[HN Gopher] Tomorrow people: For a century, it felt like telepat...
___________________________________________________________________
Tomorrow people: For a century, it felt like telepathy was around
the corner
Author : Caiero
Score : 73 points
Date : 2024-06-10 13:18 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (aeon.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (aeon.co)
| swayvil wrote:
| I think that we, as a society, are really attached to language
| and convention. And telepathy is incompatible with that. So any
| evidence or argument for telepathy is voided.
|
| There is a mountain of anecdote, however.
| lxgr wrote:
| All of which can be adequately be explained for with unexpected
| physical nonverbal communication channels, confirmation bias
| and various other cognitive biases, and none of which
| reproducible in a methodologically correct setting, despite
| decades of trying.
| swayvil wrote:
| "Adequate explanation" is a tool of relatively small scope,
| dependent upon the judgment of individuals, which is of
| relatively great scope. If many individuals judge it
| "telepathy" then that carries weight. Let's not put the cart
| before the horse.
| lxgr wrote:
| > If many individuals judge it "telepathy" then that
| carries weight.
|
| No, science is not a trial by popular vote. What carries
| weight are models, theories, experiments, and
| falsification.
|
| This can include subjective reports, but the human mind, as
| brilliant as it can be, is also a never-ending source of
| biases and (conscious or unconscious) deception, which all
| need to be corrected for via proper experimental setup.
| wumbo wrote:
| friends! let us have it both ways!
|
| Humans have telepathy _and_ cognitive biases!
| RobotToaster wrote:
| What if collective cognitive biases are the result of
| telepathy?
| ErigmolCt wrote:
| But telepathy, as traditionally understood, isn't
| scientifically proven...
| mistermann wrote:
| It sure can, but whether your explanation is correct is the
| tricky part.
|
| Luckily, most people can't realize this so the problem
| "doesn't exist", and "is" solved.
| lxgr wrote:
| Not sure how I'd "realize correctness" of my explanation,
| but until I hear a more plausible one (in particular, that
| means one not introducing extraordinary other assumptions
| without extraordinary evidence for their existence), I'll
| stick with mine.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| Telepathy is around the corner, with Neuralink it will be
| possible somehow.
| thuuuomas wrote:
| You first
| swayvil wrote:
| What will we exchange? Language? Memories? Streams of sensory
| stuff?
|
| Because language is, in the big picture, very very small.
|
| And if we were going to exchange memories etc, we might have to
| encode it.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _language is, in the big picture, very very small_
|
| You may enjoy Ted Chiang's "The Truth of Fact, the Truth of
| Feeling" [1][2].
|
| [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20140222103103/http://subterr
| ane...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Truth_of_Fact,_the_Trut
| h_o...
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| Better than talking and being overheard. Also, with telepathy
| you could have any voice of your choice, with any sound
| effects.
| TheRoque wrote:
| Yeah, you could buy the Morgan Freeman voice pack for only
| 20$
| mistermann wrote:
| Insightful question...unless something emergent came along
| with Neuralink for free, we have a hard problem of how to
| figure out how to use the new bandwidth. And both ends need
| to be able to encode and decode, _and understand the result_
| , with multiple levels of error handling.
|
| An exception: high resolution transmission of emotions could
| be revolutionary.
| swayvil wrote:
| It would change the art world for sure.
|
| Why craft emotionally evocative images or sounds when you
| can deliver it directly?
| radarsat1 wrote:
| Heh this reminds me of a joke from an old colleague, who
| would say, "forget working on a great demo! let's work on
| technology that makes you _feel_ like you 've just seen a
| great demo!"
| swayvil wrote:
| Hey, Total Recall. The movie. They did a thing like that.
| drewcoo wrote:
| Odors. Smellepethy.
|
| The future William Castle saw for us. Um . . . sniffed for
| us.
| labster wrote:
| In just 20 years, we'll have fusion-powered telepathy.
| passwordoops wrote:
| <snark>
|
| In space in the metaverse on the blockchain!
|
| </snark>
| ozim wrote:
| Well I can app/sms my GF in other room without yelling already.
| The same with sending her notes on situation in a crowded room
| or on a bus/train without strangers knowing.
|
| I feel like I have it covered without implanting stuff in my
| head.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| No it isn't. We have absolutely no way to transmit messages
| _to_ the brain yet, we 've barely only been able to go brain ->
| computer interface so far. The other way around we don't even
| know _how_ to do.
| criddell wrote:
| Would cochlear implants qualify as transmitting to the brain?
| nemomarx wrote:
| In the same sense that a Bluetooth headset is transmitting
| information to the brain?
|
| I assume people mean without going through one of the
| existing senses, although I wonder if it would really feel
| like telepathy. If you suddenly had a sense for magnetism
| would that just feel like a new addition to your ordinary
| senses, for instance?
| vdqtp3 wrote:
| https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/21/15999544/biohacking-
| finge...
| throwanem wrote:
| If we're going to talk about telepathy and all mean the same
| thing by it, we need a rigorous definition of the term. Does
| anyone have one?
|
| If asked to guess, I'd start with "the communication of meaning
| among humans in the absence of signification", but I am unstudied
| in the field and have no idea what prior art exists.
|
| _edit:_ I did say "rigorous". Please cite your sources, and
| note that while I am admittedly guessing above, I'm borrowing the
| terms "meaning" and "signification" from the jargon of semiotics
| in order to do so; considering the subject matter, to raid a sort
| of philosophical "fringe science" for terminology seemed apropos.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Transfer of information not using the existing senses.
| loceng wrote:
| Is intuition a sense - or is that potentially some people
| excelling at reading physical cues that 99.999999% of people
| can't see or relate to what someone is then likely thinking?
