The RDA can't do physics

[Human No More]

Originally Posted by Clarke

Yes, she did. She specifically brings up the context: the cliche image it invokes.

Considering it's fiction, there isn't a problem there.

Stereotype invocation again. Go read "White Man's Burden." Or just look up the concept up.

Because any school is automatically bad?
Wow, are you TRYING to troll here? You jump to defending her when your physics trolling proves untenable.

Selfridge is so thin as to be an archetype, and one that has been trodden almost to death in other works.

Archetypes work, and actually, he's far more developed than most.

It's not an exact quote, but she does have the point that "dangerous frontier" is customarily how the West is portrayed in Westerns.

...and it actually wasn't. That's called ignorance.

The actual details aren't relavent; the point is that JC is condensing stereotypes out of basically all the "mystic" images he can lay his hands on.

And that is crap. Obviously details are relevant, and queues are NOT monopolised by any specific group. Read my post again without unquoting the relevant part.
Oh, as for queues being 'mystic' they aren't.

What, complaining that the music fits Earth stereotypes almost perfectly is pathetic? I think it's quite valid.

Considering the fact that it's not a native american instrument, more associated with folk music than anything else in a modern context, then no.
She's probably never heard real native american music. Oh, and drums are ancient and non-specific too.

...Considering it's a note she sent to herself as she was watching the film, it's not as though there was time for historical research.

...and that is why the author is not that intelligent, when they could have done so afterwards. But then again, it's a sense of entitlement.

Contributes to the stereotypes, though.

It's a stereotype that they even do it in the first place, and IIRC, the stereotype is different.
The Na'vi have never had any exposure to hat, so it's not copying anything.

I get the impression that something has gone wrong, coherency wise, when TvTropes has a category of Headscratcher pages for this particular work.

1. They're all answered (by me)
2. Anyone can start one for any page . ANY moderately popular film has one.
3. Most of them are people who do not understand something, and have had it answered.

IB has a similar theme to what she's complaining about, therefore she's forcing it?

No, I mean she's clearly never watched it and has some ridiculous sense of entitlement that even referencing ideas is wrong (while somehow believing native americans had horses prior to being sold them (WTF?!))

Would you like a light? Because that's a pretty impressive stawman you built up.

Yet if you read the aforementioned tvtropes page, you'll see that 50% of its population was composed of such people. I couldn't stereotype them even if I wanted to.

[Human No More]

Originally Posted by Clarke

It is not posisble to do with any conceivable engineering. It is not economical to do, ever.

Bull****.
I've already pointed out the fallacy of that. The amount of energy is impossible today, but such shifts HAVE happened and will never be the last. If you keep restating tired already-rebutted points, I'm going to consider this thread as having finished because it feels like groundhog day in here.

I don't understand. The energy required appears to be a large fraction of wha's generated on Earth, therefore Unobtanium has to be similarly valuable.

It doesn't appear to be anything. We have no idea how much energy is available.

But soft sci-fi is a category all on its own. The category you set your work up in changes the audience's expectations.

And everything works. Everything is possible.

It could be, though, which is what the original point was.

Your original point was that it was.
Also, no, chromosomes can not be transferred neurochemically.

Being unable to see through a charade by a species that they not only have never encountered before, but have nothing to compare to doesn't exactly make them stupid. Without our explanation, (which may not be believed) the Na'vi should have no idea who or what we are, or what we are capable of.

Even if a human had never seen any scifi, and they met a humanoid alien with only minor differences (shorter, skin colour) and demonstrating speech patterns that, while not instantly understandable, were still recognisable as a developed language, they'd have the right idea.

They're still alien and immensely different from the Na'vi. Also, they may not recognise the concept of non-biological machinery without our explanation.

...the exact reason why sending spess mehren robots is a stupid idea.

Well, yes, and the electronic computer itself is half as long as the timespan you're trying to predict. Having no advances would be unbelievable. (Computronium was offered as an alternative in case you objected by saying the RDA reached the epitome of computational power.)

A computer applied purely can't do anything, it wouldn't make unobtainium obsolete. Anyway, this point was originally about onsite manufacturing - using a fictional material to illustrate your point only makes it even less likely that could ever happen.

So the power of 50 Earths will be as cheap as chips then?

At a completely arbitrary cost per kg, yes, especially when we have no idea what the generating capacity is like.

So in those respects, the difference between a robot and human is...? Also, surely it would have been incredibly risky, in case the first human they talk to is a scared Marine.

1. Nonhumanoid vs humanoid. Idiot.
2. It wouldn't be, because they know the Na'vi are there when specifically making contact. That means leaving the idiots on the ship.

