It's very true that you can't prove a negative. Anybody can make up anything and challenge the world to disprove it. It doesn't make it true just becasue no-one can prove it false. Someone could tell me that Santa was real. They could say all the evidence to the contracry doesn't count. They could say it's possibly because Santa doesn't appear if you don't believe in him. They could come up with elaborate and convoluted theories as to how Santa could visit every household in a single evening but none of it would matter.

If a thing only appears to exist in the belief systems of some people and cannot be verified under observation by everyone else, I think the onus is on the believers to give an unequivocal demonstration. I don't mind that there's no theory. Just one solid, unarguable demonstration, is all I ask. Invoking 'skeptics' as a barrier to demonstration is just a weak and implausible strategy. Gravity still works in the presence of skeptics. You can circumnavigate the globe with a flat earther on your ship. People who believe in psychic phenomena despite all the evidence against it could confound all the skeptics simply by showing us that it works. There is probably a very good reason why nobody has claimed James Randi Educational Foundation million-dollar prize and that's almost certainly because nobody can.

Cold fusion, by the way, is something altogether different. Pons and Fleischmann were not credulous people or conmen. They were serious scientists who made some observations they could not explain. They came up for an astonishing theory for it and the scientific world set about (a) trying to replicate the finding and (b) analysing the theory. Sadly for all of us, the observations were not replicable, neither did the theory stand up to close scrutiny. Cold fusion, as they presented it, is a dead duck. Which is not to say cold fusion by any means is impossible. The very idea, the slightest prospect, that it might be possible to do cold fusion is imminently worth investigating as a theoretical possibility. Other, ingenious (and more plausible) models of how it might be produced have been developed and several research teams are still investigating these approaches. With any luck, one of them may be successful, although it does seem to be a very long shot.

The Dean Drive and other so-called reactionless drives seem to me to be an error in physics, mechanics, and judgement on the part of the inventor (if anyone is ineterested, check out the Wikipedia article.) Again, if this worked, we'd all be driving around in flying cars by now.

My own view is that science fiction should be science-based, but that the science in question can be imaginary and even realistically implausible. I distinguish this from the famous instance in the Star Wars movie where, reportedly (I have not seen it) the starfighters “whoosh” in empty space. Now if one wished to explain this based on audible microwaves (yes, these exist) due to exotic propulsion systems, that would be one thing. But to have whooshing fighter planes in a vacuum with no explanation of how this might happen is simply absurd.

But the above really belongs as a comment to your previous blog post. My bone to pick with you here is on psychic abilities.

Oh my, where do I start.

First, the proverbial. It is impossible to prove a negative. Suppose you test 100,000 purported psychics and they all come up incapable. Maybe real psychic ability is quite rare compared to claimed abilities and you missed the good ones.

Or, suppose that skepticism really does act as a damper. If psychic abilities exist I would expect skeptics to be able to generate a powerful negative effect. How many of the tests have been controlled for the mental attitude of the experimenter?

Maybe they are inherently idiosyncratic, meaning that incidents only occur when a wide variety of (unknown) factors combine in just the right manner. How could anybody ever test that?

All an experiment of the sort you cite could ever prove is that the claimed ability could not be demonstrated under the conditions of that particular experiment. And, this is almost to be expected, because if it works, nobody really knows how and why it works. And without a hypothesis which is actually accurate – or close to – it would be impossible to design an adequate experiment because nobody would know what variables were reklevant to control for.

So, I think that you can plausibly say that someday we might prove they exist. Or we might go for a very long tiome failing to prove they exist. But how can you prove something does not exist? Atheists have been trying for centuries to disprove the existence of the Christian God. While I myself strongly suspect He does not exist, at least in the way He is generally understood, how would one ever prove such a statement?

I think science is less a set of definite answers, and more a way of exploring questions, and a particular attitude toward the process of inquiry. At one tiime, the canals of Mars were “science” – established by astronomical observation. But the observations were wrong – happens all the time. “Real” is a bit more slippery than a lot of would like to admit.

By the way, just curious. Do you accept cold fusion?

-Steve

P.S. Abiut “keeping it honest” in the realm of human character. Outright falsification is one thing, but I don't know that it's always obligatory to tell all that you know about a character. Maybe he yells at his dog. But is that relevant to the story? The story is about him being a good guy. You are no more required to document his moral lapses than you are to note every time he uses the toilet. Yes, those things are there – but they don't have to be part of the story.

