Proportions mod: So confusing!

DirectorTsaarx · #1 October 23rd, 2002, 11:08 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by oleg:
Actually, It is a good thing that several labs are working on similar projects - without peer review there would be no way to assure reliability and reproducability (sp.) of data. There would be no Science as we know it.

Good point; and that provides further support for the notion that multiple labs do NOT provide linear increases in technological progression. The science may be more accurate, thanks to peer review, but that doesn't make 4 labs twice as efficient as 2 labs...

geoschmo · #2 October 24th, 2002, 01:05 AM

On the other hand it's entirely possible that for some topics of research four labs would be more than twice as efficent as two labs. Sometimes in research and development the total is greater than the sum of the parts.

Because most of the time involved in coming up with new technologies is trying and ruling out possibilities that end up not working, and working along until a fortuitous happenstance occurs. The more different people you have working on these different posibilities in different places simultaneously, the more chance for someone to hit on one of these discoveries.

Geoschmo

Fyron · #3 October 24th, 2002, 02:39 AM

Just because you build more labs does not mean that you will instantly gain new staff to work in those labs. You can only have so many qualified researchers. Throwing a lot of money into it doesn't necessarily mean that you will get more Newtons, Eintsteins, Hawkings, etc.

geoschmo · #4 October 24th, 2002, 04:02 AM

Very true. However there is often a difference between pure scientific discovery and technological advancment. The greats that you mention and others like them are exceedingly rare. Most of technology and invention is a gradual process of hard work and experimentation that is built on the work of these greats. "Standing on the shoulders of giants". And often great intuitive leaps have been made by otherwise obscure researchers that never did anything truely notable before or after their "one great discovery".

The great theoretical physics done by Einstein and others uncovered the principles of atomic power, but it was the grunt work done by many labs all over the world that put the theories into pratical applications like nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons. Whether or speed of advancment in this grunt work is linerly related to the number of people working on the problem is debatable. Likely reasonable arguments could be made on both sides. I am not sure if it's possible to ever know for sure, even for past discoveries, much less predict future ones.

Don't get me wrong though. I am not trying to make the case that Proportions somehow "has it wrong". I am simply engaging in a philisophical discussion.

I tend to take a much more abstract view of all of this stuff in SE4 anyway, rather than try to shoehorn it into a strict realistic view. I see research in SE4 as being the more practical application side of things. It's the R&D. In many cases "more money" is exactly what brings about innovation.

Geoschmo

Graeme Dice · #5 October 24th, 2002, 05:38 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
This "debate" is really funny.

Graeme Dice, no offense, but you have completely missed almost all of (if not all of) PvK's points, and you are insanely wrong about how advanced humans will be in a few centuries.

I debate for the sake of debate, whether or not I truly agree with a position. I also don't think that it's that far off in the future where we will be able to send off an automated factory to a nickel/iron asteroid, and have it produce just about anything from the materials present.

Graeme Dice · #6 October 24th, 2002, 05:39 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by oleg:
30 years ago we were on Moon. Where are we now ?
Nay, progress is greatly overrated.[/QB]

Right now we are about as far from getting a man to Mars as we were from getting a man to the Moon when Kennedy committed the States to it. In other words, we could have the technological capability to get a person there and back again within a couple of decades if we decided to do it.

Mylon · #7 October 24th, 2002, 07:35 AM

I dare claim that we have the technology to do it now. It's just that lifting up enough people, supplies, and fuel for a 6 month mission may prove a little more costly than what anyone would be willing to bear. The problem usually isn't what's possibe, but what is practical. SEIV seems to casually ignore this as you can easily run your empire into bankrupcy without rioting of any sort, much less being "relieved" of command for poor performance.

[ October 24, 2002, 06:36: Message edited by: Mylon ]