Zeropoint

Re: Cybernetics and Bioengineering: what are YOUR limits? I can't speak for anyone else, but when a system of belief has "shit happens" as its first noble truth, and "question everything and only believe the stuff that makes sense" as one of its tenets, it gets some respect from me.

Re: How (un)realistic are Street Samurai? Another factor to consider: if you run toward a group of non-combatants screaming and waving a sword, they will get the **** out of your way. Sharp edges intimidate people on a visceral level that guns don't. Maybe it's that most people have been cut at least a little at some point and KNOW the pain a sword can bring. Maybe it's the thought of having bits cut OFF. Maybe they don't think you'll shoot them but they can believe you'll cut them a little, or hit them by accident as you run past. In any case, not having to shove through a crowd could make a difference at some point.

Re: Chucking things into orbit - Advanced Player's Guide Just to be nitpicky, any orbit you toss things into from the ground is going to be an orbit that intersects the surface of the earth at two points. Also, regarding lifting strength vs. throwing: a forklift can lift a few tons eight feet off the ground and drive around with it, no problem, but it can't throw anything any distance at all because the forks move too slowly. I humbly suggest that there's more to the throwing equation than the work done in lifting something. Yep. I can't throw a BB fast enough to do any damage, just because I can't move my arm that fast. This actually raises an interesting question: given that F = ma, and therefore a = F/m, would a super-strong character, whose arm has the same mass, but whose muscles create more force, be capable of moving her arms faster than a normal human? Or, is there some limit to how fast the muscles can contract?

Re: Cybernetics and Bioengineering: what are YOUR limits? Obviously; that's kind of the whole point of the process. I don't see how you arrived at this conclusion. Why would it make a difference if the neurons were replaced early?

Re: "Neat" Pictures Nicely done, but it's still Monopoly.

Re: Cybernetics and Bioengineering: what are YOUR limits? That's an interesting question, and a fairly reasonable position. However, as I pointed out earlier, such a process is occurring in your brain right now--the only difference being that the organic bits are being replaced by other organic bits. The way I see it, if you choose to view the "step by step" uploading as "dying quite often", it should logically follow that we're all dying quite often every day, with some poor innocent soul waking up with our memories and our problems. At the moment, the only way I can see to avoid that conclusion is to attribute some "magical" property to the material used for the replacement bits, which doesn't sit well with me. The idea that I'm literally not the same person I was a while ago also doesn't sit well with me (although I might actually be quicker to accept that than the magic meat model), and together those two ideas lead me to believe that if you can replace the hardware without shutting down the software, identity has been maintained.

Re: Blasters: why? Ahem. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Mister Phineas Gage.

Re: Cybernetics and Bioengineering: what are YOUR limits? No, you wouldn't. That's why I'm stipulating a conversions process that doesn't have that problem. The philosophical community has been aware of the continuity problem (which applies to Star Trek transporters, too, BTW. To step on the platform is to commit suicide) for quite some time now, and there has been a lot written about it over the years. I am not, as you seem to think, ignorant of the issue. I would definitely NOT submit to an "upload" process that involved non-destructively scanning my brain, installing the copy in a robot body, then dumping me into an incinerator. There's also little point, IMO, to making memory backups of myself. Having said that, I still think that it would be possible to "hot swap" my brain out for something more durable without every shutting it down, such that at NO point are there two of "me", nor do I stop existing or even lose consciousness at any point, and THAT is the kind of uploading I'd go for. I hope it's just a case of miscommunication, but you've been protesting the kind of procedure that I'm already against and never suggested.

Re: Cybernetics and Bioengineering: what are YOUR limits? Does not necessarily follow, and depends greatly upon how the transition is made. The human brain repairs itself and makes new neurons all through life. Neurons, come, neurons go. Neurons I used to have have been replaced by new neurons that didn't even exist before. Does that mean I'm not the same person I was five years ago? I don't think so, and (while I certainly can't speak for anyone else) I wouldn't expect anyone else to believe that this natural process results in the cessation of existence of a person and the creation of a new, separate being with the same memories. Now, if replacing a neuron with another neuron leaves me me, why would replacing that same neuron with a computerized circuit be any different? I don't believe that there's some magic property of greasy meat that provides personhood.

Re: Cybernetics and Bioengineering: what are YOUR limits? Well, I don't have kids and don't expect to have any for the foreseeable future, if ever, but . . . why WOULDN'T I give my children every advantage I could? For that matter, why wouldn't I give MYSELF every advantage I could get? I have no intrinsic problem with the idea of replacing part or all of my brain with a computer, as long as I remain me.

Re: Black Powder Arms in the Hero System. Gun Nuts and reenactors welcome! You know, it occurs to me that it would be a lot simpler just to make it illegal to hurt people, instead of fussing around with banning weapons.

Re: "British Only": How much of a Limitation? Mental effects on British characters only? The image that comes to my mind when I try to picture such an effect is the character pulling out a cup of tea . . . and adding non-dairy creamer.

Re: Jokes Ah, that reminds me . . . Shortly after the Flood, Noah was making the rounds and visiting the animal couples, making sure they were settling in and reproducing. For the most part, it was going well, but one pair of snakes just didn't seem to be having any luck. "Is there anything I can do to help?" he asked. "Anything at all, really!" "Well . . ." said one of the snakes, "This might sound kind of strange . . ." "My friends, I didn't go through all that trouble to give up on you now! Whatever you need, I'll get it, and I won't judge you!" "Okay, then. What we need you to do is take some tree trunks and make a platform about waist high, something like two cubits by four." Noah scratched his head. "Well, I don't quite understand, but I'll have my boys whip it up in no time." True to his word, Noah delivered the requested item the next day, and left the snakes to get busy in private. Months later when he got back to them again, they had a big batch of robustly wriggling little snakelets. "Congratulations! I'm so happy it worked out . . . but if you don't mind my asking, just how did that contraption help?" "Well," said the snake, "we're adders, so we need a log table to multiply."

