32 KiB
[MK][D] Star Trek Munchkinery
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Author: u/Igigigif IT Foxgirl*
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/2nw400/mkd_star_trek_munchkinery/
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Score: 4
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Created: 2014-12-01T00:34:20
Post:
If you were to wake up as an admiral during stardate 47941.7 (the penultimate episode of next gen), how and how badly would you break the trekverse? In the interest of limiting future knowledge, I'm just going to call both voyager and DS9 not cannon.
Comments:
u/alexanderwales [+6] Time flies like an arrow (an hour later)
There are so many things that I would need the answers to:
- Why can't transporters be used for creating perfect duplicates of people, given what happened to Riker?
- Why can't replicators make living things?
- Why isn't artificial intelligence in widespread use, given the demonstrated capabilities of the holodeck?
- What's preventing whole brain uploading and/or simulation?
- How does time travel actually work?
It might be that these questions have sensible answers, but in the show, it's all sort of glossed over. The Trekverse seems like it has all the foundational technologies necessary to create a transhumanist society, yet that just hasn't happened. And not just in the Federation - in nearly every other civilization that they come in contact with. Why?
u/Igigigif [+6] IT Foxgirl (an hour later)
From a doylist view, its because its philosophy IN SPACE, not science fiction. From watstonian perspective I don't even
u/alexanderwales [+10] Time flies like an arrow (an hour later)
Sure, but that means that it's pretty much impossible to know what you can and can't do in the universe. The way the writers wrote the show was literally to just insert the word "tech" into the script and have someone fill in the appropriate bullshit later. The whole thing makes no sense, and asking how to exploit it is never going to produce a worthwhile answer, because the answer is probably just, "We can't tech because the tech." I like Star Trek, but the technobabble makes no sense, and trying to make sense of it - let alone exploit it - seems like a fool's errand.
u/ZombieboyRoy [+2] (7 hours later)
I like to think of the Star Trek's tech more in the terms /u/DaystarEld used for his Pokmon: Origin of Species work.
You can't explain how a pokeball works, but you can give it hard rules that fit within the established cannon that would allow one to extrapolate how such technology could theoretically be utilized for greatest munchikiny effect.
u/just_for_this [+1] (a day later)
I think the point alexanderwales intends is that while that's all possible, the established canon provides almost no constraints. It would look like a replicator, but all the constraints that you might then munchkin are constraints you provided. Because, like, who's to say that you can't something something deflector array phase modulation shield harmonics and now we're gods?
u/scruiser [+3] CYOA (2 hours later)
From watstonian perspective I don't even
I have an idea borrowed from a combination of Charles Stross's Eschaton novels and a Buffy the Vampire Slayer crossover with SG-1 that turned into a star trek fusion fic (can't remember name).
In original timeline, it follows real world history up to a future singularity.
Advanced AI/uploads retroactively spread humans backwards in time and across space (resulting in Klingons, Vulcans, and all the near human people that they run across exploring)
Advanced AI/uploads becomes/joins with/retroactively is the Q continumm.
History gets altered in the process, history now fits history given in show (including stuff like the Eugenics Wars)
The very top most elite of starfleet, and probably most of the smarter vulcans (because they are not straw vulcans in head canon universe) are aware of the true history of reality. Because of reasons (probably because they consider the true knowledge dangerous) they spread alternate stories about convergent evolution and such.
This very top elite has also decided that AI, life-extension, genetic enhancement, self-replicating technology, and other such things are all too dangerous to experiment with and suppress the technological development. Because things are already close to a post-scarcity state and there is centralized control they can get away with this.
- Why can't transporters be used for creating perfect duplicates of people, given what happened to Riker?
- Why can't replicators make living things?
- Why isn't artificial intelligence in widespread use, given the demonstrated capabilities of the holodeck?
- What's preventing whole brain uploading and/or simulation?
All of these things are possible but are suppressed or are known but considered taboo. The top elite with vague knowledge of the disaster of the singularity are responsible for this.
u/comport [+2] (3 hours later)
Okay
Riker duplication happened because of interference from the planet's atmosphere, only known to happen on one planet in all of known space, and then only once every several years, and on top of that it was a fluke. Even if sentient duplication wasnt politically toxic and taboo, you try studying a poorly understood natural phenomenon you only get to see about once a decade.