As I said, robots != war machines. And how is something like accountbility a problem if the robot is remote-controlled? It's the responsiblity of whoever's controlling the robot.

I thought you didn't want any humans on Pandora
In all seriousness, it makes no sense to when humans can survive there, especially when humans are far more likely to be easily accepted and trusted (after some time, obviously) by being far more similar.

We've had the laser for two decades less than we've had the computer. If we're going to assume that energy productivity goes up by umpteen orders of magnitude, we can equally assume similar growth in other technologies.

Yet again: That does not mean everyone has one. that does not mean it is anything but extremely rare and expensive. It does not mean the marines are going to have cutting edge military hardware for an operation where they are supposed to not be doing damage.
Are you incapable of understanding this point?

So you're saying that excessive force is forbidden by the contracts and thus not allowed... despite the fact that the RDA use excessive force? It also doesn't matter how advaned, relatiely, the Scorpians are compared to "modern" tech; they're clearly war machines, far more so than any mining robot would be.

Take it up with the UN in Avatar, not me.
Anyway, it's very likely the initial number was smaller and they were trying to build up more thanks to people like Quaritch.
Anyway, remember your earlier point about a weapon: It doesn't have to be one to be used that way. They weren't intended for mass attacks, only for things like basic security around hell's gate.

When there's ~140 years of technoological development?

You were talking about the modern day.
Wanting a petawatt power supply in any kind of portable form just belies the true depths of your ignorance of physics.

Because the original point was about how EMP weapons are ineffective in actual combat?

My point was that they actually aren't past your 'faraday cages on everything lol', which belongs on trollscience.com

Did you notice the discussion a few posts ago? Mesh across the windows would work perfectly.

It depends on your frequency range. Also, again, there's no need if there are internal connections to the body.

More so than the Scorpions?

An aircraft which could be built today with only a few refinements necessary, and has been proven to actually be airworthy.

So what's the point of them?

Just about every other aspect of them, such as accuracy, consistency, and maintenance.

And be fairly scary in the context of Iron age and no-technology.

Will you get this into your limited mental capacity?
They are not there to invade. They are not there to scare. They are supposed to be avoiding causing damage.
Again, if you want 'spess mehrens kill everyone', watch something else.

The Scorpian is newer than a laser weapon would be. (Since we're working on them now) This is problematic if you're trying to argue that advanced technology is forbidden.

No, it isn't. Such a design is fully possible now. A laser is not in a practical form. Anyway, it's not done by cutoff year, but by appropriateness, not to mention availability, if any pre-Samson/Scorpion designs were unavailable.

I mean that the cage can be made out of interlocking pieces that electrically connect.

Doesn't work if there's a connection (e.g. electrical) to any of them.

I remember that there is very little explanation is given about why the armed forces are there, apart from to mine unobanium. Would you mind providing some quotes?

I'm sure you haven't read the survival guide.
"Hundreds of orbiting factories on Earth's moon, Mars, and the asteroid belt were in operation just a few decades after it formed"
"THese rights were granted to the RDA in perpetuity by the Interplanetary Commerce Adminstration with the stipulation that they abide by a treaty that prohibits weapons of mass destruction and limits military power in space"

Want me to continue? You're just embarrassing yourself here.

It certainly looks like more from what I remember of the film.

Try watching the film for once!
There are six in the shuttle and six in Quaritch's. There are never more than 4, maybe 5, on screen at once after that scene.
You have clearly not watched Avatar.

Then interact with them as humans as little as possible.

That's already done. Stop restating the obvious.

Because, in practice, Quaritch is actually superior to Selfridge?

Actually, no. Again, watch the film.
It's called Selfridge being a spineless idiot, not him taking an order.

I don't know; how long would that be?

Essentially infinite.

That's not hard, since we know it exists.

Actually, we don't.
It's like if we wanted a material that allowed FTL travel by its existence. that is not enough to create a structure either.

That's with superconducting magnets.

It's still sufficient.

So because humans can do it, with computer modelling, chemical and material engineering, and forward planning skill, it's plausible for random evolution to do it?

Yes.
Could humans plausibly engineer a feature in an entire species?
There are numerous examples of designs taken directly from evolution-directed features, which is even the entire concept of genetic algorithms.

The Meisner effect relies on magnetic pressure, which depends on B-field strength, whhich drops off with r^-3.

Yet it doesn't stop at any particular distance.

[Human No More]

FLT was a writing goof that the writers couldn't have hoped to avoided, whereas the handwave of "this is real science, honest" is relatively easy to get right.

