[004]
Robrecht
Current Version
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The two most significant problems I\\\'ve always had with \\\'Science Fiction Hardness\\\' seem to have reared their heads both on this discussion page and in the general treatment of the article as a whole:
1. The fact that people treat it as a scoring system.
Even though this has been mentioned a few times already, scoring higher for hardness does not affect the quality of a work. The problem there lies with both fans of \\\'hard\\\' science fiction and public perception in general making it sound like a \\\'harder\\\' work is inherently superior to a \\\'softer\\\' work. And when fans of those works encounter that attitude, their direct response is to proclaim the ways the work they like is harder than proposed for some reason they will then explain, with varying degrees of success.
This even results in a bit of unadulterated stupid (I have no kinder word to give to it) where the second paragraph is basically written from the pro-hard perspective of \\\"Hard is better because it (supposedly) takes more effort to write.\\\" while the page text ends on the note of \\\"We don\\\'t take an opinion on whether or not harder or softer is better.\\\" Apparently, we do. We very specifically did a couple paragraphs back when we stated that \\\'Hard\\\' science-fiction usually shows it\\\'s work. (And the dumb thing is that it usually doesn\\\'t. Most \\\'Hard\\\' Sci-Fi specifically written with the intent to be \\\'hard\\\', especially online, is dreadfully formulaic tripe that replicates the scientific interpretations of whatever much better classic it\\\'s basing itself on, including that work\\\'s unfortunate scientific mistakes.)
The true problem of the hardness discussion in my eyes, however, is also the biggest here:
2. \\\'Hardness\\\' seems to be based mostly on \\\'pure\\\' physics. Not applied physics. Or other scientific fields. Or realism in general.
The topic above this one asks whether the mere presence of FTL changes the hardness rating of a work. The answer is that it does in the eyes of many and that there is no reason for this. Officially a work\\\'s \\\'hardness\\\' is supposed to reflect, or be judged on, it\\\'s scientific realism, but in the eyes of many people scientific realism equates to \\\'strict adherence to pure physics\\\'.
If a work does not contradict \\\'pure physics\\\' (Directly stated \\\'rules\\\' of physics, like \\\'gravity pulls things together\\\' and \\\'you can\\\'t go faster than \\\'\\\'c\\\'\\\'.\\\') it can get away with AssPull after AssPull on physics as it actually applies to the real world.
To give an example of what I mean: [[HumanPopSicle Suspended animation]] is often lauded as one of the \\\'realistic\\\' and \\\'hard science\\\' ways to have people travelling to other stars and planets without being geriatric by the time they arrive and it\\\'s often used to preserve characters for decades, even centuries while travelling. This opposed to FTL which is \\\'unrealistic\\\' and \\\'soft\\\'.
In reality, however, it\\\'s merely scientifically improbable that a way to travel faster than light will be discovered in a form applicable to spacecraft. It\\\'s scientifically impossible to keep someone in cryonic preservation for such a long time and still revive them. The problem scientist are currently working on is consistency in temperature, because the minute amounts of thawing and refreezing that results from not being able to completely control the temperature in whatever the frozen thing is in causes erosion. Once we fix this, we might be able to preserve biological samples almost indefinitely. Managing this on a space ship is... [[SpaceIsCold More problematic,]] but theoretically possible
The limit to preserving actual living human beings however is mostly determined by free radicals in a person\\\'s cells damaging them from the inside with the biological countermeasures to prevent this deactivated by the preservation process. There is no way to remove all the free radicals from a living human without turning them into a dead human, free radicals are needed for cells to work. While freezing does slow this, it doesn\\\'t stop it completely and the maximum time possible for a human taking all possible (survivable) precautions is 20 to 30 years.
Free radicals are present in every cell and are created by the body itself as a result of respiration, so it\\\'s literally impossible to have someone \\\'take a treatment\\\' to remove the free radicals from their body or to remove them after freezing, not without making them unrevivable in the process.