I don't have a canonical response, I'm sure its not a cultural restriction, but I imagine there are many more states in which a piece of matter is dead than in which its alive. This might reduce it to just limitations in the technology - we already know that the transporter buffer has to be disproportionately huge to hold all the information of a life form, and that isn't even digitised information.
Holodeck programs aren't sentient? Unless you're talking about The Doctor, who spent months to years running constantly on the Federations most advanced computers. The lack of common sentient holograms is just because the shows are set prior/during their first appearance.
Nothing prevents whole brain uploading, it happens, its not common, the closest I can see to a canonical reason is that for some reason the field of robotics isn't very advanced, and man-portable computers capable of running a sentient mind are still limited by the technology (exception: data, who was once the target of a mind upload) generally there's social resistance to the idea in pretty much every culture, except where there isn't, where it happens (eg the binars).
Time travel... Weeeeeell... Its clear from having FTL at all that they don't live in our universe, and their universe has either no or modified relativity. Let's say it works via modified relativity :p
u/alexanderwales [+6] Time flies like an arrow (5 hours later)
The world of Star Trek is just really, really sloppily built, in part because it's the result of several decades and hundreds writers who were working against a deadline and much of the time, only really cared about putting out a standalone episode. I understand much of the canon "logic" for why we never see any technological progress, and some of why the obvious transhumanist stuff never happens, but I also think it's stupid.
Take the replicators, for example. They seem to have no problem making a medium-rare steak or a cup of hot Earl Grey tea. Yet they can't make living things. This despite the fact that it's claimed that replicators use a variant of the transporter technology, which certainly can transport living things. The Doyalist explanation for this is that being able to make a copy of a person at will breaks the whole universe wide open. The Watsonian explanation ... well, it somehow has to account for the fact that replicators can make a steak, with all the animal cells that implies, or the molecules of bergamot oil in Earl Grey, or any number of things that they obviously can and do make on a routine basis, but at the same time can't make living things (except for the one or two times that they do).
The problem is that the writers wanted the "cool factor" of being able to create food on demand, or create an impostor of Picard, but didn't want their universe to have to become truly alien to the viewer. After all, if it were possible to make a copy of a person (either through transporter hackery or using a replicator) there wouldn't really be a reason for every warship not to have the best possible crew. Vital personnel would be cloned a hundred times over so that their skills and knowledge would never be lost. You can talk about social taboos, but those same taboos have to apply to all the other local cultures (and everyone capable of engineering the proper technology) so that a species doesn't just fork bomb and dominate their opponents. And in fact, the threat of facing a civilization that has mastered the creation of duplicates should be so great that research into making duplicates of personnel should be a top research priority - but there's no indication that this is the case.
And you can't tell me that the field of robotics isn't very advanced when they have frickin' Data walking around. That just makes no sense. I can maybe accept that robots are impractical for most things given the existence of replicators, force fields, transporters, etc., but there's no way that Data gets made without some advanced robotic underlying technology. That strains my credulity to the breaking point.
tl;dr The problem of Star Trek is that they wanted a lot of cool things without the consequences of those cool things.
u/comport [+3] (8 hours later)
I don't disagree that the writing was oftne unnecessarily sloppy and at times insane and inconsistent (warp ten lizards o_o). But I never had a problem with any of the technologies that came straight from TNG's premise.
E.g. I'm quite happy to believe a machine could make something that I will think tastes like monkey brain, but lacks the technological sophistication to make an actual functional monkey brain, with an active mind running on it. I won't credit a replicator with godlike fabrication powers just because it feeds me.
Aside: I always thought that Star Trek's worst crimes against plausibility were done by individual writers on a budget, which accrued over its long run, rather than because the show had a philosophy of "Who cares, [insert science]". I never faulted it for having things like TECH in the original script, because its obvious those poor TECH writers were really putting their heart into it, just compare the TNG technobabble to Abrams Trek technobabble - TNG had much higher quality babble.
u/ZombieboyRoy [+1] (7 hours later)
Why can't transporters be used for creating perfect duplicates of people, given what happened to Riker?
