Blatantly political rant

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

That indeed is a major problem with physics today. Everybody want to find the TOE (Theory Of Everything) even though, Kurt Godel proved that there can be no TOE, at least in a mathematical sense, in 1931. (Sorry, I don't know how to make a umlat o.) Since Godel was not a physicist, he doesn't count to physicists, and off they go...

Well, I can't blame them for wanting to come up with the grand theory of everything, or for trying. I can simply fault their methodology.

But the trap I'm talking about is more subtle. I went to a lecture by the late John Wheeler, on nothing. Literally. It was about zero vacuum energy, and how the calculations defining it and the reality measured didn't match by an order of 58th power. n x 10 to the 58th. Which everyone else ignores, because the quantum energy model work elsewhere so well. He gave the lecture to try to interest young physicists in the fundamental study of what the structure of vacuum really is, and maybe explain why the huge gap exists. But if you really start trying to analyse a vacuum, you bump up against C . (speed of light in a vacuum). And that's an immutable constant in physics. It and Plank's constant are sancrosant. If you suggest otherwise, you're unceremonially pitched out the door. So nobody studies what the structure of a vacuum really is, and how C is derived from it... (And the trap closes).

<shrug>

C and Plank's constant are example of values that have held up because no one has been able to come up with different values that work and yield meaningful results.

As you say, the quantum energy model works well elsewhere. Trying to use different values for those constants sounds like it might involve tearing down and redoing about half of the mathematical basis of modern physics (or more) because those values appear in a lot of places. I can see why people might not want to.

There have been an assortment of SF stores on the premise that "speed of light" is a local value, and may not be true elsewhere. (Like Vernor Vinge's _A Fire Upon the Deep_, which postulates that Earth is in an area called the Slow Zone, and that farther out toward the galactic rim, you find ultra waves which propagate at speeds orders of magnitude faster than light, and are used in a galactic [and inter-galactic] communications net.)

Peter F. Hamilton's _The Sleeping God_ featured an entity (the sleeping god of the title) which had been created by a vastly advanced race to help them explore the universe, and whose sentience resided in patterns of quantum vacuum fluctuations. It's structure allowed it direct access to and control over a good deal of the observable universe. As it put it "For me, thought and action are one and the same." I had to stop and think about technology advanced enough to manipulate and control quantum vacuum fluctuations. Can you say "Sense of Wonder"?

Hamilton also postulated a race that existed in a post-scarcity economy. They had achieved molecular level replication, ala Star Trek. Any adult member of their species could have any material object it desired by simply asking a Universal Provider to make one. If a pattern was in the Provider's database, it could, and these beings had been pretty much everywhere and analyzed pretty much everything, so the pattern was likely to exist. A Provider had no problem creating an ice cream cone for a human child that wound up on their home world, because they'd been to Earth at one point, too...

That made me ponder as well, because our notions of economic systems get turned on their heads if you can do that. The beings actively traded with others, but for knowledge, not goods. While they no longer roamed the galaxy, they were explicit that they had deliberately kept their technology, because it enabled them to pursue what had become their real interest: how the universe worked, and why.
______
Dennis

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Peter F. Hamilton's _The Sleeping God_ featured an entity (the sleeping god of the title) which had been created by a vastly advanced race to help them explore the universe, and whose sentience resided in patterns of quantum vacuum fluctuations. It's structure allowed it direct access to and control over a good deal of the observable universe. As it put it "For me, thought and action are one and the same." I had to stop and think about technology advanced enough to manipulate and control quantum vacuum fluctuations. Can you say "Sense of Wonder"?

Hamilton also postulated a race that existed in a post-scarcity economy. They had achieved molecular level replication, ala Star Trek. Any adult member of their species could have any material object it desired by simply asking a Universal Provider to make one. If a pattern was in the Provider's database, it could, and these beings had been pretty much everywhere and analyzed pretty much everything, so the pattern was likely to exist. A Provider had no problem creating an ice cream cone for a human child that wound up on their home world, because they'd been to Earth at one point, too...

