# Sci-fi inventions the world is better off without **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [December 22, 2005, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-inventions-the-world-is-better-off-without/336815 "2005-12-22T16:55:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Mr.Blue\_Sky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d26b3c/32.png) [@Mr.Blue\_Sky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Blue_Sky)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2005, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-inventions-the-world-is-better-off-without/336815/61 "2005-12-23T20:36:46Z")
> [@Regallag\_The\_Axe](#): > > What’s a Shrike? It’s from Dan Simmons’ Hyperion saga. It’s a humanoid-shaped wepaon covered in ultra sharp blades. It can stop time as it slices and dices its victims. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Blue\_Sky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d26b3c/32.png) [@Mr.Blue\_Sky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Blue_Sky)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2005, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-inventions-the-world-is-better-off-without/336815/62 "2005-12-23T20:56:19Z")
> [@Mr. Blue Sky](#): > > It’s from Dan Simmons’ Hyperion saga. It’s a humanoid-shaped wepaon covered in ultra sharp blades. It can stop time as it slices and dices its victims. [Here’s a pic and description](http://www.seanparnell.com/Hyperion%20Cantos/Web%20Pages/Shrike%20and%20Tree%20of%20Thorns.htm). ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2005, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-inventions-the-world-is-better-off-without/336815/63 "2005-12-23T21:46:13Z")
> [@Mtgman](#): > > I once spoke with a history professor who said he believed Einstein was not far from figuring out how to convert matter to energy and vice versa. If that were true, don’t you think someone else, armed with scientific knowledge even vaster than Einstein’s (science being a cumulative enterprise), would have figured it out by now? ---
**Author:** ![Mtgman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5a626/32.png) [@Mtgman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mtgman)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2005, 7:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-inventions-the-world-is-better-off-without/336815/64 "2005-12-24T07:14:02Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > If that were true, don’t you think someone else, armed with scientific knowledge even vaster than Einstein’s (science being a cumulative enterprise), would have figured it out by now? Not at all. Mankind can stand on the brink of a major discovery for decades or even centuries. All Einstein’s notes, papers, working sessions, etc. do is bring us up to where he was, it doesn’t help us see where he might have been able to go had he lived longer. Each step forward in the cumulative enterprise of science relies on the ingenuity of the individual making it. Once the step is taken then obviously the knowledge is shared, but every advance happens within the mind of a single individual who then shares it with others. Once the advance is shared and verified, then the state of the art advances, but this incremental growth relies on the capabilities of individuals to take the first step. If one believed, as the professor obviously did, that Einstein was an extremely rare individual then it wouldn’t be at all difficult to believe Einstein may have been able to make this discovery and others, even with the benefit of Einstein’s body of work, would not. Enjoy, Steven ---
**Author:** ![2nd\_Law](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/2/f475e1/32.png) [@2nd\_Law](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/2nd_Law)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2005, 8:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-inventions-the-world-is-better-off-without/336815/65 "2005-12-24T08:34:34Z")
Reactionless drives, as in Niven’s Known Space series. While being able to propel your spaceship without the need of reaction mass might be nice, it also would mean anyone with one of those ships could relatively easily move comets/asteroids into collision courses with inhabited planets. ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2005, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-inventions-the-world-is-better-off-without/336815/66 "2005-12-24T14:36:14Z")
> [@2nd Law](#): > > Reactionless drives, as in Niven’s Known Space series. > > While being able to propel your spaceship without the need of reaction mass might be nice, it also would mean anyone with one of those ships could relatively easily move comets/asteroids into collision courses with inhabited planets. **Or** uninhabited ones, making it a terriffic tool for terratorming. ---
**Author:** ![Love\_Rhombus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/love_rhombus/32/10694_2.png) [@Love\_Rhombus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Love_Rhombus)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2005, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-inventions-the-world-is-better-off-without/336815/67 "2005-12-24T15:16:19Z")
Replicators would be an awful weapon, if you think about it, Matter transmutation+ very nasty. “I’ll turn all the water to acid. Then I’ll drop five tons of compacted medical waste out of my ship and turn it into titanium! That should give them a surprise!” Also, wide angle multi-purpose transporter beams could get very nasty: pick up a few hundred people and drop them into the ocean, or space. Or just into buildings. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2005, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-inventions-the-world-is-better-off-without/336815/68 "2005-12-24T19:53:17Z")
> [@Ranchoth](#): > > I’ve noticed that pretty much _any_ sci-fi-ish technology that’s shown being publicly introduced to an otherwise “normal” fictional world tends to make things end badly. No matter how benevolent they’re intended to be. Some kind of Ned Ludd/Victor Frankenstein cultural undercurrent, or somethin’. Hear, hear! Bring back the spirit of Hugo Gernsback and John W. Campbell! New technologies are **fun!** ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2005, 4:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-inventions-the-world-is-better-off-without/336815/69 "2005-12-25T04:50:46Z")