Limitations of hardware and/or power required to store a living humanoid pattern before it degrades to a point where it would be dangerous to create. What happened to Riker on that planet is unique due to the make up of the atmosphere and conditions on the planet. It's possible to clone with a transporter using a filter of sorts simulating the same conditions but it is easier and more efficient to clone using other techniques.
Why can't replicators make living things?
Well, they kind of do. Replicators and transporters are similar in that they are 3D printers but one is specialized in living beings and the other for more common needs. At the least a replicator can create organic materials safe enough to consume but not ever shown to be used for say creating a heart for surgery. I'm torn between a glaring lack of understanding how organ rejection works and my belief this is a case of hand waving from writers.
Why isn't artificial intelligence in widespread use, given the demonstrated capabilities of the holodeck?
Fail-safes built into systems as powerful as ones the Federation has. Not cannon but reading a thread about that on /r/DaystromInstitute sometime ago made some good arguments for the case.
What's preventing whole brain uploading and/or simulation?
Wolf 359.
How does time travel actually work?
The many-worlds interpretation for starters, helps fit the major model shown in the series. Of course, there is a lot of plot relevant "subatomic particles" that come into play that could use some hard limits. Unlike the 29th century the 24th century is still working it all out but does have a Department of Temporal Investigations for such matters.
The Trekverse seems like it has all the foundational technologies necessary to create a transhumanist society, yet that just hasn't happened.
Humanity has reached a seemingly utopian society and with the capacity for FTL travel any group of people who don't share the same values can start their own version. Gene manipulation is taboo so cybernetic research and augmentation are a main line of pursuit.
u/MugaSofer [+1] (18 hours later)
I really think you're not giving the writers enough credit. It's not perfect, but it's a lot more consistent than, say, Superman.
Why can't transporters be used for creating perfect duplicates of people, given what happened to Riker?
Because they run on quantum technobabble, and that would violate the no-cloning theorem. You can move a pattern from place to place, isolate portions of a pattern, or create artificial patterns; but not duplicate an existing pattern.
Why can't replicators make living things?
... the same reason existing 3d printers can't?
Why isn't artificial intelligence in widespread use, given the demonstrated capabilities of the holodeck?
Because planets that develop AI ... don't end up joining the Federation. The Enterprise encountered the ruins of several on the show.
They are apparently researching it regardless, however. Although it's possible that it's being deliberately sabotaged, given that the top-secret "Section 31" apparently suppresses certain "transhuman" technologies (except for their own use, of course.)
What's preventing whole brain uploading and/or simulation?
Well, the Federation hasn't solved physics, and they don't have unlimited processing power (they had a nuclear war before they even noticed Moore's Law IIRC.)
But they do seem to have limited prototypes; in fact, it's been the basis of every experimental "AI" they've shown on the show.
How does time travel actually work?
... it's complicated. There is a consistent system for Trek timetravel set forth in the DTI novels, though.
At a first pass, it's the standard Doctor Who meta-time and "fate" pushing things back toward the way they were.
u/alexanderwales [+2] Time flies like an arrow (21 hours later)
Quantum technobabble and the no-cloning theory doesn't stop the fact that transporter duplicates have been created two different times on screen. It's always the same (lazy) "this can only happen once" thing that Star Trek writers like to do when their technology works in some way that would revolutionize their world. They do the same thing over and over again with implants, neural interfaces, artificial intelligence, holograms, etc., in order to ensure that the world is relatively stagnant and their vision doesn't get disrupted.
But Star Trek was never much about the worldbuilding, it was about the philosophy and ideas. And that explains why their worldbuilding is so thin on the ground.
My main gripe with replicators is that they're explicitly stated to be built with the same technology that transporters are. That undercuts the argument that they're not sophisticated enough to make a living thing, as does the fact that they can make all sorts of organic molecules and arrange them in complex ways. If a replicator can make a steak (which it can) then it can make dead flesh, and there's no much difference between dead flesh and living flesh. It also undercuts the argument that transporters can't possibly make duplicates. And when the Federation comes across alien technology that can make living matter from a replicator (which happens at least twice), they don't react in shock or seem to have any desire to possess these clearly better technologies - because it would upset the status quo.