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Intuition isn't a sense. There's no data being measured.
| Intuition is a processing and synthesizing of past and
| sometimes presently sensed data into some meaning.
|
| When I understand "sense" in this context I'm understanding
| "sensor." A sensor is measuring something.
|
| I think the closest I can get to telepathy without it being
| a completely wild paradigm shift in understanding is if we
| could implant technology directly into our brains, thus
| introducing new sensors.
| loceng wrote:
| There are "famous" people on YouTube who seem very
| telepathic-psychic - but I suppose people would really
| only become a believer if they have an anecdotal
| experience themselves that defies all odds.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| If it's real, it will survive scrutiny and people will
| believe the evidence.
| lxgr wrote:
| There are all kinds of famous people, on Youtube and
| elsewhere, that believe (or claim to believe) the most
| absurd things.
|
| Why would that matter in the slightest, especially given
| that their purported abilities all seem to flee to
| another dimension as soon as they're under scientific
| evaluation?
| autorizo wrote:
| Intuition i think much more data driven than you say. I
| think probably it's just subconscious calculations
| ErigmolCt wrote:
| I think you're absolutely right. Intuition can be
| understood as a form of subconscious calculation.
| ErigmolCt wrote:
| I think emotions play a significant role in intuition.
| jerf wrote:
| I think this sort of negative definition is not very useful,
| though. As soon as telepathy is demonstrated, it becomes an
| existing sense. And that's not just word chopping, it's
| pretty evident that this is going to bother people and that
| they will believe it can't be "real" telepathy.
|
| In a non-trivial way, this means that "telepathy" is
| _defined_ as something that does not and can not exist. If it
| exists, it won 't be telepathy, because it'll have to be
| something real, and as such, it won't be "real" telepathy.
|
| If you _do_ give it a concrete definition that permits it to
| exist, it is often the case that it turns out that we have it
| in the real world already, unless you define it as some sort
| of ability to _invasively_ read people 's minds or something,
| in which here's hoping it never exists in this universe.
| mistermann wrote:
| Well said - more formally:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-world_assumption
|
| A fun question to cut through (or expose)
| intuitive/cultural heuristics: did atoms _exist_ before
| they were discovered to exist?
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Yes, that's essentially the whole point.
|
| "Magic is just science we don't yet understand" and all
| that.
| swader999 wrote:
| Telepathy would convey instant understanding in both the
| receiver and the sender. I don't think humans in their current
| form could handle it. We'd be completely exposed. It's not at
| all like verbal communication if you read accounts of NDEers.
| NooneAtAll3 wrote:
| telepathy does not always mean read access to the brain
|
| at its most basic, it's an email
| ErigmolCt wrote:
| At its core, both concepts involve the transfer of
| information between individuals without the need for
| physical interaction. The comparison of telepathy to email
| is an interesting one indeed.
| swader999 wrote:
| My take on it is that it wouldn't even involve language.
| mock-possum wrote:
| Telepathy is the ability to use your mind to reach out into the
| mind of another, thereby allowing you to passively observe
| and/or change the contents.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| Parapsychology is what you're looking for.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Growing up I read a lot of "golden age" science fiction, and I
| remember realizing how many classic "hard" sci-fi novels and
| short stories feature super mental powers like telepathy,
| precognition, teleportation, etc.
|
| - Asimov's Foundation series
|
| - Herbert's Dune series
|
| - Larry Niven's Known Space stories
|
| - Heinlein's Stranger from a Strange Land
|
| - Alfred Bester's Demolished Man and Tiger Tiger
|
| - Clarke's Childhood's End
|
| I'm sure there are more that I forgot to mention.
|
| It really did seem to be a pervasive expectation that the mind
| was the next frontier for seemingly magical scientific
| advancements. But it never panned out with actual results, and
| mental powers faded from hard sci-fi stories.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| I also noticed that Starship Troopers threw in hypnosis among
| its many military technologies, for some reason, which feels
| like a related sci-fi concept.
|
| I don't think teleportation counts. Feels like either Star
| Trek-type super-science or outright mysticism.
| mwigdahl wrote:
| Starship Troopers also had "special talents" -- "sensers"
| capable of detecting and mapping Bug tunnels underground,
| "memory men", "lucky men", and telepaths.
|
| Heinlein at least nods to the possibility that the sensers'
| abilities were the product of very powerful hearing, but
| telepathy would be tougher to explain that way.
| BarryMilo wrote:
| I know it's not your main point, but I think most of us big
| sci-fi fans agree that "soft" vs "hard" sci-fi is a false
| dichotomy. Who knows what is and what will be possible? Just
| because the technology is wrong doesn't mean the idea is not
| interesting.
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| Hard means it's kept within tasteful range of today's sense
| of technoplausibility.
|
| Usually it also implies that it grapples with the nitty
| gritty details to "earn" the tech. Hohmann transfers vs.
| brachistochrone trajectories omg squee
| https://projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/torchships.php
| 7thaccount wrote:
| I tried to say this, but not nearly as eloquently as you.
| doctoboggan wrote:
| I am a big sci-fi fan and I disagree here. I think there is a
| difference between soft and hard sci-fi, but that difference
| is more about how consistency with the rules is treated. Soft
| sci-fi can be thought of as fantasy with a future setting,
| while hard scifi sticks to it's own world rules tightly, and
| often explores the consequences of these rules and the
| characters are just a means for that. (Relatedly, I think
| there can be hard and soft fantasy as well)
|
| Greg Egan is often cited as one of the current greats when it
| comes to hard sci-fi. His novels explore some very far out
| ideas in terms of how the world may work, but he sticks to
| the consistency and really explores the politics and
| consequences of that universe.
|
| Clarke also does this, but to a somewhat lesser extent. In
| many of his stories, the world and its rules are the main
| character, and the actual beings are the supporting
| characters.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Your understanding of the terminology sounds a lot
| different than mine. I always interpreted "hard" and "soft"
| to simply be references to "hard science" and "soft
| science."
|
| In other words, I thought "hard sci-fi" means fiction that
| deals mostly with fictional facts in fields like physics,
| astronomy, geology, and biology, while "soft sci-fi" means
| fiction that deals mostly with fictional facts in fields
| like psychology, economics, and political science.
| anbende wrote:
| Yes this is a reasonable way to misunderstand given the
| way we refer to "hard sciences" and "soft sciences", but
| it does not map to the terms "hard scifi" and "soft
| scifi" in common usage.
