Magic and Sci-Fi

[simonh]

Therefore a ship with a jump drive could carry a signal to it's destination faster than the speed of light, across a spacelike interval, which would open up the possibility of causality violations.

I too studied this. There is no violation if the object didn't have a "violation" by action in THIS universe. That was my point... J-space isn't subject to the laws we know as physics.

Arriving in our universe when it emerges from jump is an action in this universe, as is carrying information from the point of entering jump to the point of exiting it.

I dont think there's anything ambiguous about the quote from the Wikipedia page you linked to. It states the situation pretty clearly.

Simon Hibbs

 

[Prime_Evil]

Yep...I think that's correct. Any form of FTL travel implies the possibility of causality violations. Whether such violations can occur in practice is a matter of debate - Stephen Hawking proposed the Chronology Protection Conjecture to avoid the problems that arise if causality violations are allowed. Alternatively, the Novikov Self-Consistency Principle argues that the only worldlines allowed in the real universe are those which are globally self-consistent from all possible reference frames. This would seem to rule out the possiblity of closed timelike curves and the associated causality violations entirely.

 

[simonh]

Yep...I think that's correct. Any form of FTL travel implies the possibility of causality violations. Whether such violations can occur in practice is a matter of debate - Stephen Hawking proposed the Chronology Protection Conjecture to avoid the problems that arise if causality violations are allowed. Alternatively, the Novikov Self-Consistency Principle argues that the only worldlines allowed in the real universe are those which are globally self-consistent from all possible reference frames. This would seem to rule out the possiblity of closed timelike curves and the associated causality violations entirely.

And therefore anything like a jump or Alcubierre drive.

A theory I'm particularly fond of is that if time travel were possible, then the timeline would be fundamentally unstable. It would keep shifting, changing an re-changing including changing when, how and by who time travel was invented. Eventually it would inevitably at some point change to a timeline in which time travel is never invented. So even in a universe in which time travel is possible, the only steady state for the timeline is one in which it never actually happens*.

Simon Hibbs

* Edit: The timeline would keep changing and iterating until every attempt to perform time travel was somehow prevented. Since in theory the timeline could change a near-infinite number of times before stabilizing, the accidents, co-incidences and implausible happenstances that prevent time travel ever occurring can in theory be near-infinitely unlikely. For any attempt to actually travel through time there is actually a very high chance that it would be prevented by even the most extremely unlikely series of events. So one way to measure the relative stability of the timeline would be to try to build a time machine a few times and statistically analyze the random, unlikely occurrences that will inevitably prevent it ever being used. But now we're getting into Hitch Hiker's Guide territory.

 

[sideranautae]

Arriving in our universe when it emerges from jump is an action in this universe, as is carrying information from the point of entering jump to the point of exiting it.

Not really as the universe has no way of "knowing". It would be as if a different object appeared from a different universe. You are ascribing a quality to this universe that can't be ascertained at this time nor even tested. Therefore totally unknown and unknowable. Unless you can show testing that this (a N-space checkpoint upon entering the universe from outside) occurs when something emerges from a different universe. There is nothing in our current knowledge of physics that covers this. At all. Unless you are withholding vital research data. :wink:

Similarly, the object reentering would not all of a sudden gain the mass that would have come from traveling through N-space at ultra high velocities as that didn't occur either in our universe...

 

[simonh]

Not really as the universe has no way of "knowing". It would be as if a different object appeared from a different universe. You are ascribing a quality to this universe that can't be ascertained at this time nor even tested. Therefore totally unknown and unknowable. Unless you can show testing that this (a N-space checkpoint upon entering the universe from outside) occurs when something emerges from a different universe. ...

It doesn't matter where the ship went or where it came from, the events of it leaving and arriving would, in some inertial frames, be reversed in order and therefor a signal could be sent from the arrival event back to the point of departure before the departure event occurred. The order of the events is all that matters.