That was exactly my point - FLT was only to illustrate its real age. It makes very few departures, and only the ones necessary to avoid plot-killing elements such as an x year wait between systems.

The ad homenims aren't helping, certainly.

Neither is your continual fallacious reasoning and ignoring my repeated explanations.

Even that one note should have a whole lot of knock-on effects that would almost completely revolutionize society.

Yet it doesn't make everything all suddenly perfect as you seem to believe.

Ther are no power sources external from Earth in reality. Ergo, it comes from Earth?

The sun?
As I said, "however, we don't need to assume so or not so".

I did the same calculation above and got 800MW.

An average modern one (and average not meaning 'the mean of all examples' but a typical recently-installed single example), not the average in-use one, many of which are decades old.
Even if you want to go by decades old examples, that's a 160fold increase.

...Can't it? You can order CPUs by the thousand if you really need something done.

So there are no interdependent theories? Nothing that has a prerequisite in knowledge to be formulated?
Wow

No, I mean you don't need to touch Pandoran biology except for ideas/algorithms. You can build anything you like, presumably, you only need to know what you want to build. (this should be quite easy.)

Ah, no.
Genetic engineering is not just 'copy A to B'.
LEGO Genetics - Television Tropes & Idioms
"Remember, genes are not blueprints. This means you can't, for example, insert "the genes for an elephant's trunk" into a giraffe and get a giraffe with a trunk. There are no genes for trunks. What you can do with genes is chemistry, since DNA codes for chemicals."

I think the difference between humanoid robots and actual humans would be comparatively smaller than the "Arrgh, aliens!" reaction.

Until this post you SPECIFICALLY said nonhumanoids.
Stop moving the goalposts again.

You have weapons in case you need to use them, and so when you need to use them, you want to be able to get the effect you need.

That's a tautology in absence of a point. All it does it makes you look stupid.

So the complete lack of mention of this is because...?

Because it's 3 hours long already? Because it's extraneous to most people's interest? Because it will take ~ 6 years for that to even start?

I'll let the soldiers know you skimped out on their safety, then.

People do that at this very moment. they're paid to do a job, not fight a completely safe invasion with ridiculous spess mehren lazors.

...Earth's power? I don't know what you mean.

You said Earth has too much energy, I pointed out that the energy source for the ISV's fuel is never specified so could be any as required or practical.

[Icu]

This has gone off the deep end.

[ahoragi]

Originally Posted by EywaBlessMe

Really? You mean there is no way that a sci-fi pic has the facts right, and blows logic? Wow, I suppose next you'll tell me that no Terminator came back in time to kill John Conner and there is no guy in Gotham in tight black leather calling himself "batman" and fighting crime.

A terminator did come back in time to try to kill John. I saw it with my very own eyes.......on tv.

[Moco Loco]

These posts need to somehow be consolidated.

[Clarke]

Or split off. I'll get to the actual physics discussion tommorow.

[Tsyal Makto]

This ****'s getting ridiculous. It's a goddamn movie, can you both just pack it in already FFS?

[Clarke]

Originally Posted by Tsyal Makto

This ****'s getting ridiculous. It's a goddamn movie, can you both just pack it in already FFS?

Originally Posted by Icu

This has gone off the deep end.

Guys, nobody's forcing you to read the thread.

[Clarke]

Originally Posted by Human No More

Bull****.
I've already pointed out the fallacy of that. The amount of energy is impossible today, but such shifts HAVE happened and will never be the last. If you keep restating tired already-rebutted points, I'm going to consider this thread as having finished because it feels like groundhog day in here.

We're still talking about ion engines, right? Because the best part of 1 (edit: ) 100 grams of fuel per atom of payload is pretty unworkable no matter how much technology you have. For one thing, your fuel eventually tries to form its own planetary body.

We have no idea how much energy is available.

If we want to be excessively realistic about this, food isn't an issue if you have such huge quantities of energy avaliable. Hydroponics aren't used ATM because it's cheaper to actually farm things. That's not true when you have so many exawatts avaliable for cheap.

And everything works. Everything is possible.

Sort of. The plot doesn't follow from the world completely.

Your original point was that it was.
Also, no, chromosomes can not be transferred neurochemically.

I think I know what I originally meant to say. And if you mean in general, then there's no reason they couldn't be transmitted electrically. A cell is basically a Von Neumann universal constructor, after all.

Even if a human had never seen any scifi, and they met a humanoid alien with only minor differences (shorter, skin colour) and demonstrating speech patterns that, while not instantly understandable, were still recognisable as a developed language, they'd have the right idea.

There is no Na'vi H.G. Wells. They aren't shown to have any concept of astronomy. How could they possibly arrive at anything approximating the right idea?