> [@Mtgman](#): > > Not at all. Mankind can stand on the brink of a major discovery for decades or even centuries. All Einstein’s notes, papers, working sessions, etc. do is bring us up to where he was, it doesn’t help us see where he might have been able to go had he lived longer. Each step forward in the cumulative enterprise of science relies on the ingenuity of the individual making it. Once the step is taken then obviously the knowledge is shared, but every advance happens within the mind of a single individual who then shares it with others. Once the advance is shared and verified, then the state of the art advances, but this incremental growth relies on the capabilities of individuals to take the first step. > > If one believed, as the professor obviously did, that Einstein was an extremely rare individual then it wouldn’t be at all difficult to believe Einstein may have been able to make this discovery and others, even with the benefit of Einstein’s body of work, would not. > > Enjoy, > Steven Sounds like the Cult of Personality to me. If science is so dependent of individual brilliance, why do we so often see instances in which several groups simultaneously, or almost simultaneously, make crucial discoveries? The most famous example would be Alfred Russell Wallace and Charles Darwin’s co-discovery of natural selection (the focal point of evolution) but there have been many others. Fact of the matter is, Wallace and Darwin were building on the work of Hugh Miller, whose book “The Old Red Sandstone” convincingly established the idea that the earth had been around for million upon millions of years. Once that idea was established in science, it was only a matter of time before someone picked up on the fact that speciation could occur thorugh natural selection of useful traits over the millions of years that no one was sure the Earth had existed for, prior to Miller. There were quite a few scientists sniffing around the notion of a unified field theory in the early part of the 20th century. If not Einstein, someone else would probably have come up with an equivalent to Einstein’s theory. Nils Bohr, whom many consider to have been as brilliant a physicist as Einstein, has been cited as a likely candidate. In short, sorry, no sale on your theory. Science is indeed a cumulative endeavor. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2005, 5:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-inventions-the-world-is-better-off-without/336815/70 "2005-12-25T05:18:51Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Hear, hear! Bring back the spirit of Hugo Gernsback and John W. Campbell! New technologies are **fun!** I’ve read a few histories of SF, and they all seem to point to the fact that in the 60s and 70s, when SF started to get critical consideration and was also one of the few paying markets for short stories, a lot of lit-crit types moved into SF and fucked it up tremendously. They were basically a bunch of idiot Luddites who didn’t have the great feel for the potential of technology that the doctors (Asimov) engineers (Clarke) navy officers (Heinlein) and such that made SF so powerful back in the 50s. To me, much of the best SF is still being written by literary outsiders – scientists like Larry Niven and Vernor Vinge. A few literary types like Iain Banks have overcome the general Luddite notions of literary SF writers, but I generally consider English majors who write SF to be a drain on the genre. ---
**Author:** ![Cardinal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cardinal/32/4000_2.png) [@Cardinal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cardinal)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2005, 7:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-inventions-the-world-is-better-off-without/336815/71 "2005-12-25T07:41:53Z")
> [@Podkayne](#): > > Goin’ 'way back to the Gaslight Era: food pills. They’d be cool for disaster situations, or for convenience on those days when you’re too busy to stop for lunch, but imagine what it would be like if food pills displaced _actual food_! How awful! I have to laugh when smart people say, or are depicted as saying, that we’ll eventually just eat food from a pill. Despite the fact that about the only way to make food smaller is to dehydrate it and still be properly fed (protein and fiber take up space), you’d never be happy just eating pills. Your stomach is evolved to be FULL of real food, because that’s the fuel your anscestors survived on. ---
**Author:** ![Sublight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@Sublight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sublight)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2005, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-inventions-the-world-is-better-off-without/336815/72 "2005-12-25T14:28:23Z")
> [@panache45](#): > > Woody Allen’s Orgasmatron. > > Not that I wouldn’t give my left hand to own one. Sounds like a good trade, since with your own Orgasmatron, you wouldn’t need a left hand anymore. ---
**Author:** ![Clothahump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/51bf81/32.png) [@Clothahump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Clothahump)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2005, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-inventions-the-world-is-better-off-without/336815/73 "2005-12-25T15:56:06Z")
> [@Ethilrist](#): > > Teleporters. Niven wrote a short story a while back about flash mobs, caused by people seeing a breaking news story and teleporting across the country so they could see it first-hand. > > Fusion power. Again, Niven, with the Kzinti Lesson: A fusion drive is efficient as a weapon in direct proportion to its efficiency as a drive. > > Organlegging. Wow. Niven’s got a pretty creepy mind, doesn’t he? Not to mention his concept of the droud. That is really something that could easily destroy society. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2005, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-inventions-the-world-is-better-off-without/336815/74 "2005-12-25T19:04:40Z")
> [@Clothahump](#): > > Not to mention his concept of the droud. That is really something that could easily destroy society. Or put an end to crime! 😃 I’m flashing on the episode of _Sliders_ where our heroes find themselves in an alternate America where heavy drug use is mandated by law. At one point they’re trying to figure out how to break into a laboratory – and then they try the door and find it unlocked. The obvious implication, which they don’t speak out loud: No wonder the government wants everybody on drugs! It keeps them too mellow to commit crimes! (And yet somehow the productive economy still manages to function.) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-inventions-the-world-is-better-off-without/336815.md?page=3)