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The is it scientifically possible game


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Came up with this when i was thinking if a few things were scientifically possible. Most of them being bending space and time.

 

Anyways this game is easy post asking if something you think maybe scientifically possible and the next person says if they think it is or not and says why it is/is not possible than asks the next thing. If you feel the need to explain how it might work do so, but try to keep it kinda short.

 

 

I guess i will start off with one of the things i would like most.

 

Portal guns. I think it can be pulled off with wormholes however there is more to it than that we need to keep them open for that we would need something that is still just a theory and that is dark energy (I am not going to say much about dark energy because there is no proof it is real.) or dark matter, dark matter would most likely be unstable in this case, but it would at the least work for a small amount of time before the portal closes. (I could explain more, but i don't like confusing people....And this is kinda getting long for some people.)

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You didn't give me an invention to comment on! You answered your own, but I will also.

I think portal guns are scientifically impossible.

 

Just imagine how impractical it would be, you aparently need to shoot tham at flat, smooth surfaces, but on a highly magnified level, NOTHING is very smooth at all. Apart from that, how many portals would be the maximum? If one portal gun can make a maximum of two portals, but millions of typical zombie retail customers buy it, you would have people making millions of portals all over the place!

 

Now imagine how many murders and other crimes would be committed via portal. Someone curiously goes in one portal, ends up inside a pit they can't climb out of, and very little evidence, someone buys an expensive ring for their fiancée, but someone pops a portal on the table where they kept it and puts the other one in their house. NIGHTMARE.

 

In short, the invention of portal guns would cause ANARCHY.

 

...

 

The next scientifically impossible (or not) phenomenon to prove/disprove is time travel. Time travel in any form whatsoever, just time travel in general, be it Back To The Future style, or Doctor Who style, or a decent excuse to rebuild the British Empire style.

Edited by Pc Genie (see edit history)
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I hope time travel doesn't exist. It would cause chaos more or less. I believe a lot in multiple dimensions/universes. I think there are an infinite number of parallel universes out there, and because of that if "time travel" were invented it wouldn't be time you traveled to but one of these nearby universes. Our own time-stream is irreversible, and has already happened. So anything we do to these other timespaces wouldn't have any meaning to ours at all, it would only be changing someone else's dimension. That still has a lot of moral confusion, and pitfalls associated with it. We could still royally screw up a world or two, an infinity of worlds... Just because it won't be us exactly doesn't mean it would be fine.

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So, you didn't mention a theory for me to critisize/advertise.

 

I'll come up with another one, shapeshifting.

Not something ludicrous like turn-child-into-skyscraper-dwarfing-dragon nonsense, but something more small scale and realistic but dramatic nonetheless. Take Werewolves, Werelions, Wererabbits (see Wallace and Gromit) or anything else Were, besides my wares, which are 20% off today!

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  • 2 weeks later...

Shapeshifting would require altering matter in which I believe is potentially possible given certain recycling technology... However, I believe it is impossible. Perhaps if you were to turn a standard knife into a serrated knife, or turn a wooden table into a wooden chair - Redirect/rebuild the matter into something else of the same amount of matter. However who knows what the possibilities of technology are, I believe that if shape alteration ever exists in the next several hundred years, it will be on a simpler scale - Equal matter. Thus, a child couldn't become a huge dragon. And I believe it couldn't work on living organisms as it is, as it would mean re-arranging the organs - Such as turning a young man into a medium-sized dog. The systems couldn't cope and death would be the result. However, easier ways of gender re-assignment could be possible in such fashion. Anyway, a matter-recycling system would be what I get out of this, although it isn't exactly what you wanted as an answer. Think - Throw something that is plastic away, or rebuild it into something else? Possibilities can really have a nice impact on occasional events in everyday life.

 

The verdict? Scientifically plausible, with great limitations.

 

Mine is a simpler, yet more self-obsessed topic. Longer lifespans { By a few hundred years or more }/eternal life in general. I'd love to see what the next guy has to say about this.