This is physics, just as much as \\\'no going faster than light\\\' is, but because it\\\'s physics by way of biology, it gets ignored. As a result, many of the works that employ suspended animation are considered harder than works that use FTL travel, even though by any definition of hard science other than \\\'Must adhere to what I read on Atomic Rocket\\\' suspended animation through cryonic freezing as it\\\'s used in most works (as a replacement for FTL to get to places that it takes more than 50 years to travel to while keeping the crew \\\'young\\\') is actually \\\'softer\\\'. Other common areas \\\'hard\\\' science writers can fudge the rules on if they adhere to \\\'standard\\\' or \\\'pure\\\' physics without comment are Biology (certain areas of biology at least), Economics, Sociology, Chemistry, Logistics and Physics.
Yes, physics. Because the point I\\\'m trying to make is that the \\\'hard science\\\' fandom (and it\\\'s very much a fandom that\\\'s behind this classification) has several rules it focusses on and which are given undue importance over others.
Could we try to take these elements out of the page? Or else could we rework it to reflect the specific set of selection criteria on which the rating is based rather than pretending that Hardness on this scale is a reflection of the \\\'\\\'actual\\\'\\\' scientific realism of a work in general?
1. The fact that people treat it as a scoring system.
Even though this has been mentioned a few times already, scoring higher for hardness does not affect the quality of a work. The problem there lies with both fans of \\\'hard\\\' science fiction and public perception in general making it sound like a \\\'harder\\\' work is inherently superior to a \\\'softer\\\' work. And when fans of those works encounter that attitude, their direct response is to proclaim the ways the work they like is harder than proposed for some reason they will then explain, with varying degrees of success.
This even results in a bit of unadulterated stupid (I have no kinder word to give to it) where the second paragraph is basically written from the pro-hard perspective of \\\"Hard is better because it (supposedly) takes more effort to write.\\\" while the page text ends on the note of \\\"We don\\\'t take an opinion on whether or not harder or softer is better.\\\" Apparently, we do. We very specifically did a couple paragraphs back when we stated that \\\'Hard\\\' science-fiction usually shows it\\\'s work. (And the dumb thing is that it usually doesn\\\'t. Most \\\'Hard\\\' Sci-Fi specifically written with the intent to be \\\'hard\\\', especially online, is dreadfully formulaic tripe that replicates the scientific interpretations of whatever much better classic it\\\'s basing itself on, including that work\\\'s unfortunate scientific mistakes.)
The true problem of the hardness discussion in my eyes, however, is also the biggest here:
2. \\\'Hardness\\\' seems to be based mostly on \\\'pure\\\' physics. Not applied physics. Or other scientific fields. Or realism in general.
The topic above this one asks whether the mere presence of FTL changes the hardness rating of a work. The answer is that it does in the eyes of many and that there is no reason for this. Officially a work\\\'s \\\'hardness\\\' is supposed to reflect, or be judged on, it\\\'s scientific realism, but in the eyes of many people scientific realism equates to \\\'strict adherence to pure physics\\\'.
If a work does not contradict \\\'pure physics\\\' (Directly stated \\\'rules\\\' of physics, like \\\'gravity pulls things together\\\' and \\\'you can\\\'t go faster than \\\'\\\'c\\\'\\\'.\\\') it can get away with AssPull after AssPull on physics as it actually applies to the real world.
To give an example of what I mean: [[HumanPopSicle Suspended animation]] is often lauded as one of the \\\'realistic\\\' and \\\'hard science\\\' ways to have people travelling to other stars and planets without being geriatric by the time they arrive and it\\\'s often used to preserve characters for decades, even centuries while travelling. This opposed to FTL which is \\\'unrealistic\\\' and \\\'soft\\\'.
In reality, however, it\\\'s merely scientifically improbable that a way to travel faster than light will be discovered in a form applicable to spacecraft. It\\\'s scientifically impossible to keep someone in cryonic preservation for such a long time and still revive them. The problem scientist are currently working on is consistency in temperature, because the minute amounts of thawing and refreezing that results from not being able to completely control the temperature in whatever the frozen thing is in causes erosion. Once we fix this, we might be able to preserve biological samples almost indefinitely. Managing this on a space ship is... [[SpaceIsCold More problematic,]] but theoretically possible
The limit to preserving actual living human beings however is mostly determined by free radicals in a person\\\'s cells damaging them from the inside with the biological countermeasures to prevent this deactivated by the preservation process. There is no way to remove all the free radicals from a living human without turning them into a dead human, free radicals are needed for cells to work. While freezing does slow this, it doesn\\\'t stop it completely and the maximum time possible for a human taking all possible (survivable) precautions is 20 to 30 years.