Now, I like Star Trek, but I have to watch it on an episode-by-episode basis instead of considering it as a coherent whole, and I still think the worldbuilding is fairly lazy. Part of this is because Star Trek was built to be episodic in nature, and couldn't do stuff like a modern television show with heavy continuity would.
u/MugaSofer [+2] (a day later)
If a replicator can make a steak (which it can) then it can make dead flesh, and there's no much difference between dead flesh and living flesh.
It's not a real steak, it's replicated food designed to resemble "a steak". According to TNG, it's got the nutritional balance of a MealSquare with none of the flavour or texture. Characters often complain that replicated foods and drinks don't really taste quite the same as the real thing, but that's what specialist chefs are for.
There are a ton of things they can't replicate effectively. Most equipment is manufactured using (industrial) replicators, sure; but it's not as if you can just print yourself a new star drive, or a photon torpedo, or an equiv-tech civilization's currency.
It's always the same (lazy) "this can only happen once" thing that Star Trek writers like to do when their technology works in some way that would revolutionize their world. They do the same thing over and over again with implants, neural interfaces, artificial intelligence, holograms, etc., in order to ensure that the world is relatively stagnant and their vision doesn't get disrupted.
[...]
I have to watch it on an episode-by-episode basis instead of considering it as a coherent whole, and I still think the worldbuilding is fairly lazy. Part of this is because Star Trek was built to be episodic in nature, and couldn't do stuff like a modern television show with heavy continuity would.
One advantage of the episodic format is that there's usually an episode somewhere where the writer went out of their way to justify things, or which you can use to justify things. I think that's one of the reasons it's so popular with people who like to over-analyse these things.
[... on DS9 we met Section 31, who were blackmailing a mildly-transhuman character because his - perfectly safe! - biomods were illegal. So that's a part of the setting, too. But apparently we're treating that as non-canon.]
In general, I think it's fair to say that the writers were well aware of transhumanist possibilities; and they deliberately postulated a Good Future where that stuff mostly didn't work out. (Rather like the future Eliezer postulated in Three Worlds Collide.) Genetics is hard. Brain emulation is hard. Messing them up leads to very smart and very crazy people blowing your stuff up, if you're lucky, and self-replicating plagues destroying your entire civilization if you aren't.
In TOS (which I'm most familiar with), they encountered not one but three planets I can think of off the top of my head, reduced to devolved remnants of their civilization by brain emulation. They encountered a parallel Earth that tried to cure aging and wiped themselves out with a bioengineered plague; the characters were sympathetic, but unsurprised. And they encountered Kahn. Despite that, they've cured almost every disease, they have an unspecified but noticeably longer lifespan, and they're still trying to improve. They're researching and improving their tech; and they're bargaining with more advanced races that are sufficiently un-advanced to consider bargaining.
The same goes for Generic Space Energy Nonsense; we see them improving the Warp Drive despite the fact that time travel is really dangerous, and we see them cheerfully poking Space Anomalies and Unknown Substances despite the fact that they generally just drive you insane and/or kill you.
Now, by TNG the Federation was portrayed as a bit more cautious about potentially-transhuman tech (and, interestingly, timetravel) - Picard was really, really bad at ethics - but still researching and testing new tech (also, Data.) If I recall correctly, they sent Moriarty off to be studied. And, of course, the premise of the show is still about adding to the Federation's scientific and technological base by flying out and poking stuff.
u/FeepingCreature [+2] GCV Literally The Entire Culture (2 days later)
u/qbsmd [+1] (a day later)
I always got the impression they could do those things but considered them both immoral and too dangerous to use (think about the disastrous AIs encountered regularly in the original series or the episodes in DS9 that deal with genetic engineering). They go out of their way to prevent anything transhumanist-flavored from happening, or made it look scary when it does.
u/None [+4] (3 days later)
Take a combadge. Go back in time. Drop it on IBM. Go back to the future.
Pick up a new and improved combadge. Go back in time. Drop it on IBM. Go back to the future.
Pick up a new and improved combadge. This one is also a personal teleporter. Go back in time. Drop it on IBM. Go back to the future.
Pick up a new and improved combadge. This one is also a chronoporter. Send it back in time to IBM from where you stand in the future. This completes a stable time loop.
All science is now complete. Your combadge is omnipotent. You are now Q.
u/MugaSofer [+3] (a day later)
It's worth noting that rational!Star Trek has been done, and it was called Three Worlds Collide. Still, it'd be really cool to see a version closer to canon.