P.P.S. Hypothesis to explain intermittent episones of emotion-driven telepathy between emotionally bonded subjects. Suppose telepathy is encoded (at a very low bandwith) as phase shifts in synchronized alpha rythyms. The earth-ionisphere resonant cavity is reputed to have a natural frequency of about 7.5 hz, roughly in the alpha range. Suppose this acts as a facilitator of propagation. There are all kinds of technical issues about how phase locking could be acquired, maintained over a distance, lost, reacquired, etc. Then there's the question of how strong emotion creates a “tagged” signal. And then then we should suppose that the information is normally tracked entirely subliminally, and filtered to the level of consciousness sporadically and unreliably, just like other forms of subliminal or subconscious knowledge.

Not saying this is a good hypothesis. But now you can't say there aren't any

And another note of curiousity. Were the “remote viewing” experiments conducted at SRI and later within the US intelligence community ever debunked? I myself am highly skeptical about them, because of all the intelligence “spooks” involved, but on the other hand, the accounts of people telling what various viewers accomplished in the program sound convincing. (Although I think Ed Dames is a bit nutty). But if they were refuted I'd definitely be interested to know.

And one more random curious note. What's your attitude toward reactionless drives such as the Dean Drive?

-Steve

But the above really belongs as a comment to your previous blog post. My bone to pick with you here is on psychic abilities.

Oh my, where do I start.

First, the proverbial. It is impossible to prove a negative. Suppose you test 100,000 purported psychics and they all come up incapable. Maybe real psychic ability is quite rare compared to claimed abilities and you missed the good ones.

Or, suppose that skepticism really does act as a damper. If psychic abilities exist I would expect skeptics to be able to generate a powerful negative effect. How many of the tests have been controlled for the mental attitude of the experimenter?

Maybe they are inherently idiosyncratic, meaning that incidents only occur when a wide variety of (unknown) factors combine in just the right manner. How could anybody ever test that?

All an experiment of the sort you cite could ever prove is that the claimed ability could not be demonstrated under the conditions of that particular experiment. And, this is almost to be expected, because if it works, nobody really knows how and why it works. And without a hypothesis which is actually accurate – or close to – it would be impossible to design an adequate experiment because nobody would know what variables were reklevant to control for.

So, I think that you can plausibly say that someday we might prove they exist. Or we might go for a very long tiome failing to prove they exist. But how can you prove something does not exist? Atheists have been trying for centuries to disprove the existence of the Christian God. While I myself strongly suspect He does not exist, at least in the way He is generally understood, how would one ever prove such a statement?

I think science is less a set of definite answers, and more a way of exploring questions, and a particular attitude toward the process of inquiry. At one tiime, the canals of Mars were “science” – established by astronomical observation. But the observations were wrong – happens all the time. “Real” is a bit more slippery than a lot of would like to admit.

By the way, just curious. Do you accept cold fusion?

-Steve

P.S. Abiut “keeping it honest” in the realm of human character. Outright falsification is one thing, but I don't know that it's always obligatory to tell all that you know about a character. Maybe he yells at his dog. But is that relevant to the story? The story is about him being a good guy. You are no more required to document his moral lapses than you are to note every time he uses the toilet. Yes, those things are there – but they don't have to be part of the story.

P.P.S. Hypothesis to explain intermittent episones of emotion-driven telepathy between emotionally bonded subjects. Suppose telepathy is encoded (at a very low bandwith) as phase shifts in synchronized alpha rythyms. The earth-ionisphere resonant cavity is reputed to have a natural frequency of about 7.5 hz, roughly in the alpha range. Suppose this acts as a facilitator of propagation. There are all kinds of technical issues about how phase locking could be acquired, maintained over a distance, lost, reacquired, etc. Then there's the question of how strong emotion creates a “tagged” signal. And then then we should suppose that the information is normally tracked entirely subliminally, and filtered to the level of consciousness sporadically and unreliably, just like other forms of subliminal or subconscious knowledge.

Not saying this is a good hypothesis. But now you can't say there aren't any

And another note of curiousity. Were the “remote viewing” experiments conducted at SRI and later within the US intelligence community ever debunked? I myself am highly skeptical about them, because of all the intelligence “spooks” involved, but on the other hand, the accounts of people telling what various viewers accomplished in the program sound convincing. (Although I think Ed Dames is a bit nutty). But if they were refuted I'd definitely be interested to know.

And one more random curious note. What's your attitude toward reactionless drives such as the Dean Drive?