Free radicals are present in every cell and are created by the body itself as a result of respiration, so it\\\'s literally impossible to have someone \\\'take a treatment\\\' to remove the free radicals from their body or to remove them after freezing, not without making them unrevivable in the process.
This is physics, just as much as \\\'no going faster than light\\\' is, but because it\\\'s physics by way of biology, it gets ignored. As a result, many of the works that employ suspended animation are considered harder than works that use FTL travel, even though by any definition of hard science other than \\\'Must adhere to what I read on Atomic Rocket\\\' suspended animation through cryonic freezing as it\\\'s used in most works (as a replacement for FTL to get to places that it takes more than 50 years to travel to while keeping the crew \\\'young\\\') is actually \\\'softer\\\'. Other common areas \\\'hard\\\' science writers can fudge the rules on if they adhere to \\\'standard\\\' or \\\'pure\\\' physics without comment are Biology (certain areas of biology at least), Economics, Sociology, Chemistry, Logistics and Physics.
Yes, physics. Because the point I\\\'m trying to make is that the \\\'hard science\\\' fandom (and it\\\'s very much a fandom that\\\'s behind this classification) has several rules it focusses on and which are given undue importance over others.
Could we try to take these elements out of the page? Or else could we rework it to reflect the specific set of selection criteria on which the rating is based rather than pretending that Hardness on this scale is a reflection of the \\\'\\\'actual\\\'\\\' scientific realism of a work in general?
Changed line(s) 1 from:
n
to:
The two most significant problems I\\\'ve always had with \\\'Science Fiction Hardness\\\' seem to have reared their heads both on this discussion page and in the general treatment of the article as a whole:
1. The fact that people treat it as a scoring system.
Even though this has been mentioned a few times already, scoring higher for hardness does not affect the quality of a work. The problem there lies with both fans of \\\'hard\\\' science fiction and public perception in general making it sound like a \\\'harder\\\' work is inherently superior to a \\\'softer\\\' work. And when fans of those works encounter that attitude, their direct response is to proclaim the ways the work they like is harder than proposed for some reason they will then explain, with varying degrees of success.
This even results in a bit of unadulterated stupid (I have no kinder word to give to it) where the second paragraph is basically written from the pro-hard perspective of \\\"Hard is better because it (supposedly) takes more effort to write.\\\" while the page text ends on the note of \\\"We don\\\'t take an opinion on whether or not harder or softer is better.\\\" Apparently, we do. We very specifically did a couple paragraphs back when we stated that \\\'Hard\\\' science-fiction usually shows it\\\'s work. (And the dumb thing is that it usually doesn\\\'t. Most \\\'Hard\\\' Sci-Fi specifically written with the intent to be \\\'hard\\\', especially online, is dreadfully formulaic tripe that replicates the scientific interpretations of whatever much better classic it\\\'s basing itself on, including that work\\\'s unfortunate scientific mistakes.)
The true problem of the hardness discussion in my eyes, however, is also the biggest here:
2. \\\'Hardness\\\' seems to be based mostly on \\\'pure\\\' physics. Not applied physics. Or other scientific fields. Or realism in general.
The topic above this one asks whether the mere presence of FTL changes the hardness rating of a work. The answer is that it does in the eyes of many and that there is no reason for this. Officially a work\\\'s \\\'hardness\\\' is supposed to reflect, or be judged on, it\\\'s scientific realism, but in the eyes of many people scientific realism equates to \\\'strict adherence to pure physics\\\'.
If a work does not contradict \\\'pure physics\\\' (Directly stated \\\'rules\\\' of physics, like \\\'gravity pulls things together\\\' and \\\'you can\\\'t go faster than \\\'\\\'c\\\'\\\'.\\\') it can get away with AssPull after AssPull on physics as it actually applies to the real world.
