10-06-2016, 02:12 PM
If by 'hard' you mean 'hard science' then that is a fuzzy concept that means different things to different people. We've gone around and around that particular mulberry bush multiple times and have moved various items on the timeline (including genetic advancements) multiple times.
Genetic advancements are particularly tricky both because the field is relatively young and we don't know what hard limits (equivalent to strength of materials or laws of physics) there are for it, except in a general way. So, based on past experience, this seems likely to (again) boil down to one person/group of people saying X thing is implausible (to them) or doesn't fit into their vision of the future (or this particular chunk of the future) with little real world science to back up the assertion. And around the mulberry bush we go again.
If you can field arguments about plausibility based on professional qualifications we may be more inclined to consider them. But I'm not sure what you do out in the RL, so can't say with certainty one way or the other.
I'm not really concerned with contradicting RL events regularly when speaking of something most of a century away. So how do you propose to set a limit there? We have historically tried to keep everything before the 22nd century CE vague, but in the last 5 years or so there has been a great deal of interest among many members (yourself included based on what you say in this post) in the early timeline - and it seems implausible that nothing much happens for 100yrs and then suddenly we see enough tech advances to get us to the pre-Technocalypse level civ in a period with whole century cut out of it.
Finally, there is the point that OA is fiction - so to some degree some events are going to happen because we say they are going to happen. We are willing to try to be plausible whenever possible - but not willing to put ourselves at the mercy of every person who has a different idea of what that means or what is to their taste - that way lies madness:p
Looking at the last several posts, there seems to be a lot of talking in generalities and not so much in the way of specifics - which isn't going to get us anywhere.
Please provide some specific proposals for how you would like us to adjust the timeline and why (note that the why needs to be specific, not just 'I just don't consider thing X to be plausible' with nothing else backing up the assertion).
Todd
Genetic advancements are particularly tricky both because the field is relatively young and we don't know what hard limits (equivalent to strength of materials or laws of physics) there are for it, except in a general way. So, based on past experience, this seems likely to (again) boil down to one person/group of people saying X thing is implausible (to them) or doesn't fit into their vision of the future (or this particular chunk of the future) with little real world science to back up the assertion. And around the mulberry bush we go again.
If you can field arguments about plausibility based on professional qualifications we may be more inclined to consider them. But I'm not sure what you do out in the RL, so can't say with certainty one way or the other.
I'm not really concerned with contradicting RL events regularly when speaking of something most of a century away. So how do you propose to set a limit there? We have historically tried to keep everything before the 22nd century CE vague, but in the last 5 years or so there has been a great deal of interest among many members (yourself included based on what you say in this post) in the early timeline - and it seems implausible that nothing much happens for 100yrs and then suddenly we see enough tech advances to get us to the pre-Technocalypse level civ in a period with whole century cut out of it.
Finally, there is the point that OA is fiction - so to some degree some events are going to happen because we say they are going to happen. We are willing to try to be plausible whenever possible - but not willing to put ourselves at the mercy of every person who has a different idea of what that means or what is to their taste - that way lies madness:p
Looking at the last several posts, there seems to be a lot of talking in generalities and not so much in the way of specifics - which isn't going to get us anywhere.
Please provide some specific proposals for how you would like us to adjust the timeline and why (note that the why needs to be specific, not just 'I just don't consider thing X to be plausible' with nothing else backing up the assertion).
Todd