Anyway, since you ask, I'd get people to research the Augments. Yes, they are unFriendly and mildly superintelligent, but it seems extremely likely that they can be fixed or at least pointed at the enemy in some fashion.
Also, the Borg are idiots, so find them and steal their tech (while suppressing the hive-mind neural interface stuff so we don't end up turning into them.)
Finally, standing order to all starships that whenever you encounter a godlike superbeing that can kill us all with a thought, see about persuading them to disable all our enemies' weapons or something. Worked well enough with the Klingons. It's such a waste to just survive these encounters, you know?
EDIT: Oh, hey, depending on how canon the Abrahms verse is here; ask S31 why the heck they're suppressing super-Transporters (via hologram telepresence so they won't assassinate me for Knowing Too Much, I bet they'd do that.)
u/qbsmd [+2] (an hour later)
Whenever a main character really needs to be able to detect cloaked ships, they manage it pretty quickly. I'd have a team of engineers go through the list of known methods and build a sensor array that does that by default. And preferably a torpedo-sized sensor array that does the same things. And put them everywhere.
If you'd counted DS9, in one of the episodes that bothered me most, an away team discovered the survivors of a crashed ship who were trapped by a portable technology-neutralizing device. After that moment, the Borg were no longer a threat in the ST universe. They simply became a convenient source of technology to reverse engineer.
u/scruiser [+2] CYOA (2 hours later)
Whenever a main character really needs to be able to detect cloaked ships, they manage it pretty quickly. I'd have a team of engineers go through the list of known methods and build a sensor array that does that by default.
Why stop there? Do this with all the teching the tech solutions that have ever been used.
I would assemble a database of all the jury-rigs (teching the tech) used in all the past episodes. I would have the crew train to apply each of these jury rigs quickly and effectively. When possible, I would have them permanently modify or add on modified sections to the ship to do all the tricky things that get them out of trouble. Then instead of rushing to fix things in a dramatic manner, my crew would just pull out one of the known jury-rigs and have it ready to go.
u/qbsmd [+2] (3 hours later)
Why stop there? Do this with all the teching the tech solutions that have ever been used.
Of course; I just wasn't up to looking for examples. So I provided a few off the top of my head that gave the Federation the ability to dominate the Borg, Romulans, and Klingons. For an admiral, I'd think that would be enough to earn me a nice long vacation on Risa.
u/FeepingCreature [+1] GCV Literally The Entire Culture (2 days later)
permanently modify or add on modified sections to the ship to do all the tricky things that get them out of trouble.
'Sir, why does your proposed ship design look like the Borg got very, very drunk?"
'I call her the USS Hodgepodge!'
u/BekenBoundaryDispute [+1] (27 minutes later)
Can technology and its implications showcased in Voyager and DS9 that probably exists by the stated time period be counted as canonical? What about events of DS9 up to the second season where it overlaps with TNG?
u/Igigigif [+2] IT Foxgirl (51 minutes later)
It depends on which advancement you mean: mildly improved warp engines and transporters, sure, but not, say, that miniaturized site-to-site transporter from that one episode where Kim goes to an alternate timeline. On a more specific note, something like the EMH is fair game, but not the "holo-matix" bit they occasionally bring up that lets them construct an AI with ease. (Moriarty and his wife only being possible with the massive resources of a ship's computer). On shared events between DS9 and TNG, I'm not sure. My intention with the ruling was to prevent focus on that war thing that took up most of DS9, and since the wormhole just opens up a box of worms, I'd prefer to not count it as anything more than an unremarkable outpost.
u/eaglejarl [+1] (4 hours later)
Specific things I'd look into:
- Wasn't there a phasing device that let them fly starships through asteroids?
- There were those creatures from subspace that transported people off the ship in order to surgically investigate them -- they cut off Riker's arm and then reattached it. This whole "other dimensions in subspace" thing sounds pretty cool; let's see if we can't extract energy or resources from that
- Since time travel is a thing, let's send someone back in time...oh, say, 100 years...with a message about all the disasters that are going to wipe out planets etc and how to deal with them. Also notify them of any particular awesome opportunities so they can exploit them earlier. Oh yes, and send along a completely up-to-date science/medical/engineering database and fully build-the-infrastructure tools.
