Talk:Orion's Arm/Archive 1

not realstic

mentaluploading? CAn we even attempt it?

Myt problem is your 'hard scifi' usuallky is at teh edge oftheortical science. MOst is not based on currently working technologies.

That said, I'm going to get flamed. THere is controversy, despite your ear holding.

GEt a clue. This is not a clear case of hard scifi. THat is 2001.

I'm also logging in and making a deletion request. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.197.19.10 (talk • contribs) on 09:34, 1 September 2005

Please take this rather imbecilic post as an example of what wikipedia is not about or for. I'm sure you can see where this person went wrong.

Response

Har har har. I do hope you're kidding.

And if you want, add a 'controversy' section. But deleting something because it doesn't appeal to your sensibilities is just plain stupid.

Furthermore, mental uploading, given a mapping of the human brain, is possible. IIRC they transferred a insect's brainstate to computer once in the present. So it's not the hardest of sci-fi. Many sci-fi are considered 'hard' without being absolutely meticulously correct to every current science detail.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.91.112.190 (talk • contribs) on 05:11, 2 September 2005

Response

The OA site defines the difference between what they call "ultra hard" and "hard" SF. The first is based on foreseeable technology, the second on foreseeable science. There's a difference. OA never claims to be ultra-hard.

That said, any degree of "hard" is a subjective term. I'm an optimist regarding technological advancement, and I have issues with some of the science and technology in OA. If "hard" means "designed with the intention of being scientificially plausible", then OA is hard. If "hard" means "correctly predicting future advancement", then your guess is as good as mine.

The real issue, therefore, isn't how scientifically accurate OA is. It's that the article's statements that it is sound like they came from the OA site. We don't want to sound like we're promoting OA as "superior" science fiction. SpaceCaptain 17:06, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Faster-than-light?

The OA creators consider their universe to have no FTL. However, most SF writers (hopefully) admit that wormholes are used for getting to another place faster than you could by sub-light movement, and are FTL by the general definition. Wormholes are no less FTL than the generic "hyperdrives" of science fiction. More plausible, to be sure, but to say OA has absolutely no FTL is just repeating wwhat they claim on their own site. We need to critically analyze whether OA's statements about itself are true. SpaceCaptain 00:35, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Hi Space Captain. I try to avoid all but occasional very minor edits to the OA page for obvious POV reasons  ;-) However the talk pages are a different matter. Your question here is a very important one, so I'll try to answer it as best i can.

As any physicist will tell you, navigatible wormholes (themselves still purely in the province of science fiction) would allow instantaneous transit between remote points, whereas of course as you point out light (and any ships etc) not passing through the wormhole still has to crawl from point "a" to "point "b" at relativistic or sub-relativistic speeds. This however does not make wormholes "FTL by the general definition". This is because within that part of the space-time fabric that has been warped by the WH, it is still the case that nothing goes faster than light relative to the immediately surrounding space that makes up the wormhole (relative to the wormhole mouth, for example). This is in keeping with the dictum that you can have any two of the following: special relativity, causality, and/or FTL, but not all three. Therefore, assuming a causal relativistic universe (such as OA assumes) a ship passing through a WH cannot - according to the laws of physics and causality as now understood - go faster than light relative to the surrounding space-time. Don't believe me, check with any physics guys you know, or get in touch with any at any university or institute.

Of course if we lived in a purely newtonian universe (which we don't, as innumerable observations and experiments confirming special relativity have proven), FTL would certainly be possible. And if, conversely, the universe turns out to be acausal (who knows, maybe it is), and thus allows time travel paradoxes, then there is again no problem with FTL (Apparently also you can get around time travel paradoxes by means of the many worlds interpretation).

With OA we do try to be consistent re the hard science, so because of the above reasons we unfortunately cannot have FTL as above defined.

M Alan Kazlev 06:16, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Let me try to clarify the view that OA seems to take, as far as I can understand it. The problems with faster than light travel aren't so much with outpacing a photon to a destination, but are with the creation of closed timelike curves (paths that you can travel on that let you arrive at your starting point before you left). Unrestricted FTL lets you create CTCs, which causes serious problems with physics. Orion's Arm chooses to restrict faster-than-light travel only to those cases where CTCs don't form, allowing you to travel from one star system to another between breakfast and lunch time, but avoiding all of the messy problems with causality violations that you get with unrestricted FTL. The mechanism OA relies on is virtual particle-induced collapse of any CTC that starts forming, proposed by physicist Matt Visser (who doesn't seem to have a Wikipedia page at the moment) as a mechanism for preventing wormholes from being used as unrestricted time machines.

For myself, it's not this assumption that I find unrealistic. Instead, I don't agree with the assumption that negative mass is possible in the first place (it's suggested, depending on how you look at the equations, but nothing like it has been observed, and yes, I know about the Casimir effect; different beast). However, it's a fiction site, so it can make whatever assumptions it likes. The question hasn't been definitively settled either way. --Christopher Thomas 07:43, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

I know the basics of how wormholes work. I learned everything you said before I heard of Orion's Arm. All I'm saying is, from the perspective of what can be done in the fictional universe re: travelling, OA has FTL. Most science-fictional FTL drives are, in some way or another, not "true" FTL. Only a minority of universes, like the Lensman series, have ships that can travel faster than light in non-warped space comprised only of the dimensions we know. My issue isn't with your science. It's with misrepresentaation of the universe. Saying "no FTL" immediately suggests it always takes years, at least, to travel between stars. If you want to be pedantic, OA has no FTL. But in practical terms, you can travel between stars quickly. There's gotta be some way of making this clear immediately. SpaceCaptain 00:25, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

I understand where you are coming from. Maybe say something like that it is FTL via traversable wormholes, but it also takes into account theories by Matt Visser and thus avoids CTCs and preserves causality M Alan Kazlev 11:06, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Space opera

FYI I changed the bottom tagline from post cyberpunk to space opera. it's closer to space opera than postcyberpunk. Unless we start take postcyberpunk to mean everything after snow crash, it needs to have a near future earthbound setting. It even says it’s a space opera on its own web site Joeyjojo 06:29, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Lem?