|
| It's not exactly about rules consistency either as stated
| by the GP, though that's part of it. It's more about
| strong consistent application of scientific principles
| even theoretical or untested principles.
|
| This is in contrast to futuristic fantasy with no real
| focus on the science. But futuristic or space fantasy can
| be very consistent just like magical systems in fantasy
| can be very consistent. Hard scifi has to be constrained
| by plausible consistent science and that science is
| typically a main character in the story, or even THE main
| character.
| tshaddox wrote:
| I don't know if it's a misunderstanding, or if usage is
| just very mixed and inconsistent. Both Wikipedia articles
| provide both definitions, and both claim that usage is
| sometimes contradictory and not at all rigorous.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_science_fiction
|
| > The complementary term soft science fiction, formed by
| analogy to the popular distinction between the "hard"
| (natural) and "soft" (social) sciences,[6] first appeared
| in the late 1970s. Though there are examples generally
| considered as "hard" science fiction such as Isaac
| Asimov's Foundation series, built on mathematical
| sociology,[7] science fiction critic Gary Westfahl argues
| that while neither term is part of a rigorous taxonomy,
| they are approximate ways of characterizing stories that
| reviewers and commentators have found useful.[8]
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_science_fiction
|
| > The term soft science fiction was formed as the
| complement of the earlier term hard science fiction.
|
| > The earliest known citation for the term is in "1975:
| The Year in Science Fiction" by Peter Nicholls, in Nebula
| Award Stories 11 (1976). He wrote "The same list reveals
| that an already established shift from hard sf
| (chemistry, physics, astronomy, technology) to soft sf
| (psychology, biology, anthropology, sociology, and even
| [...] linguistics) is continuing more strongly than
| ever."
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| I've only ever heard Gattaca described as hard sci-fi and
| Star Wars as soft sci-fi.
| nox101 wrote:
| I'll throw out one I expect I'll get lots of disagreement
| over. Firefly (the series, not the movie) seemed pretty
| "soft sci-fi" to me. They could have changed the setting
| to people in a Winnebago towing a trailer going from city
| to city on Earth and nothing would really have changed in
| at least the first 7 episodes.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| Good one. I think it's generally considered a Western in
| a sci-fi setting. They did try to stick to self-
| consistent rules and a realistic "feel" with the
| technology, physics, special effects and so on (no sound
| in space, etc) which would put it on the harder side of
| the spectrum perhaps. But since the sci-fi elements
| barely interact with the story, and so there's no deeply-
| considered exploration of how those sci-fi elements are
| consequential to the story / characters / society of that
| world, it could also be considered soft.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > I think it's generally considered a Western in a sci-fi
| setting.
|
| This is how I think of it as well. I actually don't
| really consider it science fiction, it just uses the
| scenery. Although I equally wouldn't say anyone who calls
| it "science fiction" is wrong.
|
| That brings up another thing: I think a story can be
| science fiction without involving anything futuristic or
| space-related at all.
| underwater wrote:
| For me it's soft sci-fi because the show was about the
| people. Space was just the backdrop.
|
| Whereas something like Foundation is about the exploring
| the concept of psycho-history and galactic civilisations
| and the people are there to move that story forward.
| lupusreal wrote:
| The Foundation series is premised on an achievement in
| the social sciences (soft) but is considered "hard sci-
| fi".
| tshaddox wrote:
| It looks to me like both definitions are widely used. The
| first paragraph on Wikipedia claims that the term "hard
| sci-fi" was coined first, then "soft science fiction" was
| coined specifically to make the distinction between hard
| science and soft science. That paragraph also notes that
| there is no rigorous distinction, and mentions Foundation
| as a classic example.
| lupusreal wrote:
| I strongly disagree, I don't think the "soft-science
| fiction" and "hard-science fiction" meanings are widely
| used; if you use these meanings often then you'll probaby
| very frequently cause confusion and prompt discussions
| like this one. Almost everybody is using the other
| meanings, at least in recent years.
| 7thaccount wrote:
| I share a similar view to you on what is hard or soft
| science fiction, but it can be tricky to pin down. Star
| Trek to me is somewhat firm (in between) as the technology
| may as well be magic (Heisenberg compensators), but it
| tries to be consistent with the scientific rules within the
| show for the most part. Revelation Space more or less feels
| like a universe operating off the same principles as ours
| with a more reasonable assumption about the future (hard).
| Then you have things like Star Wars that are fun, but so
| ridiculous as to very much be on the soft side.
| nox101 wrote:
| ST:TOS and ST:TNG era seemed to deal with some hard sci-
| fi ideas. Nothing I've watched in the last 20 years
| seemed hard sci-fi. Most of them seem to be "how can we
| work some action sequence into this story". Admittedly I
| haven't watched them all and I'm sure there are moments
| of hard sci-fi but my impression is it's devolved into
| space opera.
| WalterBright wrote:
| "Primer"
|
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390384
|
| "The Man from Earth"
|
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0756683
| nox101 wrote:
| sorry I meant episodes of modern star trek. there are
| plenty of hard sci-fi movies. those two are great.
|
| I'd add "Her" and "Ex Machina"
| shagie wrote:
| > Greg Egan is often cited as one of the current greats
| when it comes to hard sci-fi.
|
| I'd also suggest a good look at Baxter's books and Robert L
| Forward's too.
|
| I've jokingly called Forward's books science papers with a
| plot. Timemaster starts out with:
|
| > There exist semieducated but obstinate people who have
| raised the concept of strict local causality to godhead,
| and attempt to use such words as "obviously" and "it only
| makes sense that ..." in an attempt to "prove" that their
| version of causality cannot be violated, and that any sort
| of time machine is logically impossible. From my reading of
| the scientific literature, they are wrong. If I receive a
| letter from this sort of person complaining about the
| "impossibility" of the time machines in this novel, I will
| throw the letter in the nearest wastebasket... unless the
| letter is accompanied by a reprint of a scientific paper
| published in Physical Review (or any other reputable,
| refereed scientific journal), written by the person writing
| the letter, which proves that the paper "Cauchy Problem in
| Spacetimes with Closed Timelike Curves" by Friedman,
| Morris, Novikov, Echeverria, Klinkhammer, Thorne, and
| Yurtsever, is erroneous.