To give an example of what I mean: [[HumanPopSicle Suspended animation]] is often lauded as one of the \\\'realistic\\\' and \\\'hard science\\\' ways to have people travelling to other stars and planets without being geriatric by the time they arrive and it\\\'s often used to preserve characters for decades, even centuries while travelling. This opposed to FTL which is \\\'unrealistic\\\' and \\\'soft\\\'.\\\\\\\\
In reality, however, it\\\'s merely scientifically improbable that a way to travel faster than light will be discovered in a form applicable to spacecraft. It\\\'s scientifically impossible to keep someone in cryonic preservation for such a long time and still revive them. The problem scientist are currently working on is consistency in temperature, because the minute amounts of thawing and refreezing that results from not being able to completely control the temperature in whatever the frozen thing is in causes erosion. Once we fix this, we might be able to preserve biological samples almost indefinitely. Managing this on a space ship is... [[SpaceIsCold More problematic,]] but theoretically possible
The limit to preserving actual living human beings however is mostly determined by free radicals in a person\\\'s cells damaging them from the inside with the biological countermeasures to prevent this deactivated by the preservation process. There is no way to remove all the free radicals from a living human without turning them into a dead human, free radicals are needed for cells to work. While freezing does slow this, it doesn\\\'t stop it completely and the maximum time possible for a human taking all possible (survivable) precautions is 20 to 30 years.
Free radicals are present in every cell and are created by the body itself as a result of respiration, so it\\\'s literally impossible to have someone \\\'take a treatment\\\' to remove the free radicals from their body or to remove them after freezing, not without making them unrevivable in the process.
This is physics, just as much as \\\'no going faster than light\\\' is, but because it\\\'s physics by way of biology, it gets ignored. As a result, many of the works that employ suspended animation are considered harder than works that use FTL travel, even though by any definition of hard science other than \\\'Must adhere to what I read on Atomic Rocket\\\' suspended animation through cryonic freezing as it\\\'s used in most works (as a replacement for FTL to get to places that it takes more than 50 years to travel to while keeping the crew \\\'young\\\') is actually \\\'softer\\\'. Other common areas \\\'hard\\\' science writers can fudge the rules on if they adhere to \\\'standard\\\' or \\\'pure\\\' physics without comment are Biology (certain areas of biology at least), Economics, Sociology, Chemistry, Logistics and Physics.\\\\\\\\
Yes, physics. Because the point I\\\'m trying to make is that the \\\'hard science\\\' fandom (and it\\\'s very much a fandom that\\\'s behind this classification) has several rules it focusses on and which are given undue importance over others.
Could we try to take these elements out of the page? Or else could we rework it to reflect the specific set of selection criteria on which the rating is based rather than pretending that Hardness on this scale is a reflection of the \\\'\\\'actual\\\'\\\' scientific realism of a work in general?
1. The fact that people treat it as a scoring system.
Even though this has been mentioned a few times already, scoring higher for hardness does not affect the quality of a work. The problem there lies with both fans of \\\'hard\\\' science fiction and public perception in general making it sound like a \\\'harder\\\' work is inherently superior to a \\\'softer\\\' work. And when fans of those works encounter that attitude, their direct response is to proclaim the ways the work they like is harder than proposed for some reason they will then explain, with varying degrees of success.
This even results in a bit of unadulterated stupid (I have no kinder word to give to it) where the second paragraph is basically written from the pro-hard perspective of \\\"Hard is better because it (supposedly) takes more effort to write.\\\" while the page text ends on the note of \\\"We don\\\'t take an opinion on whether or not harder or softer is better.\\\" Apparently, we do. We very specifically did a couple paragraphs back when we stated that \\\'Hard\\\' science-fiction usually shows it\\\'s work. (And the dumb thing is that it usually doesn\\\'t. Most \\\'Hard\\\' Sci-Fi specifically written with the intent to be \\\'hard\\\', especially online, is dreadfully formulaic tripe that replicates the scientific interpretations of whatever much better classic it\\\'s basing itself on, including that work\\\'s unfortunate scientific mistakes.)
The true problem of the hardness discussion in my eyes, however, is also the biggest here:
2. \\\'Hardness\\\' seems to be based mostly on \\\'pure\\\' physics. Not applied physics. Or other scientific fields. Or realism in general.
The topic above this one asks whether the mere presence of FTL changes the hardness rating of a work. The answer is that it does in the eyes of many and that there is no reason for this. Officially a work\\\'s \\\'hardness\\\' is supposed to reflect, or be judged on, it\\\'s scientific realism, but in the eyes of many people scientific realism equates to \\\'strict adherence to pure physics\\\'.
