
dTal wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The owls aren't that magical - they are established to be obstructed by such mundanities as thunderstorms and glass windows. The communication latency is atrocious. To top it off they're sentient beings, presumably in finite supply, who can die in the line of duty. Interception and denial-of-service are both established to be not uncommon problems with owl communication. Come to think of it, we come across actual mag…

We have strong cryptography and near-instant communication protocols. Why the hell is there a postal service in every country, and why is the quality of the postal service an indication of sophistication rather than lack of development in a country?

I'm not sure if this is meant to be rhetorical? Either way - ideally you have postal service AND electronic communication, and the quality of both reflect on the country.

It's a fair question though - anecdotally, the two main uses for the postal service nowadays (in countries with internet access) are package deliveries and unsolicited marketing (possibly print subscriptions factor in).

To my mind, the unique advantage of the Muggle postal service for personal communications, apart from the globally federated physical distribution network - the one that would make me very hesitant to scrap it - is the difficulty of conducting mass surveillance on it.

Re: Asking the wrong questions

#36

Post by stygiansonic »

Interesting aside: One of the RAND's predictions (No. 24) is for "International agreements which guarantee certain economic minima to the world's population as a result of high production from automation", which sounds pretty much like Basic Income, along with some of the same arguments we've heard recently about why it will be increasingly needed. (Not saying I agree nor disagree)

Re: Asking the wrong questions

#37

Post by dTal »

detaro wrote: post #30
dTal wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which of course implies that magic is detectable using ordinary electronic equipment (even inadvertantly - would Kings Cross Starbucks notice their WiFi dropped out twice a year?) It also raises the question of how electric something has to be to not work. Flash photography works, so capacitors are seemingly okay. Even a simple one-wire telegraph system would be an improvement on owls.

> Flash photography works, so capacitors are seemingly okay. It does? But yes, these things are glossed over quite a bit, which is also odd since there are enough wizards that grew up as muggles and should have a fairly good idea about what technology can do, and would miss tech they'd have to leave behind ((EDIT: in a modern version) no smartphones, no internet would be quite a jump for kids used to them) Any sugges…

Nitpick - Harry Potter is set in the 90s, pre smartphone.

As for story suggestions - well, I don't read a lot of fantasy, but the "fanfiction" Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (by LessWrong's Eliezer Yudkowsky) is a deeply amusing take on what havoc might have been wreaked in the Harry Potter universe by someone who, finding themselves in it, applies the scientific method. (If that's not enough to pique your interest, at one point in the story Harry explores the possibility of using a time-turner to deterministically solve NP-hard problems through the forced creation of stable time loops.)

Another good story is Sam Hughes' "Ra", where magic is literally a field of scientific research and engineering. It scratches the same itch as Methods of Rationality (scientific deconstruction of magic), but in a universe built for that purpose. It's awesome.

[1] http://www.hpmor.com/ [2] https://qntm.org/ra

Re: Asking the wrong questions

#38

Post by barrkel »

This is a bit banal. Nobody can predict second and third order effects reliably because they don't know how to weight one predicted effect vs another to know how they'll intersect and interact.

Extrapolation for any one technology usually works well for a short distance into the future (a decade or so), but the chances of a technology being blindsided by something else entirely rapidly rise over time.

Re: Asking the wrong questions

#40

Post by intrasight »

I enjoyed the photo, the family history, and the premise of "asking the right/wrong question". I think that all technologists - or perhaps everyone - can and should take a step back from their daily grind and ask some questions.

I think the wisdom of the crowd can be leveraged in asking questions about the future. There are sites like longbets.org where you can weight in.

It is one of the great gifts to the human species to be able to contemplate a future beyond tomorrow.

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