|
| My take on it is more of a "what is the focus of the
| story?" Is it the soft sciences? Psychology and sociology
| and politics ... and the Foundation.
|
| Or is it one more of challenges met with the STEM
| disciplines of physics and astronomy and biology?
|
| It's also not a "it is either a this or that." Some books
| can be both and I think that Clarke is a prime example of
| this. 2001 is as much of a story of psychology as it is
| about astronomical distances and the ship needed to
| accomplish that goal. The Songs of Distant Earth is about
| two cultures clashing ... with the real problems of
| engineering a ship to travel (it's a softer story than it
| is hard).
|
| Protector by Niven likewise scores high on both the soft
| and hard scales.
|
| Foster tends to higher on the 'soft' side of the scale,
| though sometimes it edges up there with some real biology
| and the limits of technology are sometimes real limits.
|
| And so, it is "are the challenges that the characters
| surmount solved with tools developed from the soft or hard
| sciences?"
|
| "Use the Force Luke" is not a hard science solution.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| > I've jokingly called Forward's books science papers
| with a plot.
|
| All the biggest scientific achievements always occur in
| Canada. His stuff's solidly in the fantasy category.
| cmiller1 wrote:
| How does hard fantasy which also sticks to it's own world
| rules tightly factor into this?
| JohnFen wrote:
| I agree that there's a clear difference between hard and
| soft science fiction. But in my mind, it's "hard" science
| fiction if the world is entirely consistent with physical
| reality as we know it.
| neaden wrote:
| There's basically little to no truly hard sci fi under
| that definition. Even the Martian fudges things to make
| the storm happen as the plot needs it to. I can't think
| of any other recent movies or books that fit your
| criteria, though I'm sure there are some books at least.
| JohnFen wrote:
| There has always been a lot less hard sci-fi than soft,
| true, and it used to be more common than it is now.
|
| But the real dividing line in my mind isn't quite as
| stark as I made it sound. There's still a gray area.
| Unusual events that exist purely for plot purposes don't
| disqualify anything, for instance.
|
| The differentiator I have in mind is more basic: if the
| story involves things that are simply not possible, it's
| not hard sci-fi. If it involves things that are very
| unlikely, but still within the realm of possibility, it
| can certainly still be "hard". Same if it involves
| things/effects that don't (as far as we know) exist, but
| wouldn't break the laws of physics if they did.
| neaden wrote:
| Can you give examples of works you consider to be hard
| sci-fi?
| nathan_compton wrote:
| > Who knows what is and what will be possible?
|
| I think this is a vast oversimplification of how knowledge
| works. Like yes, no one knows with perfect certainty what the
| laws of physics or whatever else are, but that hardly means
| _anything_ is plausible or worth entertaining.
|
| I amuse myself with the foundations of physics and I'm so
| sure that FTL is impossible that I find science fiction that
| uses the idea almost tragically silly, simply unwilling to
| grapple with the limitations imposed on us by the vastness of
| space.
| mminer237 wrote:
| I agree, but also, it's really hard to have sci-fi without
| FTL. I feel that necessitates it being somewhat soft, but
| having every other character die when someone travels to
| another planet means you're basically tied to a space story
| without space travel.
| nathan_compton wrote:
| Read some Greg Egan. It isn't really that hard.
| bluGill wrote:
| > when someone travels to another planet
|
| I think you mean solar system. While nobody has traveled
| to Mars, it is reasonable to suggest that is only because
| we haven't tried hard enough yet. There are problems in
| the way, but they seem like engineering things that we
| will figure out if we try. It is debatable if we can make
| a self supporting colony on Mars, but it getting there
| seems perfectly possible in reach. Venus is harder
| (getting there is easier, but reaching the surface is
| questionable), but we could probably do it.
|
| Getting just the farthest planet in our solar system
| though is getting close to a lifetime. The nearest star
| to earth is 4 light years away, we have no hope of
| reaching it in a lifetime with any technology we know
| works (there are nuclear options that seem promising but
| we don't know if they work)
|
| The milky way is 100k lightyears. Not possible to cross
| without FTL.
| itishappy wrote:
| That's an incredibly compelling hook for a sci-fi story!
| mminer237 wrote:
| It is largely the premise for at least the beginning of
| _Speaker for the Dead_ where the main character lives
| essentially a digital nomadic life traveling at almost
| light speed planet-to-planet. He knows he can never go
| back to any place he 's been as everyone died of old age
| as soon as he left. It has FTL communication though.
| MeImCounting wrote:
| Its really not hard! I am with GP in that most scifi with
| FTL comes off as silly, perhaps fun and well written but
| not to be taken seriously in the sense of its
| worldbuilding being immersive or intriguing.
|
| Almost all my favorite books almost exclusively occupy
| settings with laws of physics that are internally
| consistent and believable and therefore have no FTL. See
| "The Expanse", "Three Body", "Blindsight", "The Sunflower
| Cycle", "Rendezvous with Rama" and too many others to
| name.
| atrus wrote:
| Three Body has FTL.
| MeImCounting wrote:
| Does it? The sophons are capped at light speed though
| they communicate FTL. The whole curvature propulsion I
| thought had the ships moving at light speed, not
| exceeding it. Three Body has plenty of clarketech but
| most of the drama comes from it being grounded in
| something kind of like actual the laws of physics.
| neaden wrote:
| Communicating FTL breaks causality just like FTL travel
| does.
| philipkglass wrote:
| The Expanse has FTL after a couple of books, though I
| enjoyed the pre-FTL parts more.
| MeImCounting wrote:
| Yeah I _guess_ it has FTL but its not really FTL in the
| same way I think GP meant. It could just as easily be
| simulation or something else. Its not warp or hyperdrive
| and it doesnt really violate the internal consistency of
| the world building since its totally alien clarketech
| dvdkon wrote:
| Mild spoilers for The Expanse: It _does_ have FTL travel,
| but it is presented as alien and has a limited impact on
| the day-to-day lives of characters. I get the feeling
| this was done for narrative reasons primarily, but it
| helps with "sci-fi hardness".