The article states "It takes the concept of the technological singularity directly from Lem's work.". Nowhere does it define who Lem is. --irrevenant [ talk ] 10:21, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Fixed. --Christopher Thomas 17:15, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

for some reason my change from lem to ulam was reverted. stanislav lem was a prolific writer and I wouldnt be surprised if he proposed a technological singularity as well, but the mathematician stan Ulam must definitely described it. From the wikipedia article on Ulam:

In May 1958, while referring to a conversation with von Neumann, Ulam said what would later become a foundation of the technological singularity theory: "One conversation centered on the ever accelerating progress of technology and changes in the mode of human life, which gives the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue."

Your change was wrong. Look at the Orion's Arm website. They clearly reference Stanislaw Lem's science fiction works. Ulam's is not mentioned anywhere. You can't substitute your idea of what should have influenced the project for what the project members say was their influence. Briangotts (Talk) (Contrib) 15:47, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

See, e.g., [1]; [2]; [3]

I guess I accept that Ulam is not relevant, and that Lem is the author in question, however I have with two comments:

1) We should make an explicit reference to the exact manner in which Lem discusses the "Technological Singularity" (I have no knowledge of any relevant work of Lem's that touches this subject).

2) I haven't seen specific evidence that they are influenced by Lem's work on "technological singularity". Influenced? Sure, but not regarding the singularity, and definitely not "It takes the concept of the technological singularity *directly* from Lem's work."

RZ

Those seem like fair statements to me. I am not familiar with Lem's work myself, I only know that he is prominently mentioned in the OA website and that Ulam is not. Briangotts (Talk) (Contrib) 15:16, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

The concept of 'Toposophy' used in Orion's Arm is based on one described by Lem, while the concept of the 'Technological Singularity' is more closely based on speculations by Vernor Vinge and various transhumanists. However the use of both concepts has developed to be idiosyncratic to the OA scenario itself. 87.102.28.2 15:41, 12 August 2007 (UTC)Eburacum

This dosen't seem like hard sci-fi to me

Seriously, it dosen't, it seems to be "hard sci-fi" by their own definition and nobody else's. Wormhole travel ? Mind uploads ? God-like beings with no defined or explained motives, traits or limitations (because they're transhuman see, you wouldn't understand it anyway... nice cop-out o.0 ). In my opinion hard sci-fi means slow-boating around at 0.1c at best (if biological beings do any space travel at all), it means terraforming a planet takes a few thousand years if it works at all, it means computers don't automagically become sentient by accident but rather they do what computers do - curnch numbers, and if you have any AI it implies that those creating it fully understand a mind works, and it's slightly more complicated then creating biological life from scratch. It means you don't throw around "i've gone through 5 singularities and my power level is over 9000, beat that !". Seriously the biggest difference between this and 50's science pulp fiction is that it meets modern audience's expectations more and it avoids some science that has been disproved in the meantime. That being said i don't think anything set 10000 years into the future can seriously claim itself to be hard sci-fi, so it's not just their version of the future that seems rather fantastic. --Helixdq 11:14, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

<shrug> Everyone's entitled to their own opinions (although the above contains some factual errors; for example, it's simply not true that the AIs have no defined or explained motives or traits). Ultra-hard SF is by its own nature limited to stories about the immediate future, unless they're either post-apocalyptic or have some other reason to explain the otherwise inexplicable fact that science and technology haven't advanced beyond present day understanding in over a century. Your opinion of what "hard sci-fi" means implies the term simply can't be used at all for stories set in the far future. I think many would disagree. To the extent that the idea of and philosophy behind "hard sci-fi" can be applied to far future settings, I believe they do a reasonable job with OA. --68.112.142.241 22:41, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

You're right about everything except the computer thing. All signs seem to suggest that within a century we'll see mind uploads being standard procedure for the elderly in developed nations. This would naturally lead to "AI Gods" as the uploaded improve their cognitive abilities. See also technological singularity. --86.135.179.69 (talk) 15:07, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

"Fictional" sections

It seems like Dyson Spheres, et al, should be considered less fictional, and more theoretical. I'll be bold and rename the sections myself, rather than waiting for somebody to second my motion. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.111.18.26 (talk) 00:37, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Vast?

The novel "Vast" by Linda Nagata is set in "Orion's Arm". Is that this Orion's Arm? If so, it should probably be mentioned in the article. If not, there should probably be a disambiguation page. --Irrevenant [ talk ] 21:30, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Actually Nagata's book is set in the Orion Arm, which is the part of the galaxy where the Earth is located, and is also the part of the galaxy where Orion's Arm is set. (eburacum 87.102.28.2 (talk) 01:40, 11 September 2009 (UTC))

update

I've just updated a couple of things within the article. There's going to be an Orion Arm fiction collection published in 2009, and pico/femtotech have been removed from the setting. i've also taken out a few external links, as some were not really necessary (just pointing to different parts of the OA site). couple of other bits as well, but nothing major. --graham228221 (talk) 11:14, 5 January 2009 (UTC)