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[puke]

I disagree and say that the reason why some sci-fi has techno-wizards is because the authors think it's cool.

In some cases, sure.  But dont discount market forces:

Conan has wizards because Robert E Howard's publisher forced him to put them in.  The author was originally against having any magic in there.

I think in this case, the SS2 developers just thought it was cool.  You're probably right.

[sambojin]

When did this thread turn into nerds sperging out about science fiction?

About one page back. 

Since there's no SS3 yet, or any solid news about what it might hypothetically contain, feel free to sperge on about whatever tangentially related topic you like.

That's pretty much the point of the thread at the moment. We've got very little to go on, so waffle away as you like.

Psi and technology aren't mutually exclusive to my mind (me posting this from my phone would have been seen as pretty magical a thousand years ago. I'd have to explain that I was conferring to a group of dwarven wizards or something. You know you are).

It may even be because of it, but not necessarily related to it. Can wifi signals effect our brains? Probably. Will it give me superpowers in 50 years time, after lots of exposure to them? Probably not (or I hope not. 85 yrs old is pretty late to hit my peak).

But the concepts learnt, the worldviews, and the sheer ability to communicate could spark off thought processes that wouldn't otherwise be accessible without mobile internet that's easily useable.

Ok, probably not psi stuff. But there's plenty of room in scifi for evolutions and revolutions like that, where it's not really tech based, but you kind of needed the tech to get there in your own head. Perhaps wide-spread space travel and regular low-g exposure could be another triggering factor, allowing telekinesis to be finally noticed and improved upon. But it wasn't really the ftl/fusion/antimatter/plasma drives that did the psi thing, it just wouldn't have happened without them.

Implants, mutations, genemodding, etc are also ways. But there's lots of ways to show the development of such things.

It may not be explained in the SS universe, but there's plenty of room for psi and tech, while them not being truly connected in a "this tech does psi" kind of way. Even while keeping psi hypos in as a brain food to sustain psi use. The original cooking fires probably only "required" charcoal and electricity in a very round-about way (lightning strikes on trees). But look at our fires and cooking now. So much warm thinky food, that we've moved onto heaps of other things. But the original cooked food gave plenty access to thinky time as well. Perhaps psi hypos aren't exactly well developed, but they work, once they knew at least some basics on what they were fueling, how, and what with (with future tech to back it up or find these things out).

Do you understand the full developmental history behind your average frozen meat pie? I don't understand psi hypos either. Both work in their respective universes though. One on food, one on psi use. There's some leaps in logic and explanation needed to use either regularly, but both may have reasonable start and end points involved in their development.

A lot of odd things have been discovered throughout history that totally weren't the object of the experiment or project. Often it is due to "funny stuff" happening that really can't just be hand-waved away, simply due to the amount of times the weird stuff is happening around many independent observers, that "something" becomes "a thing".  Sometimes it's science/tech, sometimes belief system/religious, sometimes societal or environmental. Not all discoveries were made by one person, sometimes they are made by groups and societies as a whole due to the environment at the time and their self-seen place in it. Slow realisations with sputtering starts and leaps to explain things, without any real validity other than personal worldviews to make it correct, with random and undefined endpoints/goals when viewed as a whole in distant retrospect. The future is a grand adventure and exploration of unknowns to be sure. Why not have psi in scifi? Regardless of the explanation.

I hope they keep it in.




(yes, this:


is totally synonymous with this:

 and this:
 

in any modern or futuristic world, when trying to explain "how does that even work?". It does. Get used to it. Quite a few things are based around it in canon. Pie explains everything. There could be anything in it, but it's psilicious! Mmm mmm. Yumm!).

[puke]

(me posting this from my phone would have been seen as pretty magical a thousand years ago. I'd have to explain that I was conferring to a group of dwarven wizards or something. You know you are).

<snip>

But the concepts learnt, the worldviews, and the sheer ability to communicate could spark off thought processes that wouldn't otherwise be accessible without mobile internet that's easily useable.

sure, and I can see all that.  But I can't see it leaving anything as recognizable as human behind.  at least not recognizable as human society.

They'll posit that people can control time and energy and matter on a fine enough scale to produce these discrete effects, but the best use is to train special operators to  blast mutants with it? 

