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On Sun, 10/25/15, Kurt Feltenberger <xxxxxx@thepaw.org> wrote:

 Subject: Re: [TML] High Guard missile bay launch
 To: xxxxxx@simplelists.com
 Date: Sunday, October 25, 2015, 4:59 PM

 On 10/25/2015 7:38 PM,
 Robert wrote:
 > Kurt Feltenberger
 wrote:
 >> I like the sci-fi aspect
 where things we don't know today, or
 >> don't even conceive of today, are
 possible tomorrow using concepts that
 >> to us are what a 747 or SSN would be
 to someone from 1000AD.
 >
 > I get tired of this variation of the
 argument from ignorance.
 >
 > Pi doesn't stop being pi in the Far
 Future.
 > Gold will still have an atomic
 number of 79.
 > Light will always be a
 particle and a wave.
 > Etc.
 >
 > Knowledge is
 additive.
 > What we know now doesn't
 go away because it's the day after tomorrow.
 > Its importance will change.
 >
 > Technology will
 change. But it will have limits and will be internally
 > consistent.
 >
 > I don't mind 'magic'
 technology either. Thought needs to be put into
 > it, though, to prevent stupid
 consequences.
 >
 >
 "Guns made of marshmallows and candy sprinkles with
 infinite
 > ammunition capacity"
 give me the shits.
 > They do nothing for
 my 'sensawunda' and really detract from my
 > enjoyment of a game or story.
 >
 > Just another
 gamer's thoughts.

 Ignorance, Robert?  I never said constants
 would change, just that
 applying what we
 know today and saying that something can't work because

 science as we know it today can't make
 it happen is the problem.  We
 just
 don't know what we don't know.

 What we *knew* was possible even in 1850 would
 generally state that the
 technology we have
 today is impossible, that it would be magic, and yet
 as time progressed our efficiency and knowledge
 improved.

 We're all
 entitled to our opinions, but let's leave the
 intentional
 absurdity and insults out of
 it.

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I'm on Kurt's side here;

Remember that once-upon-a-time Newton's Laws were believed to apply to velocities ad infinitum, but now?
Well things have changed a whole lot in just a few hundred years.

I believe that further changes in the next 10,000 will be quite literally inconceivable.

ObTrav; hence the 'culture-shock' that occurs when minor races are first contacted.
All of a sudden the geniuses seem to turn into know-nothings. But it's not their intelligence that's in question. They're just ignorant of all that knowledge that has suddenly manifested itself literally 'out-of-the-blue'.
Not to mention the underlying principles behind it.

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