What tropes in science fiction annoy you?

[USS Firefly]

Fascinating. I'm going to need to watch these more than once. I must admit that the idea I couldn't have done things any other way than I did is actually rather comforting and freeing. It doesn't mean I can't learn and grow; indeed, the fact I have previously done so means I will probably do so again. I think. Deep stuff, man. The biggest questions both leave me with are 1) where do our wants come from? and 2) how do we decide between competing wants of equal strength?

I'm not entirely convinced though. Mostly, I feel like this:

Much like the old "nature vs nurture", I think the answer is actually "both/and" instead of "either/or". But I haven't done enough Deep Thinking recently to discuss it cogently right now.

This is from "Epiphany" in season 2 of Angel. It's been very important to how I think about these things:

Angel: In the greater scheme, in the big picture, nothing we do matters. There's no grand plan, no big win.
Kate: You seem kind of chipper about that.
Angel: Well ... I guess I kind of worked it out. If there's no great glorious end to all this, if ... nothing we do matters ... then all that matters is what we do. 'Cause that's all there is. What we do. Now. Today. I fought for so long for redemption, for a reward, finally, just to beat the other guy. But I never got it.
Kate: Now you do?
Angel: Not all of it. All I want to do is help. I want to help because I don't think people should suffer as they do, because if there's no bigger meaning, then the smallest act of kindness is the greatest thing in the world.


I love that! In my first year of college, I took an Intro to Philosophy class with my then-boyfriend. I managed to *almost* convince him he didn't exist.

@Unicron - should we create a philosophy thread or would that be just one more place to argue around here?

Angel has a lot of good quotes in the show

 

[Commander Troi]

1) I believe that's mainly down to the thalamus within the limbic system of the brain. Here's one description. I'm not sure how accurate it is. It's not my field at all. It's an extract from Mapping The Mind by Rita Carter. The synopsis is "Modern brain scans reveal our thoughts, memories, and moods, as clearly as an X-ray reveals our bones. A person's brain will light up on a scan as it registers a joke. This book examines how these findings can be used as a basis to explain aspects of human culture and behaviour."
2) Sometimes we can't, sometimes we go with our gut, often we get it wrong and screw up. I assume there is a mechanism in the brain that allows us to break the deadlock between contradictory impulses from neural circuits. Neural networks usually work on the most active pathway winning.

Also, people are capable of change. We do it by changing what we want more, i.e. I used to want to sit and eat; now I want to be healthy as I get older more than I want that. Yes, underlying wants determine our actions, but I think we can choose our wants, it just takes a lot of work.

^ Reminds me of this classic scene from Galaxy Quest…
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QqVqxWU-Itg

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Cheers,
-CM-

That was on last night! Such a perfect movie.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Yeah, we set goals to achieve objectives - in early life it comes down to survival and increasing the chance of reproduction to pass on one's genetic material. Later on, it's about protecting and nurturing progeny and family that share your genes. There are other goals of course, but these are perhaps the main ones programmed into us. That's all a gross simplification. Those of us without children have to find other distractions, for example adopting children for some, typing nonsense on a BB for others.

 

[oldtrekkie]

Yeah, we set goals to achieve objectives - in early life it comes down to survival and increasing the chance of reproduction to pass on one's genetic material. Later on, it's about protecting and nurturing progeny and family that share your genes. There are other goals of course, but these are perhaps the main ones programmed into us. That's all a gross simplification. Those of us without children have to find other distractions, for example adopting children for some, typing nonsense on a BB for others.

You know in ants only one in tens of thousands of individuals reproduce. Yet the others not only fulfill an important role but they are essential for the survival of the species.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

You know in ants only one in tens of thousands of individuals reproduce. Yet the others not only fulfill an important role but they are essential for the survival of the species.

Yeah, or more the survival of the "selfish" gene, which is, of course, only a label that we anthropomorphically apply to something that has no motive.

 

[oldtrekkie]

Yeah, or more the survival of the "selfish" gene, which is, of course, only a label that we anthropomorphically apply to something that has no motive.

I know it's a book by Dawkins. I haven't read it yet, though.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

I wouldn't say that it per se annoys me, but "people more like ants" is a trope that's pretty much played out at this point.

 

[oldtrekkie]

I wouldn't say that it per se annoys me, but "people more like ants" is a trope that's pretty much played out at this point.

I don't remember it in fiction.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

I know it's a book by Dawkins. I haven't read it yet, though.

I've read "The Selfish Gene", "The Blind Watchmaker", and "Climbing Mount Improbable" - those are worth reading. I borrowed "The God Delusion" to read but gave up as I didn't learn anything new and it became somewhat wearisome when I realised I didn't need persuading about the strength of his thesis in the first place. I haven't read "The Extended Phenotype" and I probably should.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

I don't remember it in fiction.

It was done literally in Phase IV.

More often it's done figuratively, for example by comparing people to insects, but also anytime a "hive"-like society is posited, with division of labor into drones and queen. The Borg, for example, would qualify on that account.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Oooh I have one. Magic is real but hey you're not allowed to do magic outside in the world but hey we have a special university you can go to that is in another dimension separated from the rest of the world and we will teach you magic there, and you can even take over the world or try if you wish all we do is provide the tools (magic) and teach you how to use those tools. Oh and we steal our electricity from the outside world and you can use laptops and cellphones there too but don't mind that magic.

In this setting why hasn't anyone left this university and done that, tried to take over the world with the power of actual real magic or become very famous, rich or powerful, instead they stay in the background. Fucking idiots. Oh and magic is done by aliens, don't ask me why this exists in this setting but apparently magical beings are aliens as there's other worlds out there in the multiverse and that's the setting for our show........ Well that was The Magicians, hated season 1, absolutely HATED IT. Season 2 seems a bit more fun, but the setting is super silly in parts.

