Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT
WCDT 22-26 August 2011 (1996-2000)
Boradis:
--- Quote from: Is it cold in here? on 22 Aug 2011, 18:10 ---
--- Quote from: Boradis on 22 Aug 2011, 17:02 ---Imagine an AI that is programmed to handle the air traffic control needed for the vast amount of flying car traffic we will have in the future. Or an AI designed to perform brain surgery.
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We use free sentient beings for air traffic control and brain surgery today. The results are widely viewed as acceptable.
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Humans are not likely to rebel against their status as humans. Even Jeph said things could get seriously Terminator-y if the AIs of his world could launch nukes.
--- Quote from: wrwight on 22 Aug 2011, 18:14 ---Didn't Jeph say one time that the primary difference between QC and the real world was that in QC they lever lost that drive for exploration, which fueled most of the technological advancements? (I don't remember where he said this, but I want to say a news post, likely somewhere around the time of Hannelore's first mention of her father). This would make the divergence maybe something like 50 years ago. There may be some timeline you could guess at for APCs based on that and the fact that 20-30+ years ago a man bought/built a space station. This man may have been influential in AI tech, too, FWIW.
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If that's what he said, he has a grossly oversimplified view of the difficulties of space travel. It's not that we lost interest it's that orbital velocity is incredibly hard and escape velocity is even harder. Until a breakthrough in propulsion or materials comes along we're going to be stuck on one planet.
--- Quote from: wrwight on 22 Aug 2011, 18:14 ---
Finally, kudos for the well-placed Spongebob reference.
--- End quote ---
Thank you very, very much. :-D
DSL:
--- Quote from: Boradis on 25 Aug 2011, 07:30 ---
--- Quote from: wrwight on 22 Aug 2011, 18:14 ---Didn't Jeph say one time that the primary difference between QC and the real world was that in QC they lever lost that drive for exploration, which fueled most of the technological advancements? (I don't remember where he said this, but I want to say a news post, likely somewhere around the time of Hannelore's first mention of her father). This would make the divergence maybe something like 50 years ago. There may be some timeline you could guess at for APCs based on that and the fact that 20-30+ years ago a man bought/built a space station. This man may have been influential in AI tech, too, FWIW.
--- End quote ---
If that's what he said, he has a grossly oversimplified view of the difficulties of space travel. It's not that we lost interest it's that orbital velocity is incredibly hard and escape velocity is even harder. Until a breakthrough in propulsion or materials comes along we're going to be stuck on one planet.
--- End quote ---
You'd better tell that to Branson, Bigelow et al., people who are developing space capabilities on their own time and their own dime. It's possible in the QC verse the impetus for such development came earlier, and actually rode the post-Apollo wave people in our own universe thought would give us Pan Am space clippers, orbiting Howard Johnsons and board meetings on the Moon by, um, 2001.
Speaking of 2001, Arthur C. Clarke once noted, and I'm paraphrasing: A few hundred pounds of kerosene (costing a few bucks) will liberate enough energy to send a man to the moon. The fact it takes (here he cited the complexity and cost of a Saturn V and associated support machinery) means our technology could stand some work. Maybe, just maybe, that work was done in the QCverse, and on other fronts, too, which is why it has HannerDad Station, climate-controlling nanosatellites, THE ROBOT HAMSTER! and android salesgirls mangling show tunes, happy they're not stuck in a bank vault somewhere..
Taigan:
The Brave Little Toaster was probably a very different movie in the QCverse.
Boradis:
--- Quote from: gangler on 23 Aug 2011, 19:35 ---Is it? That surprises me. The concept is pretty all inclusive. Does it not tell a story at all?
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It's very straightforward and simple.
Extraterrestrial super beings (acting through their monolith omni-machines) instill the spark of intelligence in proto humans, then stick two more monoliths in the Solar system in order to test us.
One is on the Moon since they know we'd go there first. The second they leave in orbit around Jupiter (or Saturn if you read the book). When a human makes it to the one in orbit around the gas giant they kidnap him, download his thoughts and memories, remake him into a super human and send him/it back to Earth.
On the trip to Jupiter the ship's computer succumbs to logical contradictions caused by executive meddling and tries to kill everyone. But it's ultimately a side issue.
That's it.
--- Quote from: DSL on 25 Aug 2011, 07:40 ---
You'd better tell that to Branson, Bigelow et al., people who are developing space capabilities on their own time and their own dime.
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I think physics does a much better job of making these points than I do. I think SpaceShipOne was very impressive for both of its flights. Nowhere near what Yuri Gagarin did 40 years earlier, but still not bad.
I'm looking forward to when SpaceShipTwo does ... something. It won't be reaching orbital velocity anyway, so calling it a spaceship is a little like calling a rowboat an ocean liner.
iduguphergrave:
--- Quote from: snubnose on 25 Aug 2011, 06:08 ---
--- Quote from: akronnick on 25 Aug 2011, 03:59 --- This is a sentient, intelligent being we're talking about here, and you think it's appropriate to snuff her out of existence because... she doesn't take her job seriously?
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Robots arent sentient, though. Jephs robots act like no reallife robot would act. Computers are mathematical machines, if they "show feelings" then its because an algorithm tells them to, not because there is the slightest hint of feeling in the machine. Just as an example, reallife robots do not get bored. Ever. They compute pi to the ten power n number of digits just fine, without ever wondering why they're doing it.
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Uh well you can think what you want but it's been said explicitly that the robots in Jeph's universe (a good portion of them, anyway) are sentient. And pretty much everything in the strip regarding robots points to them being free thinkers with their own agendas. It's called FICTION. Things are allowed to be different from real life.
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