...the exact reason why sending spess mehren robots is a stupid idea.

See earlier. Non-Pandoran "creatures" are probably going to confuse them equally, regardless of whether they're humanoid or not.

A computer applied purely can't do anything, it wouldn't make unobtainium obsolete.

Some sci-fi authors have suggested that sufficiently powerful computers could be used to launch attacks against reality itself.

Anyway, this point was originally about onsite manufacturing - using a fictional material to illustrate your point only makes it even less likely that could ever happen.

Computronium is only "fictional" to the extent we don't know what it is ATM. Thre has to be some configuration of matter for optimum processing power.

At a completely arbitrary cost per kg, yes, especially when we have no idea what the generating capacity is like.

Well, we do have a floor for how cheap it is: 2.20GJ/cent. (49kgc^2/$20m)

1. Nonhumanoid vs humanoid. Idiot.

Allegedly, some of the Mexican peoples confused Cortez's men with centaurs, to the point where they were ordered to sleep and eat on their horses to not spoil the facade. I don't know how true that actually is, but it's a lot more understandable when there are actual aliens involved.

2. It wouldn't be, because they know the Na'vi are there when specifically making contact. That means leaving the idiots on the ship.

I thought this was in the case you randomly came across a Na'vi? If you're speciifically meeting them, you use an Avatar.

I thought you didn't want any humans on Pandora

I don't, but I don't know enough to jury-rig the FTL to do that.

In all seriousness, it makes no sense to when humans can survive there, especially when humans are far more likely to be easily accepted and trusted (after some time, obviously) by being far more similar.

Humans can't survive there unprotected.

Yet again: That does not mean everyone has one. that does not mean it is anything but extremely rare and expensive. It does not mean the marines are going to have cutting edge military hardware for an operation where they are supposed to not be doing damage.
Are you incapable of understanding this point?

They have Scorpians, which you mentioned earlier were penultimate generation hardware. Since energy weapons are part of RL research, that'd seem to imply laser guns are older than Scorpians, therefore almost certainly more avaliable. Also, you don't need the latest and greatest laser weapons, just usable ones.

Take it up with the UN in Avatar, not me.
Anyway, it's very likely the initial number was smaller and they were trying to build up more thanks to people like Quaritch.
Anyway, remember your earlier point about a weapon: It doesn't have to be one to be used that way. They weren't intended for mass attacks, only for things like basic security around hell's gate.

If it isn't supposed to be used that way, why not use a civilian helicopter instead? Or take out the anti-tank rockets? It seems somewhat excessive when your "basic security" can take down a tree 300m tall.

You were talking about the modern day.
Wanting a petawatt power supply in any kind of portable form just belies the true depths of your ignorance of physics.

Except I know enough physics to take advantage of the loophole in the definition of power. If you can deliver 1J fast enough, the power output will technically be measured in pe****ts. (Though you will never need 1PW except for silly physics experiments. 1GW will do fine as a weapon.)

Also, boom.

My point was that they actually aren't past your 'faraday cages on everything lol', which belongs on trollscience.com

Not sure what you mean. Did you mean that EMP weapons are effective?

It depends on your frequency range. Also, again, there's no need if there are internal connections to the body.

Avoiding connections to the othermost layer of the body seems fairly easy to integrate into the design. (And if you have to, you can put in air/optics gaps if it's important, or just let it fry if it isn't.)

An aircraft which could be built today with only a few refinements necessary, and has been proven to actually be airworthy.

...Really? I have absolutely no idea how you could know that.

Just about every other aspect of them, such as accuracy, consistency, and maintenance.

I don't really understand how they'd be more accurate, and consistency depends on the engineering involved. Though for all I know, electromagnets are easier to make precisly than explosive mixtures. Arguably, they're less maintanable, since as you mentioned earlier, normal guns are manufacturable in any metalworking shop. Electromagnets are harder.

Will you get this into your limited mental capacity?
They are not there to invade. They are not there to scare. They are supposed to be avoiding causing damage.
Again, if you want 'spess mehrens kill everyone', watch something else.

They are there to defend the mining... things. Intimidating the Na'vi does that. They don't need to fire a shot at the Na'vi.

No, it isn't. Such a design is fully possible now. A laser is not in a practical form. Anyway, it's not done by cutoff year, but by appropriateness, not to mention availability, if any pre-Samson/Scorpion designs were unavailable.

A laser is just as appropriate as a gun, and the earlier models will be easier to get than modern firearms. (Why would less advanced models be harder to make?)

Doesn't work if there's a connection (e.g. electrical) to any of them.