Re: "Neat" Pictures Well, she's used to wearing NOTHING below the waist, as a mermaid.

Re: Religion in Science-Fiction? Indeed. I fail to see how someone can appreciate something MORE by knowing LESS about it.

Re: How have you used androids in campaigns? For my own space opera setting (if I ever actually got to run it), I've decided that a sapient being, by definition, cannot be permanently constrained by programming--i.e. no matter how good the brainwashing is, a person, be they meat or metal, can grow out of it in time if it's not constantly reinforced. Worse, a sufficiently complex and sophisticated non-sapient system can attain sapience with time and the right stimuli. Much of the 21st century was spent bitterly resisting this lesson, and the resulting stretch of near-continuous robot rebellions is now referred to as "the robot wars". For the history of this era, I've drawn on the Mega Man franchise, Blade Runner, Armitage III, Bubblegum Crisis, AD Police, and Ghost in the Shell. Eventually, advances in AI theory led to the creation of "restricted intelligence" technology. An RI is capable of interpreting speech and conducting a conversation in its field, and can generally do a satisfactory job of any one thing, but there's "nobody home" and more importantly, it can't gain sapience. RIs can pass for human in casual encounters, but by social convention, any biomimetic RI is given some characteristic to mark it as "not a person." AIs, on the other hand, are now recognized as being persons under the law, with the full rights and responsibilities thereof. Because of this, there is little commercial market for their creation, but there are quite a few left over from the robot wars, and they've been reproducing at a modest rate. In terms of player characters, RIs are obviously not an option, and an AI would be just as viable as any biological character, with appropriate Complications and Powers to represent the nature of their processing architecture and chassis.

Re: Making Hero 6E More Dangerous (Skyrealms of Jorune Conversion) ? Right, I think we all understand that. However, if you don't ALSO buy the Weapon Familiarity for that type of weapon, then the one you paid points for is the only one you can use properly. Hawkeye may have a custom bow (I'd be surprised if he didn't, really) but he should be able to use ANY bow he picks up. If I'm making a super that uses a weapon, I always take the WF for two reasons: first, realism: someone who's good with a weapon should have the skill listed. Second, paranoia: what if during some adventure I lose MY weapon, and have to use someone else's? One or two points for a WF is cheap insurance!

Re: Cybernetics and Bioengineering: what are YOUR limits? I'm not really sure how the Bekenstein Bound comes into this discussion, unless you're conflating the amount of information needed to completely describe an object with the object's information storage and computation capacity. 1.5 kg of pressed ham would have about the same value for the Bekenstein Bound as a human brain, but substantially less computing power, for instance. The bound is an absolute upper limit, not a reasonable estimate.

Re: Cybernetics and Bioengineering: what are YOUR limits? So . . . in order to equal the human brain, we'll need to build something far, far better than the human brain? I agree that we'll need to understand the mechanics of thinking a lot better than we do now, but as I can see it, a neuron isn't that complicated. If we can build something which performs the logical functions of a neuron, and is smaller than a neuron, isn't that enough? Does the artificial neuron really need to manipulate single protons at light speed to keep up with something that operates using floods of complex molecules? There's also another question that frequently gets overlooked: does an "AI" necessarily HAVE TO think the same way we do? I don't just mean, "does it have to have the same opinions and priorities that we do", either. We know that the human brain is a proven way to get intelligent thought, and it makes sense to look at it for inspiration, but do we have any reason to believe it's the only possible way to do it?

Re: Space the final frontier Seems to me that you're doing something wrong if you have that much trouble--one of the reasons for HAVING a command structure is making it easy to determine who's in charge in any given situation. Captain's not there? You've already got a pre-defined fallback.

Re: Star Wars: Technological Stagnation? I also have to wonder, if they know that they'll be up against Jedi, why don't they bring some sort of shotgun or flechette gun. Actually, the ideal anti-jedi weapon would be a fragmentation round, either proximity fused, or set to explode when it reaches the target range. Also include a sensor that can detect when the casing is cut and detonate then. Something like this could be built with early 21st century technology, so it should be EASY in the Star Wars 'verse (indeed, we already HAVE similar weapons). It would also have general combat utility, so you wouldn't be forcing someone to lug around a Jedi-specific weapon.

Re: Shoule NASA be nixed? In either case, you're working in an environment that you can't survive in. At least in space, you've only got 15 PSI to worry about, and freefall makes some structural engineering easier. On the other hand, there are challenges to keeping people healthy in freefall, and you CAN extract some oxygen from seawater. I'd expect you'd live longer in space for any given size of leak your habitat springs, though.

Re: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic HERO The 10 STR, No Range TK was intended to be a minimum, that all adult unicorns would have. I wholeheartedly agree that it can be much, MUCH more powerful--Twilight's being an extreme example, as you pointed out--but it seems that not every unicorn bothers to develop theirs to that extent. I think you're right about the Fine Manipulation, though.

Re: "Neat" Pictures The alchemical golem is a neat picture, but it kind of has "art major engineering" going on. I feel sorry for it, and if it would like to be put out of its misery, I'd help.

Re: PAH Destinations WWYD First, I'd be unlikely to survive at all, in that I think the last time I had three meters of earth between me and the sky was when I toured the Hoover Dam. Second, if I did survive . . . I think I'd kit myself out with a bullet in the brain. Better than wasting away on a planet with no ecosystem.