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Shapeshifting would require altering matter in which I believe is potentially possible given certain recycling technology... However, I believe it is impossible. Perhaps if you were to turn a standard knife into a serrated knife, or turn a wooden table into a wooden chair - Redirect/rebuild the matter into something else of the same amount of matter. However who knows what the possibilities of technology are, I believe that if shape alteration ever exists in the next several hundred years, it will be on a simpler scale - Equal matter. Thus, a child couldn't become a huge dragon. And I believe it couldn't work on living organisms as it is, as it would mean re-arranging the organs - Such as turning a young man into a medium-sized dog. The systems couldn't cope and death would be the result. However, easier ways of gender re-assignment could be possible in such fashion. Anyway, a matter-recycling system would be what I get out of this, although it isn't exactly what you wanted as an answer. Think - Throw something that is plastic away, or rebuild it into something else? Possibilities can really have a nice impact on occasional events in everyday life.

 

The verdict? Scientifically plausible, with great limitations.

 

Mine is a simpler, yet more self-obsessed topic. Longer lifespans { By a few hundred years or more }/eternal life in general. I'd love to see what the next guy has to say about this.

To some extent, this is possible, and I think by the year 2040 it will be. Basically, one of the main factors behind the why of aging comes from the wearing down of these caps on the end of your chromosomes called telomeres. Once they're gone, every time your cells replicate, they lose some base pairs, which results in the cell being just a little bit worse at doing its various jobs. However, there's an enzyme that can regrow those telomeres, cleverly named telomerase. In theory, continuous doses of that enzyme could make a person immortal, as long as they didn't get injured, diseased, etc. to the point that they'd die anyway. The only problem is that, as of now, this enzyme-doping ends up giving you mega-cancer pretty quickly. So, yeah. Not there yet.

 

Now for mine . . .

cooler virtual reality that wouldn't be ridiculously expensive.

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To some extent, this is possible, and I think by the year 2040 it will be. Basically, one of the main factors behind the why of aging comes from the wearing down of these caps on the end of your chromosomes called telomeres. Once they're gone, every time your cells replicate, they lose some base pairs, which results in the cell being just a little bit worse at doing its various jobs. However, there's an enzyme that can regrow those telomeres, cleverly named telomerase. In theory, continuous doses of that enzyme could make a person immortal, as long as they didn't get injured, diseased, etc. to the point that they'd die anyway. The only problem is that, as of now, this enzyme-doping ends up giving you mega-cancer pretty quickly. So, yeah. Not there yet.

 

Now for mine . . .

cooler virtual reality that wouldn't be ridiculously expensive.

Scientifically possible, and I'm sure of that.

 

It would be more or less mental stimulation... Tapping into and altering your brain. Problem is, it would be dangerous, unless there were some sort of safety system, which would no doubt be complicated as hell to create. I'm actually not too clear on how they would do it... But I would think it would be some sort of platform you lay on and put a vizor/helmet/something on, and somehow manipulates your mind to performing these actions in... You know what, think of it like sort of a lucid dream. Also, if it were made a thing, a way to punish the unjust criminals - Instead of putting them in a cell, make them re-live the last moment of their victim's life at their own hands from the victim's point of view. However, that would be quite cruel, and possibly insanity-driving. I'm not sure... But I have a feeling it can be done. Can't give a good estimate of time, though, as I currently would prefer real action or handheld controllers - As real action is exercise, and I just appreciate the good hand-held controller. If this makes any sense. Which it probably does not... But I tried, for credit.

 

Alright, this next one I also like. Replication and genetic alteration - They go hand-in-hand in my question here for one reason - Create a replica of yourself, though tweak it to be a different-looking person, different gender, etc. For example, to make the perfect friend. { Although I believe if it were possible, memories couldn't be replicated... }

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Scientifically plausible, but you'd need a female to hatch your eggs.

 

But on a serious note, you would need a woman to develop and birth the chils, artificial 'test tube' baby growing is several leagues* away, and it would basically become artificial insemination, like we already have, but perhaps alterations could happen, suuch as making sperm alterable to a woman's Deoxyribonucleic Acid so a woman could impregnate a woman to create a child.

 

Bear in mind however that with any form of same-gender-reproduction, problems may occur. Two women will always produce a female (XX and XX), whilst two men, with one wierdly aletered would have a chance to produce a YY chromosome man, and they have a dramatically lower chance of producing a female.

There have been cases of XYY chromosome individuals, but it is very rare indeed.

 

The theory is plausible but not incontestable.

 

 

*A league in the literal sense is seven miles.