So make sure the cage is electrically insulated from everything inside the craft?

I'm sure you haven't read the survival guide.
"Hundreds of orbiting factories on Earth's moon, Mars, and the asteroid belt were in operation just a few decades after it formed"
"THese rights were granted to the RDA in perpetuity by the Interplanetary Commerce Adminstration with the stipulation that they abide by a treaty that prohibits weapons of mass destruction and limits military power in space"

Well, no, I've seen the film. It's not really a good idea to hide background-critical detail in the manual.

Try watching the film for once!
There are six in the shuttle and six in Quaritch's. There are never more than 4, maybe 5, on screen at once after that scene.
You have clearly not watched Avatar.

As I said, I did, close to a year ago now. I don't remember the number of mechs precisly.

Actually, no. Again, watch the film.
It's called Selfridge being a spineless idiot, not him taking an order.

They're not exactly distinguishable. The end result is that Selfridge does as Quaritch says, paper chain of command be damned.

Essentially infinite.

Well, since the concept of superconductivity has been around less than 100 years, I think it's far faster than that.

Actually, we don't.

...Yes, we (they) do? They have evidence of a superconducting substance on Pandora, ergo it exists?

It's still sufficient.

What, to make an arbtararily-sized fusion reactor? Engineering doesn't work that way.

Yes.
Could humans plausibly engineer a feature in an entire species?
There are numerous examples of designs taken directly from evolution-directed features, which is even the entire concept of genetic algorithms.

...Yes? I mean, if you give us 140 years of biology research, we'll definitely get somewhere. And that was my point originally: you don't implant alien organisms wholesale, you just steal the interesting bits you find and integrate them into your own custom-made oraganisms.

[Clarke]

Yet it doesn't stop at any particular distance.

It gets steadily weaker until it's negligible compared to weight, atmospheric pressure, etc.

Originally Posted by Human No More

That was exactly my point - FLT was only to illustrate its real age. It makes very few departures, and only the ones necessary to avoid plot-killing elements such as an x year wait between systems.

But that's because Star Trek is almost as soft as you can get, and isn't supposed to be at all rigirous. If "bounce a graviton particle beam off the main deflector dish" (NSFW language) level of science was Cameron's aim, then he didn't establish it very well. I'm sure you'll agree it wasn't, and because of that, he has to play by real physics unless he puts up an explicit sign post that says, "Technobable."

Yet it doesn't make everything all suddenly perfect as you seem to believe.

It makes it closer.

The sun?
As I said, "however, we don't need to assume so or not so".

Derp. I meant significant power sources. (Large solar collectors make a conspicious non-appearance in the film.)

An average modern one (and average not meaning 'the mean of all examples' but a typical recently-installed single example), not the average in-use one, many of which are decades old.
Even if you want to go by decades old examples, that's a 160fold increase.

M'kay. 13,505 / 160 = 85 to the nearest integer. OK, so we've moved down from "fraction of planet" to "small country."

So there are no interdependent theories? Nothing that has a prerequisite in knowledge to be formulated?
Wow

...More dakka.

Ah, no.
Genetic engineering is not just 'copy A to B'.
LEGO Genetics - Television Tropes & Idioms
"Remember, genes are not blueprints. This means you can't, for example, insert "the genes for an elephant's trunk" into a giraffe and get a giraffe with a trunk. There are no genes for trunks. What you can do with genes is chemistry, since DNA codes for chemicals."

Did I say it was? I said you copy algorithms and solutions, not individual bases.

That's a tautology in absence of a point. All it does it makes you look stupid

Apologies for dropping the inference: Therefore you want the most versatile weapon avaliable.

Because it's 3 hours long already? Because it's extraneous to most people's interest? Because it will take ~ 6 years for that to even start?

It is fairly plot-relavent what happens to the main anatagonist.

People do that at this very moment. they're paid to do a job, not fight a completely safe invasion with ridiculous spess mehren lazors.

What, delibrately skimping out on peoples' safety when they could easily fix it?

You said Earth has too much energy, I pointed out that the energy source for the ISV's fuel is never specified so could be any as required or practical.

Except if it was significantly more powerful than fusion, Earth would use that instead.

[tm20]

boys have a penis and girls have a vagina

[Tsyal Makto]

Sorry, I had to. Been looking for a place to plug this other than the hilarious videos thread for a while. I just...had to.

[Advent]

Originally Posted by tm20

boys have a penis and girls have a vagina

That ain't physics, that's physiology.

[Helicoradian]

Originally Posted by Advent

That ain't physics, that's physiology.

Although those parts of the human body really have nothing to do with this thread, they do have mass. So yeah...physics