|
| Generally I think the impact of instant communication and
| near-instant travel (or lack thereof) is not talked about
| enough. Most sci-fi stories derive from the present day,
| and keep this aspect of today (as do many fantasy
| stories, interestingly), but it's a narrative choice with
| large impacts.
| rtkwe wrote:
| A major part of the hard soft dichotomy is how the tech is
| treated and talked about in the story too though, not just
| the level of the tech. You could make a hard-scifi version of
| Star Wars, you'd just be expected to provide more
| justification and narrative around hyperdrives than you get
| in the current soft scifi version.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| When I was making the list above, I actually went and looked
| at my bookshelf of ancient sci-fi paperbacks. C.S. Lewis'
| Space Trilogy is a nominally "science fiction" work that I
| excluded and would consider soft sci-fi. It's set in space
| with aliens, but is really a fantastic story (in this case an
| allegory) that makes basically no attempt to extrapolate or
| connect with hard science as we understand it today.
|
| A funny one is the Pern series, which starts out as a sword
| and dragon fantasy series, but then like 10 books in we find
| out it is actually hard sci-fi (!) with space ships, orbits,
| genetic engineering, computers, etc. But there is still that
| telepathic connection with the dragons...
| WalterBright wrote:
| "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" by Richard Rhodes is the best
| hard scifi book ever written.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Making-Atomic-Bomb-Richard-
| Rhodes/dp/...
| pfdietz wrote:
| A lot of that was due to the influence of John W. Campbell.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_W._Campbell
| card_zero wrote:
| That article links it back Joseph Rhine, and then to Arthur
| Conan Doyle and spiritualism. Ultimately maybe the blame lies
| with Emanuel Swedenborg for inspiring every kind of woo-woo.
| antisthenes wrote:
| Dune is not hard sci-fi.
|
| The whole series is filled with inexplicable "magic" and "just
| so" scenarios.
| paradox460 wrote:
| Dune is barely scifi, far more fantasy.
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| Akshually, spice, combined with genetic engineering like
| Paul's, is merely a nootropic which allows an overclocking of
| brainpower to the point where one knows how to shine light on
| the holographic universe's underlying 2D plane, changing
| qubits so as to effect 3D spacetime curvature allowing FTL
| travel (navigators) as well as how to code inject brains by
| adding certain inflections to your words (the voice) as well
| as calculate the branching paths of reality and probabilities
| thereof (seeing the future). No magic involved.
|
| Shields though? No fucking idea. Okay, nevermind; it's soft
| sci-fi.
| throwanem wrote:
| "Stranger in a Strange Land", not "...from...".
| bell-cot wrote:
| From a working author's PoV, super mental powers were great
| stuff. The "hard" SF audiences really liked the idea - I'm sure
| it helped that many of them imagined or fantasized themselves
| being somewhat "super" in the mental dept. Such powers add a
| bunch of (conveniently arbitrary) rules, which puzzle stories
| could be built around. Unlike (say) FTL drives, there was no
| expectation that the author should devise a detailed "how it
| works" backstory. Nor explain how the protagonist could manage
| to afford or invent it. And most mental powers are an easy
| short-cut to the character's emotional states. (Not to assert
| that sophisticated and nuanced character portrayal seemed a
| priority of most "hard" SF authors, back in the day.)
| teraflop wrote:
| An interesting counterpoint to this is the use of telepathy
| in Ursula K. Le Guin's Hainish cycle, which is generally
| considered as more "soft" sci-fi. Several of the early books
| in the series revolve around "mindspeech", which is a form of
| telepathy in which it's impossible to knowingly lie:
|
| > Mindspeech between two intelligences could be incoherent or
| insane, and could of course involve error, misbelief; but it
| could not be misused. Between thought and spoken word is a
| gap where intention can enter, the symbol be twisted aside,
| and the lie come to be. Between thought and sent-thought is
| no gap; they are one act. There is no room for the lie. (
| _City of Illusions_ )
|
| In her later works in the same setting, Le Guin backed off
| from this, although she never explicitly retconned it out of
| existence:
|
| > I couldn't use it in a story any more, because when I began
| to think seriously about the incalculable effects mutual
| telepathy would have on a society, I could no longer, as it
| were, believe in it. I'd have to fake it.
|
| https://reactormag.com/introduction-from-ursula-k-le-guin-
| th...
| ElFitz wrote:
| I really enjoyed Peter F. Hamilton's take on this in the
| Night Dawn Trilogy, with his Edenists. A bit hopeful, but
| intriguing.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > I'm sure there are more that I forgot to mention.
|
| It's a primary theme in the Darkover books.
|
| Those were kind of frustrating for me because I enjoyed the
| fantasy setting, but the author was very clear that what
| interested _her_ was the conflict that occurred as it was
| contacted by spacefaring magicless future Earthlings.
|
| Such powers are of course also major themes in traditional
| mythology. I like to note that modern time travel stories split
| over whether it's possible to alter the timeline, but time
| travel also features _really prominently_ in traditional
| mythology and the message there is always that the timeline can
| never be altered by any means.
| prewett wrote:
| I'm curious what mythology has time travel? I can't think of
| any in Greek and Roman mythology. Celtic mythology doesn't
| seem to have time travel either, unless you count going
| forwards at different perceived speeds.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Time travel is found in several mythologies. Some examples
| include the Hindu Mahabharata, the Greek tales around
| Chronos and Kairos, and the Irish tale of Naimh.
|
| I know there are more, those are just the ones I thought of
| immediately.
| therobots927 wrote:
| Actually the mind control aspect of the Foundation series was
| my least favorite part. I know it was a big part of the
| storyline but I would've preferred a heavier emphasis on
| "psychohistory" and chaos theory. The telepathic element,
| especially in books 4 and 5 was left unexplained. The only
| thing that would make sense to me is if anyone with mind
| control powers was actually a robot.
| thriftwy wrote:
| Asimov actually invented the Black Swan Event half a century
| before Taleb.
|
| Mind control was such an event that psychohistory could not
| account for. Sometimes things just happen and spoil our
| plans.