 

So, how about chaning elements? Bear in mind that radioactive elements can give off particles until they change into an element with less mass. But I mean at will, and usefully such as turning lead into gold, or better still, lead into iron!

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Possibly, but it could take centuries, even millenia.

 

I don't think anyone's even seen or used equipment to detect ANY antimatter ever, if you don't even have a starting point, you can't get anywhere, you either need some first step towards the progress. Take for example flint to make the first tools until we ended up with durable iron toold later on. We could never make antimatter at this moment, but perhaps in the future we could achieve it.

 

Now, how about cryogenic freezing? If you don't know what I'm referring to, watch the first ever episode of Futurama.

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Scientifically possible, unless you wanted them back alive afterwards. 

  • Water expands when frozen. 
  • We humans are basically lots and lots of water. 

Do the math.

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Hmm...  Manipulation of atomic structure's already been done.  Time travel's already been done.  I just critiqued cryostasis.  What else is there?

Ah!!  Airbending!  (Avatar: The Last Airbender)

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  • 3 years later...

airbending is something very scientifically possible but would require the use of tools, we already have devices that can shot pressurized air and water strong enough to damage or cut steel.  However this air would not be vissible like it is in the show that would require visible particles such as dust to give it shape or appearence , for a human to airbend without a tool it would require them to have arm movements over the speed of sound combined with an icreased lung capacity and carbon dioxide output rate to push the air in a way that could reach a distance of at least 10 ft and make an impact that may trigger any neural pain receptors. A strong wind may not hurt but a concentrated stream of air can cut through wood or stronger so it wouldnt actually prove very useful if we were humanly capable.  

In conclusion: Possible with tools you just need to be able to carry the heavy equipment and it wouldnt work as sudden blasts of damaging air rather thin sharp cuts of it.

My question to be answered hmmm....could a zombie like apocalypse theoretically happen?

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Yes. It's enough of a possibility that the US government has an emergency plan for a zombie outbreak, should one occur. The fact is, several different types of known pathogens can cause a victim to behave much like the classic zombie. The only real variable is how such a known pathogen would get far enough out of control to cause an apocalyptic scenario. I don't think it could, so the most likely scenario I can think of is a similar, but unknown pathogen mutating a strain that infects or inhabits people across a species barrier and spreads at a very rapid pace.

 

Will it be possible one day to transfer a human consciousness into a machine, or even a robotic body?

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There's a couple ways you could go about this. We could probably manage to keep a brain alive at some point, using machinery to keep the brain supplied with nutrients and what-not, though it would likely act very differently to how it did when it was alive. Without a body or hormones affecting it, the behaviour of the brain would be vastly different to what it was when it was still in a body. Unless you were going to rig up some sort of synthetic hormone system or try to keep hormone glands alive with the brain that is, but then that's more work. I guess if you had the time and resources you could set up a system that would simulate all the things a body does, but by the end you'd have a whole person and you'd probably have spent your time better creating things to keep the original body alive

The other way I can think of would be simulating a personality. With enough programming, refining and research into AI, it's likely that one day we could see synthetic minds that are almost identical to the person they're modelled from - but with some major exceptions. Being a simulant, any behaviour would be a calculated output on behalf of a computer - no matter how complex the response is, it will boil down to ones and zeroes. Secondly, the person themselves would not be kept alive. Even if the artificial mind was perfectly like them, the original would die (so if you were hoping you might wake up with as a computer, tough luck). Of course you could programme the AI to act as if it has come back to life, but it would only be a simulation of the original, no matter how convincing.

This mindset is why I could never relate to the Railroad in fo4. They're just simulating behaviour, none of it is actual emotion.

 

Here's something I'd been curious about for a while - atomic re-arrangement: Do you think it would be possible to break down things at an atomic level and turn them into something else by re-arranging the atoms?

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  • 2 weeks later...

@MS Ace In short, yes, I think that will happen.

Longer version: we are quickly reaching a point at which we can easily and cheaply sequence DNA, and CRISPR is a thing that you can Google and read about if you wish (I don't fully understand it, so I don't trust myself trying to explain it).  My idea with this is that – if we could sequence DNA and catalog certain (objectively observed) traits in people and if we had enough peoples' DNA sequenced – we could simply cross-check their traits with computers and see what exactly is different.  This could be done within families as well, and that might give the researchers a big boost.  Right now, there are genetic modification experiments being monitored, I am sure of it, and there has been talk of genetically "reprogramming" disease-carrying organisms such as mosquitoes.  I don't think we're more than 50 years away from things like being able to cure genetic diseases, and maybe 75 years from what you're talking about.  At a conservative guess.