Simon Hibbs

 

[sideranautae]

It doesn't matter where the ship went or where it came from, the events of it leaving and arriving would, in some inertial frames, be reversed in order and therefor a signal could be sent from the arrival event back to the point of departure before the departure event occurred. The order of the events is all that matters.

Simon Hibbs

Nope. It DOES matter as the theory as constructed doesn't include appearing from another universe. As that is NOT testable, it cannot, per the scientific method be included in the theory (and it isn't). See scientific method re testing. I'm not saying this, it is how science is conducted. If you want to redefine scientific methodology and Theory construction, go for it. I can't help ya there. Nor can I argue for or against something that is de facto as arguing makes no difference.

Same reasoning applies to thermodynamics. While you can't create new energy or matter HERE, it doesn't preclude bringing in (and thus having) new energy from outside our universe. You can't create a theory about NOT bringing in new energy if you can't test it. Same thing. Takes a bit to grasp but it is true.

 

[alex_greene]

Right ... so let's get back to the wand waving, shall we?

 

[sideranautae]

Right ... so let's get back to the wand waving, shall we?

Exactly. So, who uses fantasy magic [like psionicists or D&D type wizards] in their Trav campaign?

I for one keep it to just science & sci-fi. No fantasy magic.

 

[alex_greene]

Right ... so let's get back to the wand waving, shall we?

Exactly. So, who uses fantasy magic [like psionicists or D&D type wizards] in their Trav campaign?

I for one keep it to just science & sci-fi. No fantasy magic.

Then the topic of relativistic frames of reference and whether FTL travel violates causality really needs to be in its own thread, where the topic can be given the full attention it deserves.

Don't you think?

 

[sideranautae]

Don't you think?

Sure. So why are you still bringing it up here when we went back to talking about magic and sci-fi as you requested??

To bring the thread back on topic again; So, who uses fantasy magic [like psionicists or D&D type wizards] in their Trav campaign?

I for one keep it to just science & sci-fi. No fantasy magic.

 

[alex_greene]

Larry Niven gave the topic of demon summoning a science fictional twist in "Convergent Series," and Isaac Asimov skirted the edges of the rational with Azazel, a tiny demon who had a habit of taking things literally.

Lyndon Hardy wrote three science fiction books predicated on the idea that magic was run by seven laws, divided into five fields: Thaumaturgy (Laws of Sympathy and Contagion), Alchemy (Doctrine of Signatures), Magic (Maxim of Persistence), Sorcery (Rule of Three) and Wizardry (Law of Ubiquity, Law of Dichotomy). Then there's Piers Anthony's entire Adept series, with the worlds of Proton and Phaze coexisting with a pitifully thin dimensional membrane separating them.

As for putting psionics into science fiction, pretty much every single science fiction author, with few exceptions, has used telepaths, telekinetics or some form of psionic mutations at least once - even if the "telepathy" was bionic / technological in nature, such as John Shirley's "Wolves of The Plateau" and so on.

Blending magic in with science has long been a fascination for the authors of even the hardest science fiction. No matter how much anyone might want to deny it, psionics in science fiction settings are no less an impossibility than sentient bipedal aliens - which, according to current thinking, are highly unlikely to exist; most locally-encountered alien life forms are likely to be non-sentient plant life little more evolved than stromatolites.

So what if some people here don't like the idea of fantasy magic in science fiction? Your hard-sf games are not the Official Traveller Universe and nobody has the right to tell any other player or Referee what games they should be playing, any more than a vegetarian has any right to tell other diners at a restaurant he does not own that they should not be eating meat, just because the idea offends him.

 

[sideranautae]

So what if some people here don't like the idea of fantasy magic in science fiction? Your hard-sf games are not the Official Traveller Universe and nobody has the right to tell any other player of Referee what games they should be playing, any more than a vegetarian has any right to tell other diners at a restaurant he does not own that they should not be eating meat, just because the idea offends him.

No person on this thread is telling others what they should or, should not do in their own games. People are just stating preferences. Time for a nappy

 

[alex_greene]

No person on this thread is telling others what they should or, should not do in their own games. People are just stating preferences.