That made me ponder as well, because our notions of economic systems get turned on their heads if you can do that. The beings actively traded with others, but for knowledge, not goods. While they no longer roamed the galaxy, they were explicit that they had deliberately kept their technology, because it enabled them to pursue what had become their real interest: how the universe worked, and why.
______
Dennis

Glad to have stretched you mind. It won't take that level of technology to cause the questions of abundance. We're doing it right now, right here, at MR. It's the endless debate on copyright in the digital world. After all, when you can make copies of digital files for basically nothing, is that not the same, in the limited world of digital files, as the Universal Provider?

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

Glad to have stretched you mind. It won't take that level of technology to cause the questions of abundance. We're doing it right now, right here, at MR. It's the endless debate on copyright in the digital world. After all, when you can make copies of digital files for basically nothing, is that not the same, in the limited world of digital files, as the Universal Provider?

In the world of digital files, yes. Material objects are still a different matter.

But the level of technology Hamilton postulates would make the basis of much of the discussions here obsolete as well. The questions revolve around how you insure creators can get paid for their work in a digital world where copies can be easily made and passed around.

In the post-scarcity economy Hamilton proposes, it's not a concern, because money and payment are obsolete. If you can have anything you want by asking a replicator to produce it, why do you need money? The same goes for services: Hamilton's beings had highly advanced devices to perform them. I suspect they still had an economy, but decisions would be made at a higher level over really huge amounts of resources like "We have a research effort that will require a truly enormous replicator, and we'll need to feed it a planetary volume of mass to give it the raw material to make what we need..." That would be more than an impulse, "Replicator, make me one of these..." decision, even for them.
______
Dennis

[nekokami]

Iain M. Banks' "Culture" stories are post-scarcity, and these large-scale decisions still do take cooperative efforts. For example, in The Player of Games (one of my all-time favorites), one of the characters is sulking a bit because she wants to create volcanoes on a new plate in the "orbital" (a ring, bigger than a planet, but not as big as Ringworld), but the Minds (AI that are smarter than people) who are planning the next plate don't seem to her to be giving her ideas enough consideration.

James P. Hogan's Voyage from Yesteryear also involves a post-scarcity economy, which seems to be based on respect for competence rather than value of goods. I liked the book, but thought the description of the culture was a bit simplistic.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by nekokami

Iain M. Banks' "Culture" stories are post-scarcity, and these large-scale decisions still do take cooperative efforts. For example, in The Player of Games (one of my all-time favorites), one of the characters is sulking a bit because she wants to create volcanoes on a new plate in the "orbital" (a ring, bigger than a planet, but not as big as Ringworld), but the Minds (AI that are smarter than people) who are planning the next plate don't seem to her to be giving her ideas enough consideration.

Iain M. Banks "Culture" novels are next major series I plan to dive into. I've been held back thus far because half of them seem to be out of print.

Noted on _The Player of Games_, and I look forward to reading it.

James P. Hogan's Voyage from Yesteryear also involves a post-scarcity economy, which seems to be based on respect for competence rather than value of goods. I liked the book, but thought the description of the culture was a bit simplistic.

I've read some of Hogan, but I don't think I've read that one. Cultural depictions are always problematic, and few SF writers do it really well. Among those I like are Jack Vance's works. He's endlessly creative at coming up with odd human societies.

On that line, have you read the late Janet Kagan's _Hellspark_?
______
Dennis

[nekokami]

I haven't read Hellspark, no. Are you recommending it for its depiction of an odd human society? Sounds intriguing....

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by nekokami

I haven't read Hellspark, no. Are you recommending it for its depiction of an odd human society? Sounds intriguing....

More then one odd human society. The title of the book is also a title applied to the protagonist. She's a specialist in intercultural communications, adept at explaining the viewpoint of one culture to another.

Janet demonstrates how the unconscious aspects of culture can be stumbling blocks on the path to understanding. The sort of issues she deals with in the book are the same ones I've posted about elsewhere here.
______
Dennis

[nekokami]

Ok, I'm sold. No ebook version at Fictionwise, though. A web search only turned up torrents. Do you know of a legal ebook version? I'm trying to avoid buying any more paper. I just don't have room for it.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by nekokami

Ok, I'm sold. No ebook version at Fictionwise, though. A web search only turned up torrents. Do you know of a legal ebook version? I'm trying to avoid buying any more paper. I just don't have room for it.

Not that I'm aware of. My copy is an old SFBC hardcover.
______
Dennis