 

My question would be: Do you think it would ever be possible in any way, shape, or form to have some sort of microchip implanted in our heads that helps us store information, or is like an encyclopedia of knowledge that we could access at will?

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I believe it would be possible. When it comes to forecasting science, the easiest thing is to say what will be done. It is a little harder to say how it will be applied, and the hardest, practically impossible thing to say is when it will be done. I do believe that the microchips you described would be possible, since our brains are practically just electricity and chemical reactions, nothing that couldn't be manipulated. We already can affect the way our brains work, think about hormones, medicines, drugs, alcohol. They can affect our emotions, they can let us experience things that aren't real, they can stop us from experiencing things that aren't real. Think about electroconvulsive therapy. It has a bad reputation because of the inhumane ways it has been used, but it does have positive effects, it's still used these days (not without the patient's consent). We can use external things to affect the way our brains work and what we sense with our senses. We can make ourselves think things we don't really think, for instance the "great ideas" some of us have while drunk, or the paranoia that a drug addict can feel. In the future we will have much more control over it, we can insert specific stuff into our brains instead of the current "let's do this and see what happens". We already have great prostheses for our limbs, I believe we could have similar things to our brains. But there's no way to tell when this will happen, or if it will ever become accepted/legal for just anyone to get a chip like that.

 

Everything I can think of right now has already been asked here. The next commenter: please go ahead and ask your own question. I just wanted to comment the previous question.

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  • 1 month later...
  • 1 month later...
On 6.7.2017 at 5:43 AM, MS Ace said:

Do you think that it's possible, or will be possible in the future, for an android, a machine, to have a subjective experience like people do?

I think yes. We are flesh robots, and we are building metal robots. Our metallic robots' mechanisms are still much coarser and less detailed than our own mechanisms, but AI is being developed further and further all the time. Think about what AI will be like in 50 years. Or 300 years. Or 3000 years. How much better it will be than it is now!

Because you know, technically speaking there is the possibility that we ourselves are somebody else's AI. Maybe some time, somewhere, an alien race started building robots, developing AI, producing live (or "live") tissues... They realized the potential of putting these things together. They built this mechanism that seems inexplicably intricate to ourselves. They coded our DNA so that it first oversees the building of a sustaining vessel for itself out of a single cell. It makes our body's other components build a completely self-sustaining system that both finds and utilises the materials it needs for its own upkeep, and disposes of the waste that is left. Because after all, aren't these feelings, our subjective experiences, just means or byproducts of preserving ourselves so that we can carry forward the code, DNA? "Love" or "attraction" is what makes us move DNA forward, or in other words, breed. In order to get a desirable partner to help us move DNA forward, we feel the need to groom ourselves to reflect our own, perceived ideals of "beauty". "Beauty" is an imprint in our brains, which has been formed from our past experiences of stimuli and "security". "Security" is what we feel when our system is not on standby in case of a force, external or internal, threatening the success of our DNA. May I just repeat: we are meat robots.

Maybe, if we ourselves learn to build machines as complicated as we ourselves are, we'll become the God we've been talking about all along. Maybe that's why some of us feel that God is in all of us.

This time I have a question myself, but unfortunately it's a really difficult one that probably no human can answer, at least not yet. Even the concept itself is hard to grasp. But I'd like to hear your thoughts about hacking reality. Possible? Theoretically possible? Humanely possible? Or not? Can the concept even be constructed into a consistent thought?

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On 8/26/2017 at 10:03 AM, Fisk said:

I think yes. We are flesh robots, and we are building metal robots. Our metallic robots' mechanisms are still much coarser and less detailed than our own mechanisms, but AI is being developed further and further all the time. Think about what AI will be like in 50 years. Or 300 years. Or 3000 years. How much better it will be than it is now!