| therobots927 wrote:
| That's a fair point. I just wish there was a clear cause
| and effect behind the black swan event. Part of what makes
| the big short so interesting to me is seeing exactly how
| the black swan event transpired in the 2008 housing crisis.
| thriftwy wrote:
| I don't think that 2008 housing crisis had any serious
| black swans around it, instead of bad planning caused by
| chasing the dollar.
|
| The point of a black swan that there doesn't have to be a
| cause.
| ben_w wrote:
| > The point of a black swan that there doesn't have to be
| a cause.
|
| That's the first I've heard that suggested.
|
| It's a metaphor that describes an event that comes as a
| surprise, has a major effect, and is often
| inappropriately rationalized after the fact with the
| benefit of hindsight; based on a Latin expression which
| presumed that black swans did not exist which stopped
| being used that way in 1697 when people found actual
| black swans.
| pjlegato wrote:
| The point isn't that black swans don't have causes. The
| point is that nobody is expecting those particular causes
| at all when the event happens, due to prior assumptions
| being wrong.
| prewett wrote:
| Apparently Asimov linked the robots into Foundation some
| decades afterwards, so maybe he agreed with you. (I've not
| read past the original trilogy, so can't say for sure.)
| robertlagrant wrote:
| He did! Foundation and Earth.
| therobots927 wrote:
| They were incorporated but there seemed to be a clear
| separation between Gaia (the planet where everyone had
| telepathy and they basically stored data inside of the
| rocks/earth's core) and the robots. Maybe that was a
| misunderstanding on my part, and Gaia was a world of
| robots. Which would also imply that the Mule was a robot.
| That being said it would also imply many of the members
| of the second foundation were also robots. I don't know
| if this is the right interpretation.
| dbspin wrote:
| _Major Spoilers_ Unmirror text to read.
|
| We tinb out in tHe tinal Azimov volume tHat tHe Mule wa2
| a @aian, tHourH not a rodot. @aia wa2 tounbeb dg Ia.
| T`aneel Olivaw. It I reoall it wa2 a 2ibe det it tHe
| 2eoonb tounbation bibn't 2ave Humanitg.
| therobots927 wrote:
| How can I unmirror this?
| selimthegrim wrote:
| That's interesting, because I thought the person in
| question was supposed to represent a certain historical
| figure.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I always just thought of telepathy in science fiction as being
| like faster-than-light travel: clear nonsense, but a very
| convenient and interesting method of avoiding physical
| realities that interfere with telling certain types of stories.
| It's an aspect of the "fiction" part of science fiction.
|
| But, relatedly, I think that a certain kind of category error
| happens that can play into this as well: a lot of science
| fiction is actually fantasy, just in a technological setting.
| Star Wars, for instance, is not science fiction so much as it's
| fantasy.
| WalterBright wrote:
| A lot of scifi is just westerns, with blasters replacing
| guns. See "The Mandalorean".
| fl0ki wrote:
| A lot of westerns are just samurai movies, with guns
| replacing swords.
| pixl97 wrote:
| I mean how much of telepathy is in reach of science now?
| Think of two individuals with some kind of neurolink style
| device. Could they be able to communicate with just thought?
| nitwit005 wrote:
| If you want to portray some sort of "next step in human
| evolution", it's an easy thing to portray that audiences would
| have some understanding of from other media.
|
| The more obvious choice of just portraying people as having
| extremely high intelligence, is unfortunately a bit of a trap.
| Authors generally fail at creating characters smarter than
| themselves, for perhaps obvious reasons.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > Authors generally fail at creating characters smarter than
| themselves, for perhaps obvious reasons.
|
| Hah, I've noticed that for years. Anderson's "Brain Wave",
| however, is a decent attempt at what more intelligent people
| would be like.
| jamiek88 wrote:
| This makes me wonder about AGI and super intelligences. Why
| would our brains be able to engineer something more
| intelligent than our brains?
|
| The only room seems to be in emergence from incredible
| amounts of processing power and data or perhaps many brains
| working together can overcome the limitations of one brain.
| pixl97 wrote:
| I mean, people working together quite often overcome the
| limitations of one brain, especially when those working
| together are driven towards that goal.
| staplers wrote:
| But it never panned out with actual results, and mental powers
| faded from hard sci-fi stories.
|
| .. and yet here I am reading everyone's thoughts about how
| telepathy isn't possible.
|
| Just because it doesn't look like us holding our fingers to our
| temples, doesn't change the effect.
|
| With neuralink it'll look even more like what you imagine..
| wild to see the dismissal when its closer than ever.
| WalterBright wrote:
| The trouble with most mental powers is they violate physical
| laws like Conservation of Energy, and rely on unknown forces
| like anti-gravity.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Aren't mental super powers pretty much ubiquitous in folk
| tradition in the form of magic, the working of miracles, or
| perhaps spiritually derived "powers" such as the siddhi of
| Indian tradition? (The traditional description of siddhi - i.e.
| 'attainments' or 'accomplishments' - may be the closest thing
| to a purported 'science' of such super powers within existing
| traditions. At least, it's a lot harder to find this kind of
| analysis in other plausible sources, such as from the Western
| esoteric tradition which is also a lot more obscure.) It seems
| weird to link these things so closely to 20th-c. hard sci-fi,
| when they are far from typical to that genre.
| irrational wrote:
| Also, using your mind to move space ships. Again in Dune, but
| also other fare like We Are Not of Earth.
| spacecadet wrote:
| We have telepathy, any unspoken private message is as good imo.
| spacecadet wrote:
| lol down vote, please someone define telepathy...
|
| Telepathy is the purported vicarious transmission of
| information from one person's mind to another's without using
| any known human sensory channels or physical interaction.
|
| I mean come. on.
| airstrike wrote:
| don't you use your eyes to read that private message?
