Proportions mod: So confusing!

[oleg]

Originally posted by DirectorTsaarx:
One final point - I have to agree with PvK about research centers not necessarily being linearly additive. Research institutions (at least the ones I've worked for) are notorious for competing with other labs (or even with other scientists in the same lab), thus reducing the additive effect (and negating some of the "parallel processing" benefits). There's some benefit in that each lab will work harder to get the result first, but I wouldn't say that two labs competing with each other will get a job done twice as fast. What's the old saying, "9 women can't have a baby in a month"? Now, research isn't exactly the same thing, but forcing 9 labs to work on a small piece of some large project isn't necessarily going to result in completion of that large project 9 times faster than if a single lab was working on it. In that case, there are two limiting factors:

• Coordination between the labs to ensure that each lab's result will interoperate with the other labs

That first point comes up in discussions of parallel processing on computers; no operation can be performed faster than the slowest task (or, more completely, than the longest chain of serial tasks, since some tasks depend on results from other tasks). The second point has bitten me in the... neck... repeatedly. Two separate Groups come up with elegant solutions to their respective pieces of a problem, and the solutions are completely incompatible. Now, if we assume absolute dictatorial management, that second point becomes less of a problem; but, in SE4 terms, unless your race description includes something like "fanatical devotion to the leader", I'd be hard-pressed to guarantee that the scientists will pay much attention to said dictator.
Anyway, that's my two cents on the current discussion. Feel free to disagree...

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.

[DirectorTsaarx]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.