And yes, that last one will overwrite my own timeline. It will also save billions of lives and catapult the federation's technology forward enormously. Perhaps enormously enough that we can curbstomp the Borg. If not, repeat the process with our NEW tech level.
u/qbsmd [+2] (a day later)
Perhaps enormously enough that we can curbstomp the Borg. If not, repeat the process with our NEW tech level.
Unfortunately, the Borg are perfectly willing to do the same thing. I imagine all the time machine starships in the distant future are working full time just to keep things from getting worse.
u/FeepingCreature [+2] GCV Literally The Entire Culture (2 days later)
Unfortunately, the Borg are perfectly willing to do the same thing.
"This is only the furthest edge of the Time War. But at its heart, millions die every second, lost in bloodlust and insanity. With Time itself resurrecting them to find new ways of dying, over ... and over again. A travesty of life."
Patrick Stewart would make a great Rassilon.
u/Igigigif [+1] IT Foxgirl (5 hours later)
I'd completely forgotten about the phased cloak. Even if they decide to follow the treaty with the romulns, they can still make a phased shield or some such thing. Also, the subspace aliens are really hard to track down. If I remember correctly, subspace is basicly pocker of reality floating around in non-euclidean space. All the same, despite being one of the most common handwaves in the sries, subspace is still underutilized
u/ZombieboyRoy [+1] (6 hours later)
Figured this would pop up sooner or later. I've been working out, at the least, a rational fiction in the Star Trek setting but with the television series, movies, the /r/DaystromInstitute, and a small number of tech manuals and a star chart book. Ever since I have started reading rationalist fiction I've had this longing to try my hand at it and when RaNaNoWriMo began I started tossing around ideas till I realized just how much of I intuitively know of the series that I might be able to give a crack at it.
I have a rough idea of a story but enough of an outline that I still feel it worth pursuing. While I can't give a rational explanation for how the Heisenberg compensator in a transporter works I have some ideas for how to rationalize enough of the universe to make more hardline rules to follow. However, I'd like to know before making a fool of myself if this could work as a premisses for a rationalist fiction;
A man who is playing catch up, someone who doesn't have the luxury of the finest education and body of knowledge the 24th century has to offer but applying himself to achieve a sense of fulfillment.
u/alexanderwales [+2] Time flies like an arrow (7 hours later)
Who is this guy, and what's it going to take for him to be fulfilled? What's the central conflict? The four general categories of conflict are man against self, man against man, man against society, and man against nature - do you know which of these your story is, or which ones you're going to incorporate?
u/ZombieboyRoy [+1] (8 hours later)
Mainly man against self at first followed by man against society. In the end... I've been thinking more about what transcendence really is all about in the Trek universe.
I'm sorry for how straight-forward an answer I give but I only just realized how late it is. I have work in the afternoon but I would whole-heartily appreciate criticism and questions. Like I said, I have a work in progress
u/lsparrish [+1] (8 hours later)
Use replicators to produce replicators to produce replicators, then build a nice big Dyson swarm around an out of the way star (nobody visits the systems without life bearing planets), program it to create starships, send them out to repeat the process exponentially until you have millions of ships (and replicators) for every technologically advanced species. For a suitable, replicable AI crew, use holograms, taken from a good holodeck simulation. Give them a mission of keeping peace in the galaxy, make the crew capable of surviving death by making backups (since they are at least a bit sentient) or merge similar individuals to reduce the population in case it becomes necessary. Give them personalities that can handle combat competently, but prefer peace. These soldier type AIs would then serve to buy time to pursue an aggressive program of peaceful research into genetic engineering, nanotech, friendly AI, and so on. Get a genetic program and psych studies going for every powerful race of sentients at least -- probably best to study them all. Again, use trillions of holodeck characters as researchers. If needed, sentient meat-beings could be hired on as creative aides, maybe use betazoid empaths to vet them, then train then by immersion in holodeck sims with their AI coworkers. Meat-people can be transmitted anywhere instantly via transporter as long as it is in the same solar system, so you could have a being rotate between dozens of different labs per day in the course of their consulting duties. Holo folks would have even more flexibility, since they can travel to other systems instantly via subspace.