alt Hacker NewsIf changing the laws of the universe is fine, then nothing gets excluded even Harry Potter. It’s one of those definitions that allows anything and ultimately only feels fine because you’re adding some other criteria.
In defense of hard science fiction, it’s a meaningful category to talk about even if it’s not something you personally care about. People often want to weaken it but that just opens a door for a new category say “scientific science fiction” and we are back to square one.
Asking questions like what does AGI look like when they can’t just magically solve all issues can be fun. Hand waving the singularly as some religious event can also make interesting stories but so is considering how chaos theory limits what computation can actually achieve.
Replies
Harry Potter isnt typically considered scifi because it doesn't critically examine its own premise and because the rules of the universe are yoked to the needs of the plot.
> If changing the laws of the universe is fine, then nothing gets excluded even Harry Potter
the laws of the universe in Harry Potter are so fickle and ever changing with the plot line that to me, it can only be considered soft. compare with Egan who takes a given cosmology and then works 100% within that world. that's hard.
> If changing the laws of the universe is fine, then nothing gets excluded even Harry Potter.
Greg Egan's law changes are on the level of "I consulted with a bunch of theoretical physics professors and asked them what the implication of tweaking this one fundamental constant would be, then I spent years meticulously crafting a world that takes into account those implications, and I had others physics professors check over my work to make sure it was within the bounds of actuality, and then I wrote a story about characters in this new world."
> Asking questions like what does AGI look like when they can’t just magically solve all issues can be fun.
Greg Egan actually has a great book about this! Permutation City. CPU cycles aren't unlimited, and there are tons of ethical problems being confronted with the entire "simulate a person" thing.