-Steve

The question of whose science is correct is not really an issue for me. For me, science is about controlled observation, the development of theory which is consistent with those observations (and, preferrably, other, well-established theory), hypotheses about how the world should behave under one theory or another, and more controlled observation to test those hypotheses. Respectable theories, such as Tegmark's, which have not yet been tested and disproven, are all equally fine by me. (Well, to be honest, I like some multiverse theories much better than others, and I'm not keen on almost all of them.) It is not for me to judge whose theories are correct. Only systematic testing against reality will show that. (And, even then, it does not show 'correctness' only consistency with observation.)

At the leading edge of every science there will be an open texture of theoretical development and unclassified observation. One of the reasons why I, as an SF writer, believe I should understand science is that it is in this space that I have some 'wriggle room' for speculation. It is an opportunity for the imagination that we have such meagre understanding of what dark matter is, or dark energy, or where all the anti-matter went. It is a situation pregnant with possibilities that we cannot say definitely that evolution happens at the level of the gene rather than the organism.

As for political 'science', you can accept or ignore it with impunity in my opinion. That kind of social 'science' gives science a bad name. There is nothing at all wrong with 'thoughtful' disciplines such as philosophy, but they are not sciences. Disciplines such as history do, at least, collate evidence and test their suppositions against it. Sociology (to some extent) and psychology are more scientific. I'd give psychology full marks as a real science except there is a whole, flabby, non-science side to it (the therapeutic side, mainly, where the likes of Freud and Jung have made their reputations). Even in the apparently scientific end of psychology there are areas like 'evolutionary psychology' where issues like 'refutability' do not seem to matter so much as elaborate storytelling.

Well, I'm just ranting now but my main point is this. Some theory is supported by observation, some is refuted by it, and some we just have not worked out how to test yet (like string theory). It is only the refuted theory that I want to avoid in my writing. Everything else is fair game.

Now that you are making broader statements about what is real and how sci-fi should be written, I'm curious to know how you make the determination of what is real.

Physicists are not united in their view of theoretical multiverses. Biologists and geneticists don't agree on all aspects of evolution. In fact, I'm not aware of any 'hard' science discipline that has said 'right, that's it, we know everything now and we can write the definitive answer'. MIT cosmologist Max Tegmark has had a crack at his Theory of Everything (http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/toe_frames.html) but it's controversial and many scientists have dismissed it. So which science is fact? Do we base our writing on the theory currently agreed to by the most scientists (majority rules) or the controversial one that tickles our what-if bone?

And, BTW, if you are saying I need to read AND UNDERSTAND this level of publication in order to write sci-fi, then I think I'll pass as I don't really have time to do a PhD in physics!!

But this is just the hard sciences. Where does your manifesto stop? If political science, anthropology and sociology all define the types of socio-political systems that have been observed, or theoretically posited, does that mean I can't explore new ways for a society to behave? Assuming I base it on plausible human behaviour (eg the urge to conform; the tendency to trust or mistrust authority, depending on culture and experience) – are you saying I can only write within the constraints of what the political scientists say is possible?

Perhaps the sciences governing human behaviour aren't included as science within your manifesto. If so, where is the border between 'real' science and 'not real' science?

Wow – this real/not real is a fraught question, huh?

I guess I'm just not confident that anybody has 'reality' totally and 100% nailed for all time. And even if they do, I'll put my hand up for living in a Universe where there are more things dreamt of, Horatio.

Now that we know the Galaxy is packed to the rafters with extra-solar planets, it's inevitable that we will find one that looks like Earth, and when we do, the urge to go there and see it will be overwhelming for some. Did you know that accelerating at just 1G for 50 years can take you to the absolute limits of the visible Universe? Where you'd find the energy or the reaction mass is another question! The point is, though, that travelling to staggeringly distant places within a human lifetime is merely a technological question, even within the light-speed limit.

And that doesn't begin to touch the strange places our technology is taking us. Cyberpunk writers have been twitchy and excited about it for nearly a couple of decades already, but there is lots more to explore as (some of us) become transhuman in all kinds of different ways. And what about the biological sciences? The 'uplifting' of species, longevity, gene hackers, artificial life, planned evolution… It's an endless list.

No, I think even without FTL travel, science fiction is still wide open for excitment and exploration.

Seriously though, ruling out FTL or some other way of using the space-time warp to advantage is severely limiting SF. If all (and I'm not saying you're saying) SF writers were to rule it out then we'd see such a contraction of the genre as to make it homogenous and stale, no? BUT, what you've posted is tremendous food for thought.

I do agree that top SF writers need to keep abreast of technological developments in order to keep their writing real.