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| The article mentions Star Trek and Vulcan mind melds, which
| continue to be an important element of the franchise today, but
| misses a more obvious case: there was a lot of ESP and
| telekinesis motifs in the Original Series in the 60s, that were
| severely toned down or outright abandoned by the 90s. For
| example, you don't hear much about Gary Mitchel anymore, except
| for that one episode of Lower Decks.
|
| Also, I think a lot of sci-fi shows had direct ESP references
| before mid-90s, then the trope suddenly died out.
| 7thaccount wrote:
| TNG has several species like the Q that have evolved to godlike
| abilities and there are episodes where a humanoid undergoes the
| final stage of physical evolution and then ascends to a higher
| plane of existence (becomes something like the Q). Star Trek
| Picard (relatively new show) had a lot about exploring internal
| conflict and I think even in TNG one of the final episodes has
| Q tell Picard that the final frontier is internal and doesn't
| involve mapping out stellar nebulae.
|
| Other shows like Stargate also have the concept of "ascension"
| as a pivotal plot point of many episodes. Farscape covers this
| as well in several episodes. Things like mind melds and mind
| reading are pretty common in these shows once someone ascends.
|
| There is a lot of "woo" in science fiction as it is kind of
| hard to still believe in gross limitations for us over a cosmic
| scale of thousands of millions of years. Assuming we don't die
| out, I'd believe our ultimate potential is unfathomable to us
| now.
| jerf wrote:
| There is definitely a difference between "these beings have
| become so advanced as to do things we would believe
| impossible like reading state directly out of our brains" and
| "for vague and in fact _aggressively_ unspecified reasons
| this critter can read the 'minds' of those around them".
| When people pontificate about "brain uploading" they are
| certainly speaking of some physical process that does what is
| now currently impossible, but may not be impossible forever.
|
| But perhaps the more relevant objection is that episodic
| television can't really be read for more than the vaguest of
| philosophical content across their wholes. One episode can be
| written by an ardent materialist and the next by a New Age
| guru writing a New Age story wrapped in science terminology,
| and as long as they do a good enough job in general writing
| ability and following the series bible for consistency, it
| might take a lot of analysis to notice. Such series aren't so
| much statements themselves as platforms.
| 7thaccount wrote:
| We're on the same page. I don't disagree with anything you
| have here.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| > Also, I think a lot of sci-fi shows had direct ESP references
| before mid-90s, then the trope suddenly died out.
|
| Everything parapsychology dies out very suddenly in the mid
| 1980s. Ghostbusters debuted June 8th, 1984, and within 18
| months most universities had already gotten rid of the
| department. Intelligence agency experiments in remote viewing
| and such all just fade away nearly as quickly. Police
| departments using psychics for leads has a sharp downward trend
| from that date onward. About the only thing left was late-night
| 900 number commercials for Miss Cleo, that last until the
| mid-1990s.
|
| Comedy is a powerful sociological weapon, able to obliterate
| entire memetic ecosystems.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Wasn't there this woman with purple uniform, who's mother had a
| crush on Piccard, who could read peoples emotions from a great
| distance and speak in their heads?
|
| I don't think I liked her character or episodes built around
| her. But I don't really remember why.
| xioxox wrote:
| Deanna Troi
| Kiboneu wrote:
| It was always there, just that at some point in tng S2
| telepathy became less of a prominent identity for characters
| who possessed it.
|
| There was always this thread of exploring beyond the dimensions
| of space and time in star trek, beyond what our minds are
| capable of grasping, beyond the information channels that we
| can immediately perceive. Getting closer, occasionally with the
| help of other aliens who are on that same voyage, on the nature
| of reality that brought us all here.
|
| "That is the exploration that awaits you. Not mapping stars and
| studying nebulae, but charting the unknown possibilities of
| existence."
| trhway wrote:
| I think empathy is a brain feature/circuitry which would be a
| foundation for anything resembling telepathy, and our societal
| development took us into the opposite direction of suppressing
| empathy, and thus further from any chance of telepathy/etc.
| Instead we'll ultimately have AI guessing/calculating our
| thoughts better than any telepathy.
| detourdog wrote:
| I agree, I also think empathy provides the clairvoyance
| capabilities of the force.
| lawrenceyan wrote:
| You have to contextualize it with the historical background.
|
| The Cold War was ongoing and there was an arms race in research
| occurring between the Soviet Union and the United States with
| regards to directed energy weapons and influence/control of the
| mind.
| imglorp wrote:
| Ultimately, the mind control vision came true far beyond those
| cold warriors' dreams. The answer wasn't chemical or subliminal
| or mind-ray like they thought, but tailored, addictive,
| adrenaline jolts of a/b tested, emotional, persusive jolts,
| infinitely scrolled in a social proof setting. And the victims
| seek it out, you don't have to force it on them.
| resource_waste wrote:
| Plato and many philosophers have a special disdain for
| poets(artists). Where they urge people to live among reality,
| artists paint a picture that can never be possible.
|
| There are ideas like: "Who knows what war looks like, a soldier?
| Or an artist? We get false ideas of war, and it corrupts our
| minds. Let us not pretend that the brain can fully separate our
| fiction media from what we are told is 'close enough' to real to
| be entertaining.
|
| I worry most when it comes to expectations of interpersonal
| relationships. What poison is happening to the population when
| they read/watch unrealistic romances?
| pnut wrote:
| A soldier telling a story from experience is a soldier artist.
|
| If Plato's point is that knowledge can only be derived through
| direct experience, then one must endure war to know what war
| looks like.
|
| If there is any value to be derived from the experiences of
| others, either through descriptions or related empathetic
| resonances, then those are dependent on communication and
| storytelling, and now we're in the realm of being effective at
| putting your reality into another's mind, and that is art. The
| authority or accuracy of your message doesn't negate that fact,
| and is entirely down to the individual in the receiving end in
| any case.
|
| Funny to hear a philosopher, whose entire domain is abstract
| thought and whose power and relationship to the world is
| through the art of communication, be so petty. Maybe that quote
| has more context?
| resource_waste wrote:
| >If Plato's point is that knowledge can only be derived
| through direct experience
|
| Its not. Its that poets corrupt.
| glonq wrote:
| I stopped listening to him years ago because he became too
| unsufferable, but I remember Joe Rogan on his podcast frequently
| asserting that telepathy or some kind of mind-to-mind
| communication was always just a few years away...