 

[Enterprise1701]

Some scientific quibbles recently on my mind:

Arriving at a new planet always has the northern hemisphere on top even though there is no up and down in space

Ascending and descending through an Earth-sized atmosphere happens too quickly without any acknowledgement of friction

An Earth-type planet's star looks yellow even from space

Planets are mono-environments like Tattooine or Hoth with no regard to how climate should change with latitude

Any species can enter a new planet's biological environment without immunization against local microbes

Universal translators can handle information which has never been encountered before

Humans were created from scratch by aliens in spite of the fossil record showing evolution

Alleged scientists are too dumb to use scanners or remote-controlled drones to investigate anything for potential booby traps or hazardous substances

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Some scientific quibbles recently on my mind:

Arriving at a new planet always has the northern hemisphere on top even though there is no up and down in space

Ascending and descending through an Earth-sized atmosphere happens too quickly without any acknowledgement of friction

An Earth-type planet's star looks yellow even from space

Planets are mono-environments like Tattooine or Hoth with no regard to how climate should change with latitude

Any species can enter a new planet's biological environment without immunization against local microbes

Universal translators can handle information which has never been encountered before

Humans were created from scratch by aliens in spite of the fossil record showing evolution

Alleged scientists are too dumb to use scanners or remote-controlled drones to investigate anything for potential booby traps or hazardous substances

I have seen examples of all of those in almost every movie or TV show I have ever watched. That last one though sticks out like a real sore thumb to me and you'd think people with the ability to do space travel at the drop of a hat would invest in surveillance drones for testing and environment to check out a planet before landing? Nah that's not how we do it we just land and hope we can breathe. 99% of the time any planet you land on can support human life....

One more.

Every solar system you encounter has Earth type planets in the right orbit to sustain life. Every single one.

BTW may I steal your post?

 

[JD]

Stargate Sg-1 actually did have their rover thing they often sent through to new planets first, but that's only show or movie I can think of where they actually used something like that.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Stargate Sg-1 actually did have their rover thing they often sent through to new planets first, but that's only show or movie I can think of where they actually used something like that.

Yes about the only show that ever bothered to do that. The machine is called a MALP

 

[theenglish]

Stargate Sg-1 actually did have their rover thing they often sent through to new planets first, but that's only show or movie I can think of where they actually used something like that.

Star Trek used scanners to evaluate a planet's environment first. Enterprise had a decontamination chamber for away teams and the transportation acted as a filter to remove any contaminants from an organism before it rematerialized.

 

[dupersuper]

Some scientific quibbles recently on my mind:

Arriving at a new planet always has the northern hemisphere on top

How do you know?

 

[Enterprise1701]

How do you know?

Because when there are rings, the rings also have to be evenly aligned with a horizontal axis according to the crew's eyes, not at all like how Uranus's rings in real life when traveling along a plane from Earth.

 

[LaxScrutiny]

Because when there are rings, the rings also have to be evenly aligned with a horizontal axis according to the crew's eyes, not at all like how Uranus's rings in real life when traveling along a plane from Earth.

Our solar system is a ring; the planets, asteroid belt, and afaik the comets all circle the sun along the same plane. The "northern hemisphere," as we think of it, is the arctic (the only way to tell visually.) Northern and Southern ice caps are the areas that don't receive the strongest level of sunlight, so they're usually lined up that way.

The ships' approach doesn't have to be along this plane, but I would think generally they would, so they intercept a planet along it's solar orbit, and orbit the planet in line with it's rotation. Why? It saves fuel if the planet is coming toward you, and a synchronous orbit keeps the ship above the landing party.

I don't see it as a trope, or particularly remarkable, much less annoying.

BTW your Uranus example is the exception, not the rule. The current theory is that it was knocked askew by a collision of some kind. The rings, its rotation, and magnetic field are all offset compared to our other planets.

 

[Jedi Marso]

Some scientific quibbles recently on my mind:

Arriving at a new planet always has the northern hemisphere on top even though there is no up and down in space

I always figured there would be a standard convention for that. The ecliptic planes of various systems will be different compared to the ecliptic plane of the galaxy- perhaps 'north' and 'south' are defined by looking at the planet from the angle that gives it a counter-clockwise orbit around its sun. Natives would have entirely different nomenclatures for direction, so a universal translator would simply choose which one translates to 'north' based on that criteria. Or something like that.

Ascending and descending through an Earth-sized atmosphere happens too quickly without any acknowledgement of friction

Re-entry heat only matters on ballistic trajectories where said friction cannot be avoided. If you have a gravity drive, you can hover over any point of the surface and simply descend as slowly as you need to straight into the atmosphere to prevent things from heating up- sort of like how we see the JJ-Trek Enterprise rise out of the ocean of that planet and leisurely cruise away- you don't need 'escape velocity' if you can control gravity fields.

An Earth-type planet's star looks yellow even from space

That'll depend on the star type and the atmospheric makeup of the planet, but you're right, it is a bit of a trope.

Planets are mono-environments like Tattooine or Hoth with no regard to how climate should change with latitude

Any species can enter a new planet's biological environment without immunization against local microbes

Universal translators can handle information which has never been encountered before

Humans were created from scratch by aliens in spite of the fossil record showing evolution

Alleged scientists are too dumb to use scanners or remote-controlled drones to investigate anything for potential booby traps or hazardous substances

Agreed on ALL of these.