418 réponses à ce sujet

[Bourne Endeavor]

David7204 wrote...

I tell you what. If you can write some sample conversations between Shepard and other characters that address that, I might be convinced. What I don't want is pointless conversation that tells that player nothing and has no themes, and is only there to check off a box of 'character must comment about event.'

Show a conversation that goes somewhere meaningful.

Done. Your move, chief. 

Shepard's revival is treated as a go to punchline throughout ME2, with characters who have thought him/her dead for two years having barely a reaction. No one questions it, nor asks how it was even plausible. Miranda's explanation is flippant and nonconsequential, glossing over any relevant topics on the matter, like how they preserved Shepard's memory. Frankly, Lazarus is ridiculed because the sheer amount of punishment Shepard's body endures, yet remains intact, is ridiculous. He/She...

1. Suffocates in space.
2. Entries planetary reentry.
3. Hurls into a planet's surface.
4. Exposed to sub-zero and vacuum temperatures.

To say the human body could survive even half that goes far beyond stretching reality and jumps straight into "space magic." In fact, one of Miranda's logs explicitly states Shepard suffered severe brain damage, but somehow his/her memories are perfectly fine.

Modifié par Bourne Endeavor, 21 août 2013 - 12:06 .

[o Ventus]

Whatever happened to this, David?

o Ventus wrote...

David7204 wrote...

Explain to me why Miranda's infertility makes no sense.

Or rather, explain to me why a doctor diagnosing Miranda with infertility makes no sense. Because that's actually the case.

Because that doctor is an idiot to think that Miranda's condition is an actual problem. Also, infertility isn't you can be diagnosed with. It isn't some debilitating disease.

[DeinonSlayer]

Bourne Endeavor wrote...

David7204 wrote...

I tell you what. If you can write some sample conversations between Shepard and other characters that address that, I might be convinced. What I don't want is pointless conversation that tells that player nothing and has no themes, and is only there to check off a box of 'character must comment about event.'

Show a conversation that goes somewhere meaningful.

Done. Your move, chief. 

Shepard's revival is treated as a go to punchline throughout ME2, with characters who have thought him/her dead for two years having barely a reaction. No one questions it, nor asks how it was even plausible. Miranda's explanation is flippant and nonconsequential, glossing over any relevant topics on the matter, like how they preserved Shepard's memory. Frankly, Lazarus is ridiculed because the sheer amount of punishment Shepard's body endures, yet remains intact, is ridiculous. He/She...

1. Suffocates in space.
2. Entries planetary reentry.
3. Hurls into a planet's surface.
4. Exposed to sub-zero and vacuum temperatures.

To say the human body could survive even half that goes far beyond stretching reality and jumps straight into "space magic." In fact, one of Miranda's logs explicitly states Shepard suffered severe brain damage, but somehow his/her memories are perfectly fine.

Just this week we saw that news story about a stuntman from the James Bond franchise who died in a wingsuit accident. He hit a mountainside at 125 miles an hour and his body was so mangled they had to resort to DNA identification.

Picture if you will a body falling from orbit. Slightly lower gravity than Earth, but plenty of distance in which to accelerate. Thinner atmosphere, meaning higher terminal velocity than on Earth. Even if the body hasn't burned to ash, it'd get pasted on impact with the ground.

I lean more towards the idea that Shepard's corpse lingered in orbit until recovery ("long term exposure to vacuum and sub-zero temperatures"), but even then, the only remotely feasible explanation I can come up with for the preservation of Shepard's memories is that (s)he had a greybox which somehow survived, the memories from which Cerberus somehow uploaded into a cloned brain.

[David7204]

Thinner atmosphere and also lower gravity. Probably a terminal atmosphere of about the same.

Plenty of skydivers have hit the ground at terminal velocity. They don't get turned into paste. Some have even survived by hitting trees and stuff like that.

Modifié par David7204, 21 août 2013 - 12:19 .

[JasonShepard]

David7204 wrote...

JasonShepard wrote...

One problem: Quantum Entanglement can't be used to transfer meaningful information. Which means that the very idea of a Quantum Entanglement Communicator is false.

(I'll put a mild proviso in here that certain versions of Quantum Theory do allow QECs, but they imply ridiculously strange things about the universe. Either they require a 'special' frame of reference, which breaks Einstein's relativity since all frames of reference should be equally valid... or, if you don't have a special frame of reference but you do have QECs, then you've got Time Travel.)

Uh, no. Wrong.

Quantum Entanglement can't transfer meaningful information as it is now, but we're a long way from any kind of proof that it's fundamentally impossible.

Go to Wikipedia and look it up. If it was fundamentally impossible, the article would say so in big fat bold letters right at the top of the page. It doesn't.