| Animats wrote:
| Between smartphones and drones, everybody is now way ahead of
| what telepathy in SF was supposed to be able to do.
| ErigmolCt wrote:
| Indeed, modern technology surpassed some of the capabilities
| that telepathy in science fiction was imagined to achieve. But
| still something is unattainable.
| jancsika wrote:
| I mean, FAANG pissing people off at scale for clicks must be
| like the tutorial level in the telepathy game.
|
| Even minor telepathy plot points seem miles ahead of that:
| didn't Spock's half-brother take over the entire spaceship by
| _healing everyone 's trauma_[1]?
|
| 1: except for Kirk (of course :)
| devmor wrote:
| The obsession with telepathy via fiction is probably a large part
| of why people buy into Neuralink, despite it not actually doing
| anything new (other than eschewing ethical standards).
|
| Musk's invasive BCI is so far, slightly less technically
| impressive than hobby toys you can build with exterior electrodes
| and nowhere near as impressive as the research from BrainGate
| that it builds off of.
|
| It's baffling why anyone grounded in reality would lend credence
| to applying his "startup culture" approach to this field
| especially.
| ctoth wrote:
| After reading her book on Nuclear War, I read Annie Jacobsen's
| Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's
| Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis. I
| recommend it.
|
| I'm not sure what was going on with Pat Price, but those are some
| damn weird stories. The incident with the Church specifically was
| particularly interesting.
|
| > In a separate outbounder-beacon experiment with Price, a more
| dramatic physiological event occurred. Green was in the car with
| an experimenter from SRI. They had opened their sealed envelope
| and were headed to the target when, "ten minutes into our drive,
| I said stop the car," Green recalls. After his earlier experience
| with Uri Geller remotely viewing a page from one of the medical
| books in his CIA office, Green intended to devise a fail-safe
| remote-viewing test. This was it. The experimenter driving the
| car insisted that he wasn't allowed to deviate from protocol.
| Green told him, "I'm the contract monitor, and I say stop the
| car." So the experimenter stopped. "But I'm supposed to drive to
| the target," he said.
|
| > Green instructed the driver to back up. "I said, I want you to
| go to that church back there," pointing to a small Episcopal
| church beside the road. The driver did as Green asked and pulled
| into the church parking lot. Green checked his watch and waited
| until the prearranged time. Then he got out of the car. "I
| crunched across the gravel and into an arbor," Green recalls. "I
| caught my foot on something and nearly tripped. I walked down to
| the sacristy," the room where the vestments were kept. "I opened
| a window. I turned around, walked into the nave, walked down the
| right-hand aisle. Stopped and stared at a beautiful rose window
| over the altar." In this moment in the church, he says, he was
| reminded of his time in seminary school and the strange notion of
| how different his life might have been had he become a clergyman
| instead of joining the CIA. Green felt a wave of emotion and
| decided to pray. "I knelt down, said a prayer. There was this
| beautiful baptismal font in front of me. I leaned over and looked
| into it. Then I was done. I crunched across the gravel, went back
| to the car." The two experimenters headed back to SRI.
|
| > "Back at the lab, we went into the Faraday cage where the
| remote viewer [Price] had been [the entire time]. He was having a
| cardiac event," Green recalls. "At minimum he was having an
| angina attack, and possibly he was having an MI [myocardial
| infarction]," more commonly known as a heart attack. After
| Price's heart rate returned to normal, he turned to Green and
| said that that was the worst experiment he had ever done. Green
| recalls Price telling him, "It just made me so sick. You walked
| down an arbor. You almost tripped. You went into the most
| terrible building I've ever seen in my life. I saw you walk down
| an aisle and crumple to your knees. I began to worry about you. I
| saw you lean over and vomit into an octagonal basin. I began to
| feel nauseated. I got chest pains."
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| > _The experimenter driving the car insisted that he wasn't
| allowed to deviate from protocol. Green told him, "I'm the
| contract monitor, and I say stop the car." So the experimenter
| stopped. "But I'm supposed to drive to the target," he said._
|
| This breach of protocol makes the experiment near-worthless.
| Even if this anecdote is truthful, and even if there was no
| deliberate collusion: some impulse prompted Green to stop at
| the church. Was there a common event, earlier in the day, that
| led both to this conclusion?
|
| > _Green intended to devise a fail-safe remote-viewing test._
|
| Rule of thumb: never trust a science experiment devised to
| _prove_ something. Only trust one designed to _disprove_
| something.
| o_nate wrote:
| Alan Turing's paper in which he first lays out the idea of the
| Turing Test for AI is surprisingly prescient in many particulars.
| But one thing that stands out is when he is considering various
| arguments for why computers might not be able to pass the Turing
| Test, he considers the objection that humans will be able to
| display some telepathic abilities that computers won't as one of
| the strongest counter-arguments. He considers it nearly a given
| that these abilities exist.
| spyridonas wrote:
| I remember growing up I watched a documentary on telekinesis. It
| concluded that people with high amounts of iron on their blood
| could move items from distance
| prewett wrote:
| Given the 50% divorce rates, we don't seem to be able to handle
| our most intimate relationships right now. Being able to access
| people's naked thoughts sounds like a disaster. Both the
| perceiver and the thinker are going to need to be pretty saintly
| for this to be a positive experience. The relatively restrained
| Babylon 5 scenario seems to be on the pretty good side, and that
| seemed pretty dark.
| wsintra2022 wrote:
| Maybe the rate is 50% precisely because of ESP/etc People can't
| turn the other persons disappointed thoughts off so they argue.
| petercooper wrote:
| _Being able to access people 's naked thoughts sounds like a
| disaster._
|
| That's the part of it I can't quite get a grip on. If we end up
| with systems that perform "telepathy", what do they actually
| pick up? The active part of the mind that filters and decides
| (the "ego" if you will) or all the random noise and nonsense
| that's in there but not really willed or deliberate?
|
| If all the random thoughts and impulses, critical voices, and
| what not were tapped into, a lot of people would be in huge
| trouble quickly, and not necessarily of their own volition.
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