If a work does not contradict \\\'pure physics\\\' (Directly stated \\\'rules\\\' of physics, like \\\'gravity pulls things together\\\' and \\\'you can\\\'t go faster than \\\'\\\'c\\\'\\\'.\\\') it can get away with AssPull after AssPull on physics as it actually applies to the real world.
To give an example of what I mean: [[HumanPopSicle Suspended animation]] is often lauded as one of the \\\'realistic\\\' and \\\'hard science\\\' ways to have people travelling to other stars and planets without being geriatric by the time they arrive and it\\\'s often used to preserve characters for decades, even centuries while travelling. This opposed to FTL which is \\\'unrealistic\\\' and \\\'soft\\\'.\\\\\\\\
In reality, however, it\\\'s merely scientifically improbable that a way to travel faster than light will be discovered in a form applicable to spacecraft. It\\\'s scientifically impossible to keep someone in cryonic preservation for such a long time and still revive them. The problem scientist are currently working on is consistency in temperature, because the minute amounts of thawing and refreezing that results from not being able to completely control the temperature in whatever the frozen thing is in causes erosion. Once we fix this, we might be able to preserve biological samples almost indefinitely. Managing this on a space ship is... [[SpaceIsCold More problematic,]] but theoretically possible
The limit to preserving actual living human beings however is mostly determined by free radicals in a person\\\'s cells damaging them from the inside with the biological countermeasures to prevent this deactivated by the preservation process. There is no way to remove all the free radicals from a living human without turning them into a dead human, free radicals are needed for cells to work. While freezing does slow this, it doesn\\\'t stop it completely and the maximum time possible for a human taking all possible (survivable) precautions is 20 to 30 years.
Free radicals are present in every cell and are created by the body itself as a result of respiration, so it\\\'s literally impossible to have someone \\\'take a treatment\\\' to remove the free radicals from their body or to remove them after freezing, not without making them unrevivable in the process.
This is physics, just as much as \\\'no going faster than light\\\' is, but because it\\\'s physics by way of biology, it gets ignored. As a result, many of the works that employ suspended animation are considered harder than works that use FTL travel, even though by any definition of hard science other than \\\'Must adhere to what I read on Atomic Rocket\\\' suspended animation through cryonic freezing as it\\\'s used in most works (as a replacement for FTL to get to places that it takes more than 50 years to travel to while keeping the crew \\\'young\\\') is actually \\\'softer\\\'. Other common areas \\\'hard\\\' science writers can fudge the rules on if they adhere to \\\'standard\\\' or \\\'pure\\\' physics without comment are Biology (certain areas of biology at least), Economics, Sociology, Chemistry, Logistics and Physics.\\\\\\\\
Yes, physics. Because the point I\\\'m trying to make is that the \\\'hard science\\\' fandom (and it\\\'s very much a fandom that\\\'s behind this classification) has several rules it focusses on and which are given undue importance over others.
Could we try to take these elements out of the page? Or else could we rework it to reflect the specific set of selection criteria on which the rating is based rather than pretending that Hardness on this scale is a reflection of the \\\'\\\'actual\\\'\\\' scientific realism of a work in general?
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Applejack is closer to TheLadette than {{Tomboy}}, if nothing else. And although she acts as a TeamMom most of the time, she doesn\'t shy away from a good brawl if necessary -- \
to:
Applejack is closer to TheLadette than {{Tomboy}}, if nothing else. And although she acts as a TeamMom most of the time, she doesn\\\'t shy away from a good brawl if necessary -- \\\"Dragonshy\\\" and \\\"A Dog and Pony Show\\\" come to mind. AJ\\\'s Laddette-style behavior is also what annoys Rarity in \\\"Look Before You Sleep\\\".
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Applejack is closer to TheLadette than {{Tomboy}}, if nothing else. And although she acts as a TeamMom most of the time, she doesn\'t shy away from a good brawl if necessary -- \
to:
Applejack is closer to TheLadette than {{Tomboy}}, if nothing else. And although she acts as a TeamMom most of the time, she doesn\\\'t shy away from a good brawl if necessary -- \\\"Dragonshy\\\" and \\\"A Dog and Pony Show\\\" come to mind. AJ\\\'s Laddette-style behavior is what annoys Rarity in \\\"Look Before You Sleep\\\", IMO.