Then let's make no assumptions that certain specific named people's stated preferences overrule or override other people's stated preferences on this thread, shall we?

Such as the assumption that some person A, who states boldly and aggressively that he personally does not believe in magic therefore nobody should be allowed to talk about magic in Traveller, should have the last say on this topic, on this thread, when there are other people expressing the preference on this thread that we should assume that magic does exist in Traveller in some form, so let's work out the mechanics for it.

In the case of this specific thread, the prevailing assumption is this - that magic exists and can be studied and used, and that it has evolved to fit the Far Future settings of Traveller.

That assumption is the overriding one here, in this specific thread. It is irrelevant if any person on this thread personally does not believe in magic. For the record, I do not believe in magic myself either - there is no magic, only science, in my personal real world experience - and yet I read and enjoy countless hard SF books in which magic features strongly, either as a natural part of the universe's laws or as a corruption of them, an intrusion from some outside universe where the laws of physics seem to break down.

Remind me to run a game of Cthonian Stars with you some time.

 

[sideranautae]

No person on this thread is telling others what they should or, should not do in their own games. People are just stating preferences.

Then let's make no assumptions that certain specific named people's stated preferences overrule or override other people's stated preferences on this thread, shall we?

Correct, YOU shouldn't make such assumptions. Why would you think that? That is just strange.

Well, back (once again) to the topic.

So, who uses fantasy magic [like psionicists or D&D type wizards] in their Trav campaign?

I for one keep it to just science & sci-fi. No fantasy magic.

 

[alex_greene]

You for one have an irrelevant preference. Your preference for magic is set at zero. You've made your point over and over. Once was quite enough.
Now everybody else must be allowed their say.

 

[sideranautae]

You for one have an irrelevant preference.

:lol: :lol: :lol:

Take your meds.

Well, back (once again,again) to the topic.

So, who uses fantasy magic [like psionicists or D&D type wizards] in their Trav campaign?

I for one keep it to just science & sci-fi. No fantasy magic.

 

[Jacqual]

I don't have it in my Trav game but have been considering it, mostly due to the fact I like the MGT task system. I think with a good balance it might very well make a fun game, having a Trav universe with magic in it. I do not know about folks throwing Fireballs around and such. In that matter I could see magic drowning out technology, which I do not want. I might have to order that PDF listed above about magic and give it a read.

 

[Prime_Evil]

I think it depends upon the setting - psionics is fine for the Third Imperium which simulates the "feel" of literary SF from the 1940s - 1960s.

The stories from this period often featured psionics, beginning with Jack Williamson's novels and E E Doc Smith's Lensman series. Certainly John W Campbell Jr was a believer in psionics during the period that he was the most influential editor in the genre (due in part to the influence of L Ron Hubbard BEFORE he founded Scientology...)

Whether psionics or magic are appropriate for other settings really depends upon the assumptions that they are based upon - don't forget that many SF authors often wrote fantasy as well and freely mixed concepts from what we would consider to be two separate genres...

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Fantasy is often set in a medeval setting with swords and arrows, what if we just change the tech level on that? Most characters in a standard Tolkenesque fantasy aren't Wizards, magic is present but not common. What if they just trade in their horses for spaceships, their bows and arrows for laser guns? It doesn't have to be Shadowrun or Dragonstar. You have wizards in spaceships, but the spaceships don't need magic in which to operate, just as a horse and wagon don't.

 

[sideranautae]

Whether psionics or magic are appropriate for other settings really depends upon the assumptions that they are based upon - don't forget that many SF authors often wrote fantasy as well and freely mixed concepts from what we would consider to be two separate genres...

I completely agree. In Trav there are no tech/sci assumptions given for humans (like you and I) to be able to levitate or whatever. It is totally divorced from scientific or tech development. Some setting are different and link to scientific advances and therefore it should be considered sci-fi. Star Wars universe is another where it is pure magic and not tech or science.