Morning Ed: SciFi {2017.11.14.T}

19 thoughts on “Morning Ed: SciFi {2017.11.14.T}”

1. SF2: The good news is that we invented a universal translator. The bad news is that you have to stick it up your nose.

   SF7: There has to be at least some robotic scientists and advocates that watched Terminator.Report

   1. Not universal, it’s limited to 40 languages. A universal translator would be able to start building a translation after hearing a new language for a time.Report

   2. SF2: The bad news is that people will discover the hard way that Google Translate is the computer equivalent of a dog walking on its hind legs. The unwise will rely on the translation for something important. Wackiness will ensue.Report

      1. Is that bad news or the best part?

         Notably, by my Very Important Standard, Google Translate has actually gotten too good. Better than it used to be, anyway.Report

         1. Google translate is getting good enough (at least English Portuguese) that our company does a ginormous amount in Brazil of work with Portuguese documents relaying on it (I’m the only fluent Portuguese speaker in the team, the one that checks out the rare wacky translations )Report

2. [Sf4] This link doesn’t look like anything to me.Report

3. SF5: umm, Stargate, anyone?Report

   1. And they found the hidden chamber in the pyramid because of odd radiation readings. Naquadah, I bet.Report

4. SF9: I don’t actually take claims that we’re living in a simulation seriously, but I see a couple of loopholes here:

   1. If this is a simulation, we have no idea what the external universe is like. It could (in fact, would pretty much have to be) be unimaginably more complex than this simulation. They do mention this at the end.

   2. Many of the same optimizations used in video games could be used in a universe simulation. At very large scales, the behavior of matter and energy follows relatively simple rules, but things get more complex the closer you look. Much as game designers use simple models for faraway objects and replace them with more complex objects as the player approaches, a universe designer could simulate details only when they’re being examined by some conscious entity. A solipsistic simulation would require only as much processing power as needed to provide sensory data for one mind.

   Basically they’ve proven that a universe cannot be fully simulated within itself, which is kind of a no-brainer.Report

   1. Brandon,
      You should look at more data compression theory. There’s quite a good argument that the only way our universe makes sense is if it is a simulation (Quantum Mechanics are Completely Bizarre, but if you run them as “we only simulate what we have to”, then it suddenly Clicks).Report

5. SF8- The sheer number of artists whose work I admire but politics I loathe would fill a book, along with spilling out on film. That is just life though and as adults, we accept that fact. We can either choose to disregard the art or realize that not everything in life works out in the symmetry that we would like and move on.Report

   1. See also: Orson Scott CardReport

   2. So, why are politics okay, but personal behavior not okay?
      (Here I’m thinking more of someone like Louis CK, who by his own account thought he was doing “the right thing” only to learn “Imadumbass” later, rather than Joss Whedon who is just a creeper.)Report

      1. Depends on the personal behavior. Sexual assault is, you know, illegal, so people generally don’t get a pass on that. Otherwise, hypocrisy is a tough pill to swallow for most people, so that’ll tank you, even if nothing illegal was done.Report

         1. Oscar,
            Hm. I think the difference is in thought versus action.
            Otherwise known as “I could make the argument that the politics, as enacted by several “socalled” libertarians… are actually illegal.”

            (And no, this isn’t the gunsmugglers.that the secret service took out. Different people entirely)Report

6. SF4 – Off-subject, if you’ve seen the movie Westworld, you know why I laughed all the way through Jurassic Park. An amusement park on an island goes awry when the high-tech creations (that we were supposed to be able to interact with safely) develop unexpected variations and start killing the guests, because mankind doesn’t understand the science behind them.Report

   1. They’re both Michael Crichton works, so the similarity is not a coincidence nor really a rip off.Report

7. At around the same time Holy Terror was released, Miller also wrote a now-infamous blog post slamming the United States’s youth culture in general and Occupy Wall Street protesters in particular, writing:

   Wake up, pond scum. America is at war against a ruthless enemy. Maybe, between bouts of self-pity and all the other tasty tidbits of narcissism you’ve been served up in your sheltered, comfy little worlds, you’ve heard terms like al-Qaeda and Islamicism.

   And this enemy of mine — not of yours, apparently — must be getting a dark chuckle, if not an outright horselaugh — out of your vain, childish, self-destructive spectacle. In the name of decency, go home to your parents, you losers. Go back to your mommas’ basements and play with your Lords Of Warcraft [sic].

   Go figure. A guy who writes comic books has the world view of a comic book. If only this were contained to comic book writers.Report

8. I’m a little impressed by the Senate GOP’s moxy. The tax cuts were struggling for popularity so lets add a whack at the ACA to the mix? Does this really make it more likely to pass?Report

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