Okay.

First, a clarification. I was referring to FTL communication ('instantaneous' communication) in my post. Quantum communication has been done in the real world, as a form of cryptography, but it relies on some traditional, slower than light communication to work.

Second, I did put in a comment in my post that QECs were possible with some strange implications and resultant paradoxes, so writing my entire post off as wrong was a bit aggressive.
(I'll note that the Mass Effect Universe already has those strange implications by virtue of FTL, but it quietly ignores them like most Science Fiction does. And I don't have a problem with that.)

The wiki page on Superluminal Communication is worth a quick read, if you're interested. General scientific consensus is that FTL communication via Quantum Entanglement is probably impossible, but you're right that it hasn't technically been proven. It would just break most of science if it turned out to be possible. (Then again, something needs to break sooner or later - Relativity and Quantum don't line up at all.)

[David7204]

It was my understanding that we've been able to send junk bits through entanglement instantly. Useless, and within causality, but still spooky action at a distance. Just gotta figure out a way to encode it.

Modifié par David7204, 21 août 2013 - 12:22 .

[David7204]

o Ventus wrote...

Because that doctor is an idiot to think that Miranda's condition is an actual problem. Also, infertility isn't you can be diagnosed with. It isn't some debilitating disease.

Why couldn't it be a problem? Or rather, why couldn't the doctor consider it a problem?

[In Exile]

 The AI. It's just comically divorced from everything we know about machine learning today.

 Quarian biology. It's not just nonsense, it contradicts itself from scene to scene. 

[JasonShepard]

DeinonSlayer wrote...

I lean more towards the idea that Shepard's corpse lingered in orbit until recovery ("long term exposure to vacuum and sub-zero temperatures"), but even then, the only remotely feasible explanation I can come up with for the preservation of Shepard's memories is that (s)he had a greybox which somehow survived, the memories from which Cerberus somehow uploaded into a cloned brain.

Heh - my explanation is similar. Miranda was told by TIM to look after Shepard before  the Collector Attack, so I just pretend/headcanon/whatever that she arranged for Shepard's helmet to be swapped out for a new one. The new helmet had a stasis module that kicked in as soon as he was brain-dead. (If something is possible with biotics, it really ought to be possible with tech and eezo.)

Then Shepard floated in space until the Blue Suns found him. If you want to account for the broken bones since during the Lazarus cinematics... well, maybe the Blue Suns found him by crashing into him.

[David7204]

In Exile wrote...

 The AI. It's just comically divorced from everything we know about machine learning today.

 Quarian biology. It's not just nonsense, it contradicts itself from scene to scene. 

Yes, because machine learning as we know it has been incredibly effective and successful, hasn't it?

What's the problem with the AI?

[LiL Reapur]

Bourne Endeavor wrote...

Done.

So quickly, and i'd buy it nice writing.

[Steelcan]

Why are we talking science to David?

[In Exile]

David7204 wrote...
Yes, because machine learning as we know it has been incredibly effective and successful, hasn't it?  

Yes, actually. Phenomenally so. 

What's the problem with the AI? 

AI isn't Spock, and that view of artificial intelligence has been basically discredited for two decades now. The kind of problem solving necessary to actually function as a physical being and interact with objects is not some equivalent to propositional language. In fact, not even language works as some equivalent of math.

Treating AI as a kind of logic-box without emotions is just non-sensical. There's no known way to create something intelligent without creating some functional analogue of emotion and intuition. These are both functionally necessary to solve information processing problems and bottlenecks. 

If you start assuming infinite computational power, then you've got an entirely different sort of problem that you need to solve, and that's having your AI be anything like a recognizable sapient entity. 

Modifié par In Exile, 21 août 2013 - 12:33 .

[Seboist]

One of the most jarring things about ME2 is how the game explores the ethics of the genophage and Mordin's personal crisis over it in his loyalty mission but when it comes to lazarus, it's just treated as if Shepard just woke up from an afternoon nap.

[Steelcan]

There are more reasonable people to argue science with.

Creationists, flat Earth believers, and newborns for example.

[David7204]

Let me get this straight.

Your problem with AI is that intelligence fundamentally cannot exist without 'intuition.' Or rather, outward expressions of intuition, since we're not given insight on the internal thought of AI. Because it breaks some physical law. Is that right?

Modifié par David7204, 21 août 2013 - 12:34 .

[sr2josh]

 

People, it's called science FICTION 

[DeinonSlayer]

David7204 wrote...

Thinner atmosphere and also lower gravity. Probably a terminal atmosphere of about the same.

Didn't you say you were a physicist?