People are giving it more thought than the authors did, in the effort to justify it.  The authors just thought, "Hey, lets have a character that can move things with their mind and cast fireballs!" and so they put that stuff in.

You point to the iphone as disruptive and inconceivable by previous generations -- and truely enough.  And so there will well be further inconceivable advances.  Of course there will!  But what are they going to disrupt?  what will change on a broader scale about how we communicate and interact as a society?

It isnt just the psi... There is atomic level nano fabrication available, and the best use of it is to make fizzy drinks and bullets?  Really?

For some more positive examples of games done well, take a look at Iron Seed -- a ship full of uploaded minds, and you have to keep them sane by pressing the reset switch on them every so often and restoring to the last known good backup.  Or even Cortex Command, tele-operated drones fighting proxy wars for disembodied brains.

Or even something like Darwinia.  Sure, it is a cutsey Tron spinoff, but its just the sort of thing that could be plausible.  Virtual worlds within virtual worlds, evolving on their own without any concept of what is going on outside.

Perhaps wide-spread space travel and regular low-g exposure could be another triggering factor

in NC.0079, maybe...

[YaW]

I'm holding the hype and waiting until they talk about the game a little bit more, but I'm really curious about how their post-GlaDOS SHODAN will be...

[sambojin]

Perhaps this is a point. More-so on SHODAN than psi though.

I do tend to dumb things down a fair bit to show a point, but how strong are you? How quick? If psi is even remotely physically based (which it is to a certain extent in the SS universe, beyond character stats, shown by things like psi hypos), can you be stronger or weaker? Faster or slower? Even on a given day, just yourself comparatively?

Because, I can move stuff with my hand. But I can't move a mountain with it. And sometimes more or less on a given day.

I can even run fairly fast, but not at the speed of light. And sometimes I'm tired.

I know some mathematics. But the untold secrets of the universe are still unclear to me.

I can make a pretty good spaghetti bog, a nice cocktail, or probably even some gunpowder, but an infinity drive is beyond my engineering skills (so far).

There's stronger, faster and smarter people about. As well as the reverse. From any given viewpoint, on any given day. I am also stronger and faster and smarter in the correct environment, with a goal in mind, especially with a little training or doing such things regularly.

I am way dumber than I was in school. But in theory, some underlying intelligence remains. What would I know, if that was the thing I did, every day?
.
.

I hate the psi=superman thing. Why would that be? Did nuclear power take us to the mythical bs dream that comes from thinking like this? No. Nor has, or will, anything else.

There are no superman switches, or not instantly.
.
.

If someone did have visions, should they automatically see and know all, or be proven a fraud if they couldn't?

If someone could direct the slightest puff of air with telekinesis, are they a charlatan for not stopping or starting every hurricane?

Does an unexplained ability to raise something a hundredth of a degree celsius require a firestorm to prove pyrokinesis?

Or a feel good masseuse to cure cancer to prove their skill in reiki? (not that sort of feel good masseuse)

There's always limits to everything else we know of. Why people automatically assume psi means godhood or a very powerful AI means likewise, with no reference to anything outside it, or reason for it, is beyond me. In games, or anywhere else.

The singularity of anything is nonsense and just a dream. A damn good dream, and worthwhile considering as a thought experiment or end-point, but absolute bs all the same.

Sometimes you can only do what you can do, or will do, on any given day. Otherwise it's just myth and magic, or something that you probably didn't understand the reason or background of.


Just from the SS wiki, for a laugh:

"The psi hypo contains a potent cocktail of tension relievers, dopamine inhibitors, and circulatory stimulators. The Surgeon General has warned that psi hypos can be habit-forming and dangerous to your health."
Those whacky doctors. Always limiting us


ps. I don't own an iphone, and am quite offended by the fact that you seem to think I do.

[Sergius]

Definitely something to PTW.

[puke]

6. On a scale of 1 (lowest) to 10 (highest), please rate your interest in virtual reality gaming?

Interesting question on their "sign up for our SS3 newsletter" questionnaire.

I'm also curious as to how many of the Dead Space (aka, unofficial SS3 under a different name because EA didn't have the rights) guys are on the new team.

[GiglameshDespair]

Well, as long as SS3 doesn't take after DS3...