Do you think paranormal activity (that can't be explained by science) still goes on in Star Trek?

Science cannot currently explain everything, thus we currently have insufficient science.

 

Once we get an accurate time viewer, we'll be able to investigate non-repeatable events like that ghost you saw on Thursday or the Mothman sightings or any number of alien abductions or who Charlie Chaplin's daughter's father really was.

 

Won't we always have insufficient science? Will there always be something more to learn? Something new to discover?

Plus, the OP specified Star Trek. Until this season of DISCO, that limited us to 23rd and 24th centuries. Did they learn everything there was to learn by then? Now we are 1,000 years later. Has science learned all there is left to learn in that 1,000 years? Is there nothing left that is not unknown?

 

There are several ways of interpreting "Science can't explain everything." If you interpret it to mean that science will never get around to explaining everything because the universe is infinite and there will always be new questions to answer once you're done answering the current ones, then that's entirely true. But I think what proponents of supernatural belief mean by it is "There are certain specific categories of thing that science will forever be incapable of explaining no matter how hard it tries" -- which is a meaningless assertion, because you can't prove a negative. Or else they mean "Science can't explain everything because it refuses to consider anything beyond what it already accepts" -- which is a profound, fundamental misconception of what science is and how it operates.

 

Also 22nd...

 

Or more simply, what they mean is, "Magic exists." Which is of course nonsense.

 

That's a distinct premise, though. There are fantasy universes where magic exists and is studied as a science, or where it functions as an integral facet of physics, e.g. Diane Duane's Young Wizards series. Then there's the Doctor Who approach that "Magic is just science we don't understand yet." So saying that magic exists is not automatically the same thing as saying that it's forever beyond science.

 

One of the more popular approaches to "Magic Exists" is the Potterverse model, where there are those that study it as a science, but most magic users tend to end their magic education with 'this is what works, I don't need to know why'. The fact that it works tends to move the story/ies forward in ways that a more comprehensive explanation of how and why can't.

 

Understood. But the storytelling can be interesting. How the double-slit “knows” it is being watched means the universe is less mechanistic than some imagine.

A physics engine in a game isn’t physics. We all talk about speed of plot. Magic means replacing physics with plot? Still rules of course, and there may be a rational explanation for most all things

 

That is hardly an example of something that "can't" be explained by physics -- just a mystery we're still working on. There are several theoretical explanations for that already, including the Many-Worlds interpretation and the transactional model involving information coming back from the future. It's just a question of continuing to experiment and come closer to an answer, and we've been doing that for decades with this particular problem. The general public has a completely warped, false perception of quantum physics as an oogy-boogy unknowable mystery. Bull. We use quantum phenomena in our technology every day -- they're the basis of transistors, LEDs, even fluorescent lights. Yes, there are outstanding questions that are still under investigation, but that's the normal way science operates, hardly a failure of science.

Indeed, quantum theory is extremely deterministic. It basically says that every event that ever happened or ever will happen anywhere in the universe (or multiverse) is already encoded in the Schroedinger wave equation of the universe. The only reason things are mysterious to us is because we'll never have complete, comprehensive information about everything in the universe, so there will always be a degree of uncertainty in our predictions. But even that uncertainty can be codified, explained, and understood.

 

Except that the people who think magic is real do usually mean that it is a supernatural phenomenon forever beyond the ability of science to comprehend.

 

Which is merely an extension of what I already said. My statement was "I think what proponents of supernatural belief mean by it is..." etc. So the fact that they believe in magic was already specified. All you did was rephrase it.

 

I don't know if it still is or not, but back in the '90s this was much of the basis for what was called 'Chaos Theory', the idea that beneath every complex, ordered system was a chaotic wave that limited the ability of the system to exist past certain limitations, yet at the same time beneath every chaotic system was a natural order that prevented the chaotic system from breaking down into entropy.

 

I should clarify, though, that when I say quantum theory is "deterministic," I mean in a probabilistic sense, i.e. that the probability of any event is fully defined if you have complete information, rather than its actual outcome. So there's still room for uncertainty. But the point is that quantum physics is a mathematically rigorous science, not the woo-woo mystical thing that it's often perceived as.

 

The woo woo can be fun to play with in fiction, though.

I actually liked Chronicles better than Pitch Black, for instance (boo hiss, I know). It had that pulp feel along with Sky Captain.

Over at the Stormtrack.org board. I learned that they are looking to remake “Twister.”

Now, I have no problem with this being a severe weather nut—but I think it needs to go in a different direction.

I might set it in 2025...a full century after tri-state, a tornado that followed a slight rise.

To me, this could be a de facto sequel to Dunwich Horror.

Beyond Global Climate change, something fell would be afoot.

An impossible triple anvil layer...a satellite passing overhead is lost...

The citizens of a small town might all be staring at the sky when the DOW truck shows up to punch through the bears cage, as it were. Odd noises come from the clouds.

Gustav Klimt’s EXPECTATION come to life.

In the wake of the storm, impossible damage...madness.

The researchers try shaking the people to no avail. Odd things fall from the sky, changed. Shapes move behind the veil of rain moving curtain like...forwards.

The rain parts, the researchers scream, and lift straight up like something from “ The Forgotten.”

That kind of thing...

Ironically, the 2011 Tuscaloosa tornado did have tentacle like horizontal vortices. I’d have the Necronomicon improve on that.

 

I'm fine with that. I've got nothing against fictional universes where the supernatural exists. I just wish so many of them wouldn't misrepresent and insult science by claiming it's some closed-minded, fixed body of assumptions that refuses to expand to encompass paranormal realities. That's just not what science is. In a universe where mystical phenomena were real and part of its workings, science would expand to encompass and codify them, just as it's always expanded to encompass new, previously unknown realities like relativity and quantum physics.

This is one thing I like about Ghostbusters. It's a universe where ghosts and psychic phenomena are real, and where scientists are able to understand them, codify them, and develop technologies to deal with them. In the movie's world, there's no divide or contradiction between the scientific and the paranormal; they're both parts of the same inseparable continuum. That's how it would logically work. If something is part of the universe, then it's part of the same laws that govern everything else in that universe, and therefore it's susceptible to science.

Nothing wrong with pulp in principle, but I found it incongruous that the sequel was in a completely different genre of sci-fi than the original. Although even if Chronicles had been a standalone movie, I still would've found it too much of a rehash of stock space-opera tropes and a muddled, cluttered, overdesigned exercise in superficial and poorly defined worldbuilding.

 

I had no idea about Pitch Black before seeing an ad for Chronicles. And, largely, I still don't care. Chronicles of Riddick is one of those guilty pleasures that I love. The world is intriguing, largely because it feels very open. Not everything is well defined because our protagonist doesn't care. His interests are purely self-serving, and it's through that journey, cliché as it is, that he becomes a little less of a self-serving ass.

People like it and that's fine but I'll take it over Pitch Black.

 

That's exactly what I would expect a ghost inhabiting a human host to say.

 

If you believe in an afterlife, isn't that what we all are anyway?

 

I meant someone else's ghost possessing a body.