Earth: 1.0 Earth gravities (9.8m/s^2), 1.0 atmospheres (1.2kg/m^3)
Alchera: 0.85 Earth gravities (8.33m/s^2), 0.83 atmospheres (0.996 kg/m^3)

Vt = sqrt(2mg/pACd)

Vt = Terminal Velocity
m = mass of the falling object, constant between Shepard falling on Earth and Alchera
g = gravity (9.8m/s^2 for Earth, 8.33m/s^2 for Alchera)
p = density of the fluid through which the object is falling (1.2 kg/m^3 for Earth at sea level, 0.996 kg/m^3 for Alchera, will change with altitude)
A = projected area of the object, constant between Shepard falling on Earth and Alchera
Cd = drag coefficient

Earth: g/p = 8.16666
Alchera: g/p = 8.36345

You're going to hit harder on Alchera than on Earth.

[JasonShepard]

David7204 wrote...

It was my understanding that we've been able to send junk bits through entanglement instantly. Useless, and within causality, but still spooky action at a distance. Just gotta figure out a way to encode it.

Kinda. If you measure your particle, and I measure mine, I'll get a result that corresponds to whatever you got. The problem is that the result itself is entirely random, so there's no way for me to tell if you've even measured your particle yet.
(Using 2 pairs of entangled particles, with each of us having a pair, could provide a way around this. Each pair would be in a superposition which would collapse as soon as either pair was measured, providing a measurable signal. But my quantum is a bit rusty, so I don't know if it'd actually work out that way.)

There's a problem with QECs being instant too. The problem is that 'instantaneous' depends on your frame of reference. If two events happen at the same time for you (like, say, two entangled particles doing the same thing), they won't happen at the same time for me if I'm travelling at a different velocity to you. We've actually proven that with atomic clocks by comparing satellites to the ground. The GPS system needs to be constantly adjusted to account for it. So a QEC couldn't be instant for everyone, which begs the question of who it is instant for and why them.

Modifié par JasonShepard, 21 août 2013 - 12:38 .

[Br3admax]

o Ventus wrote...

Whatever happened to this, David?

o Ventus wrote...

David7204 wrote...

Explain to me why Miranda's infertility makes no sense.

Or rather, explain to me why a doctor diagnosing Miranda with infertility makes no sense. Because that's actually the case.

Because that doctor is an idiot to think that Miranda's condition is an actual problem. Also, infertility isn't you can be diagnosed with. It isn't some debilitating disease.

The doctor says that Miranda had a benign neoplasm, a common cause of which is damaged DNA. In women, this is not unheard of for being a cause of infertility. The way that Miranda exists, is a very easy way to say why Miranda being infertile makes since. What I don't know is why their modern medicine cannot fix the promblem.  

Modifié par Br3ad, 21 août 2013 - 12:38 .

[Seboist]

Makai81 wrote...

People, it's called science FICTION 

Proper science fiction has grounding in reality and plausibility unlike space pulp like ME.

Fail Harder.

[David7204]

Golly, a two percent difference. How long did it take you to look up that equation and copy it?

[o Ventus]

David7204 wrote...

o Ventus wrote...

Because that doctor is an idiot to think that Miranda's condition is an actual problem. Also, infertility isn't you can be diagnosed with. It isn't some debilitating disease.

Why couldn't it be a problem? Or rather, why couldn't the doctor consider it a problem?

Because Miranda's problem (a benign tumor) is not a medical problem in any way. Seeing that the tumor is not cancerous, it's literally as simple as getting the tumor removed and waiting through the recovery period and allowing scar tissue to cover the site of the tumor. It doesn't say WHERE the tumor is located, but if it's preventing reproduction, it's likely blocking her Fallopian tubes, which makes it all the more puzzling as to why the dossier considers it to be such a tragic thing.

No self-respecting doctor would tell somebody "nope, you're sterile" over something like what's described in Miranda's dossier. The only reason it would be inherently bad at all is if she were deliberately not getting it removed (which, given Miranda's line of work and lifestyle, is somewhat understandable).

[Steelcan]

David7204 wrote...

Golly, a two percent difference. How long did it take you to look up that equation and copy it?

.  Belittling does nothing to strengthen your case

[In Exile]

David7204 wrote...
Your problem with AI is that intelligence fundamentally cannot exist without 'intuition.'

It depends on whether you consider your calculator intelligent. 

Or rather, outward expressions of intuition,

No, we can tell that the geth don't have intuition. They're evidently meant not to, but it's also something you can infer from all of their references to how they problem solve. 

since we're not given insight on the internal thought of AI. Because it breaks some physical law. Is that right?

I have no idea where you got any of this. The infinite computational power problem has to do with why we have consciousness in the first place, and why we have (according to our best theories) things like intuition and problem solving to begin with.