Morning Ed: SciFi {2017.11.14.T}
[SF1] Superhero origin story.
[SF2] Babblefish made real. This is a lot more important a development than a lot of things we consider to be important developments.
[SF3] USA! USA! Take that, Japan.
[SF4] This is how we lose everything. This was actually the plot of the Westworld movie (but not the TV show). The robots designed the robots, and so when they went berzerk nobody knew what to do because they were so removed from the process.
[SF5] But what happens if you go through the void? Alternate universes? Please tell me alternate universes.
[SF6] This will end in no tears.
[SF7] I can imagine a few ways this might go wrong.
[SF8] William Bradley tries to come to terms with the fact that Frank Miller’s politics are not to his liking and trying to like his work anyway. Must be hard.
[SF9] Either that or the programmers did a really, really good job.
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
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
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
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
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
[Sf4] This link doesn’t look like anything to me.Report
SF5: umm, Stargate, anyone?Report
And they found the hidden chamber in the pyramid because of odd radiation readings. Naquadah, I bet.Report
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
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
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
See also: Orson Scott CardReport
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
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
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
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
They’re both Michael Crichton works, so the similarity is not a coincidence nor really a rip off.Report
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
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