Because you know, technically speaking there is the possibility that we ourselves are somebody else's AI. Maybe some time, somewhere, an alien race started building robots, developing AI, producing live (or "live") tissues... They realized the potential of putting these things together. They built this mechanism that seems inexplicably intricate to ourselves. They coded our DNA so that it first oversees the building of a sustaining vessel for itself out of a single cell. It makes our body's other components build a completely self-sustaining system that both finds and utilises the materials it needs for its own upkeep, and disposes of the waste that is left. Because after all, aren't these feelings, our subjective experiences, just means or byproducts of preserving ourselves so that we can carry forward the code, DNA? "Love" or "attraction" is what makes us move DNA forward, or in other words, breed. In order to get a desirable partner to help us move DNA forward, we feel the need to groom ourselves to reflect our own, perceived ideals of "beauty". "Beauty" is an imprint in our brains, which has been formed from our past experiences of stimuli and "security". "Security" is what we feel when our system is not on standby in case of a force, external or internal, threatening the success of our DNA. May I just repeat: we are meat robots.

Maybe, if we ourselves learn to build machines as complicated as we ourselves are, we'll become the God we've been talking about all along. Maybe that's why some of us feel that God is in all of us.

This time I have a question myself, but unfortunately it's a really difficult one that probably no human can answer, at least not yet. Even the concept itself is hard to grasp. But I'd like to hear your thoughts about hacking reality. Possible? Theoretically possible? Humanely possible? Or not? Can the concept even be constructed into a consistent thought?

Define hacking. If you mean "turning off," shall we say, the laws of physics, then probably not. I mean, they are basically a main factor of reality.

However, there are many people who believe that this universe is just some computer stimulation or something similar to that. If so, then the answer is absolutely not, because the stimulation's guidelines would make it impossible for any of us to escape. Also, we haven't found the Question yet (though the answer IS 42...).

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1 hour ago, guest said:

Define hacking. If you mean "turning off," shall we say, the laws of physics, then probably not. I mean, they are basically a main factor of reality.

However, there are many people who believe that this universe is just some computer stimulation or something similar to that. If so, then the answer is absolutely not, because the stimulation's guidelines would make it impossible for any of us to escape. Also, we haven't found the Question yet (though the answer IS 42...).

By hacking I mean what it usually means when people talk about hacking. Accessing information you're not supposed to access. Or well, if it turns out to be possible to "hack" reality, then no one could probably say it's not supposed to happen, because whatever can happen, can happen, and someone's ideology about whether it should happen or not, doesn't change the course of events. But think about how many things there are that we include in the group of "can't know" or "can't be helped". By hacking reality, I mean accessing and possibly also changing the kind of information that we currently think is impossible for humans to access or change.

And I'm not talking about hacking computers. Maybe our reality is a computer simulation, maybe not, I'm not talking about that here. We do not know the nature of our reality, but whatever that is, do you people think it would be possible for us to hack it?

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21 hours ago, Fisk said:

By hacking I mean what it usually means when people talk about hacking. Accessing information you're not supposed to access. Or well, if it turns out to be possible to "hack" reality, then no one could probably say it's not supposed to happen, because whatever can happen, can happen, and someone's ideology about whether it should happen or not, doesn't change the course of events. But think about how many things there are that we include in the group of "can't know" or "can't be helped". By hacking reality, I mean accessing and possibly also changing the kind of information that we currently think is impossible for humans to access or change.

And I'm not talking about hacking computers. Maybe our reality is a computer simulation, maybe not, I'm not talking about that here. We do not know the nature of our reality, but whatever that is, do you people think it would be possible for us to hack it?

Doesn't this undermine the point of this game? What you're asking is basically "Can X be possible if X is impossible?".

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1 hour ago, guest said:

Doesn't this undermine the point of this game? What you're asking is basically "Can X be possible if X is impossible?".

No, wording this kind of text is just difficult for me in English. Sorry about that.

There's been a time when people have thought that surviving in the big water (ocean) is impossible. Which turned out to be incorrect. Or that it's impossible to talk to someone who's on the other side of Earth. Incorrect. Or that flying in the sky is impossible for people. Incorrect. Or that physically leaving the Earth is impossible. Incorrect.

We always have an idea of what is possible and what is impossible, and every year we find out that we've been seriously wrong about the impossibility of some things. We need to think that some things are possible and some are not, because that's the kind of info we base our practical lives on. But we don't always think about our practical lives, sometimes we like to think about the theoretical, like in this thread. So my question is: even though it currently seems practically impossible to "hack reality" because no one seems to know where to even begin, what are your theoretical thoughts about the concept?

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