Deep thought Friday

Haven't done one of these in a quite a while now.

The background reading includes two posts from today: Trey's review of Guardians of the Galaxy, and the idea certain aspects suggest Farscape, and a post at Realms of Chirak on 'citogenesis', essentially a lack of care in recording knowledge.

What's the connection? Read this article at the IEET site on the idea of intelligence limiting itself.

The question then. Is intelligence an evolutionary dead end and what role does culture play in this?

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Deep thought Friday

Resolving line of sight through areas like forest is a challenge in tabletop gaming. Trees? Or wood?

Heard of mycorrhizas? Turns out most plants are bonded at their root with a fungus, symbiotically. The fungus sends minerals up from the earth; the leaves send sugars down. Can these be divided?

We thought a tree was a tree - now we know it's more. But we still say 'tree', as if it's one, alone. How much interconnection does language hide..?
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Deep thought Friday

With a recent reminder of the Apollo programme and the clear contrast with Curiosity, it's natural there's been a lot of talk about how things stand.

So when we say a given entity was ahead of its time, could we in fact be a) recognising that we ourselves are behind our own time, b) admitting that we've allowed ourselves to become trapped in a future the given entity helped create, and/or c) accepting the entity as a creator and in doing so exonerating ourselves of failure to do better?

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Deep thought Friday

This time I'll just direct you to two discussions.

One is SinSynn's considered post On Violence in Gaming at House of Paincakes, which is still picking up thoughtful responses two days later.

The other is Dark nights apprising here at the Expanse, which stayed oddly quiet once it was posted despite solid traffic - until James S took up the gauntlet earlier today and made things a lot more epistemological and DtF in the process.

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Fractal gaming

I imagine quite a few of us have a played a game within a game, where the characters themselves are playing, gambling say. But how often is this a game of the very same type - meaning an RPG inside an RPG, or a wargame inside a wargame?

This kind of 'fractal gaming' shouldn't be too hard to do with a rules-light RPG, with its freedom to improvise and rewrite rules on the fly, but it could be tougher with the narrower focus of a wargame, where we're given less scope for non-destructive interaction between individuals. Hold the thought.

Could we and the dice be seen as gods to the characters in our games? Collectively, we are the creators of the fictional world, and to the inhabitants we're potentially omnipotent, as omniescent as the game needs, and possibly even omnipresent: after all, the events exist only in the players' minds; things only happen if we go there. Hold that thought too.

Deep thought Friday

Another DtF via Mr Clarke, with a warm-up here.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.         Arthur C. Clarke

Is "advanced" the right term? If we perceive time as linear, are we mistaking the nature of change, seeing it as progress? Seeing what was or could have been as failed? Is our thinking on science a teleology, or teleological argument, with science the deity? Would 'sufficiently unfamiliar' be more accurate? Could elsewhen than our future hold unfamiliar technology and our age be 'backward'?

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Deep thought Friday

I read John Lambshead's essay at the Baen site today and it got me wondering again how certain we can really be that civilisations didn't develop on Earth even many millions of years before us.

If exchange of ideas and transmission of cultural and technological records were communicated in movement or song, by tail and neck in sauropods say, and maybe constantly within and between large groups, rather like a more complex Occupy megaphone, and landscapes were transformed through cultivation only, would we have any more evidence than we do that we were not the first?

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Deep thought Friday

Here's a pretty big one, focused on fiction. As a DtF seed, it grew out of discussions at the FTL and greenery posts, and ties in with this past Dtf. For more reading you could try this article on V for Vendetta and the one last time on progress.

To try and fasten any responsibility on art as the cause of life seems to me to put the case the wrong way around. Art consists of reshaping life but it does not create life, nor cause life.

Stanley Kubrick

Can this really be true? Do ideas not lead us on?

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Deep thought Friday

Here we go then. If you'd like some background reading, try this thesis and this recent blog post.

Earth is the cradle of humanity, but one cannot live in a cradle forever.

Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky

But is a birth an imperative to grow or succeed when presumably we had no say in whether or not it happened? And if many of us play games we played in our youth, would we now aspire to grow old given the choice? Should life on Earth?

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Deep thought not Friday

Here we are as planned, but still not on a Friday. For a warm up, I suggest this, this, this and this.

Saying that the laws of physics as we know them permit travel into the past is the same as saying that, to paraphrase Bertrand Russell, they permit a teapot to be in orbit around Venus

Brian Cox, Cern researcher

Can we doubt if this quote spreads and we do reach Venus, there won't one day be a teapot in orbit there, even if only as a prank? Could time travel, or any speculated tech, be as inevitable?

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Deep thought not Friday

It's been another long time since we had one of these posts. The subject today is less obviously epistemological and there's optional reading too.

- That David Brin article; several of us responded.

- A look at potential with Alexis; last paragraph.

- JB's review of Tron: Legacy, seeing it differently.

- Harald evolves Argos, Von the Iron Kingdoms.

- Evan's worldbuilding and some protagonists.

The question then. Can we define science fiction and fantasy so as to clearly separate them? If not, how might the continuum be visualised?

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Deep thought Friday

We haven't had any deep thinking on a Friday for a while, not here anyway, or not intentionally, but yesterday's post qualifies so I'm linking back.

There are three questions, but the first and most important relates to our ability to be truly original. It's a biggie, and something that affects us all more directly than many of the past topics.

Come and join in the conversation, and check out the blog mentioned too. It's inspiring.
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Deep thought Friday

A step down from last week, I've been brushing up on utility fog for the less-than-secret project, using this seminal article. I recommend reading it, from the first image to the second at least.

How can we know we're not already in that world?

If you don't want to read it, here's the alternative:

How can we know that what we - collectively or singly - perceive to be reality is not a simluation?

Deep thought Friday

More deep thinking for a Friday. The four past ponders are here, here, here and here. James S has joined Jennie with a later comment at the second so you might want to look at that too.

I think therefore I am.   René Descartes

This is arguable based on what we understand by the verb 'be'. But how far could the notion 'be' be a useful device and thought a self-sustaining thing, a closed loop willing itself into existence?

Deep thought Friday

Normal service resumes then after last week's relatively earthbound subject. Of course, if you do want to go back a fortnight to respond to Jennie, there's nothing at all to stop you.

Here's this week's though, in the form of two related questions. Have a go at one or both.

Do we have any terms for things which just don't exist? Switching that round, are there things which exist we just don't have any terms for?

Deep thought Friday

A less abstract challenge today, to encourage you to go back to last week's ponder. Jennie came along after everyone had left with thoughts and links and I'm not sure I can manage alone.

Here's it is then, mundane by comparison.

How far is a field interested in moving us beyond its essential concern? For example, if the fundamental problem of economics is scarcity, how far will it assist in eliminating this?

Deep thought Friday

This week we go beyond alien life into logic, with thanks to meandmythinkingcap for bringing it up.

The law of identity, arguably fundamental to knowledge, states that a thing is the same as itself, that is:

A ≡ A

But is this true only as far as we can measure? Could A actually be quite different from A on a level beyond our current science or perception?

Deep thought Friday

Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.

Arthur C Clarke 

This has a little of the idea 'you're either with us or against us'. What if there is a third option, or multiple extra options, and the concept 'alone' is too simplistic, too anthropic?