Ashley R. Pollard's Blog, page 13

Visualizing 4D Spacetime

The video above is a visualization created with mathematics of a spacetime manifold. I thought this was an excellent representation of what looking at what our universe would look seen in 4D spacetime.

Yep, this is the stuff that goes through my head, and all part of the research that goes into my Gate Walkers holographic multiverse setting.

New World of Drei Story

Mission Two is now available and in due course there should be a working World of Drei series page on Amazon (currently up, and sorted).

Anyway, at last Mission Two is on sale.

Blurb

Rendered unconscious by an explosion, Lieutenant Morozova woke to a vision of a crystal mountain. Now caught between life and death, she must not only survive the rigors of war, but also the challenge of the mythical world of Russian legends.

The fourth episode set in the World of Drei universe, "Mission Two," a brilliantly ingenious vision of future war deepens the human story behind those who face an unrelenting opponent.

Go make your day brighter by getting yourself a copy.

Climate Change Science

Don't let the click-bait title put you off. Having watched this, it puts into context why the science is mistrusted, because the general public don't fully understand the scientific method.

Add into that the tendency for click-bait titles in reporting and we end up where both sides of the debate (deniers versus supporters) are attacking the science.

This discusses the models and how the theory doesn't translate well into specific predictions. Anyway, well worth watching.

Pronoun's Progress

I'm a lifelong science fiction fan and reader. As a writer I now study and practice writing and I was thinking about Isaac Asimov who posited that there were three types of SF stories.

Adventure: Man invents car, gets into a car chase with a villain.
Gadget: Man invents car, holds lecture on how it works.
Social: Man invents car, gets stuck in traffic in the suburbs.

It is to the last type of story that inspired today's post.

One of the few things that's unique to the SF genre is working out the unintended consequences of any new technology or changes in cultural mores etc.. Asimov himself wrote about mobile phones in his robot novels, which I've mentioned before, had a scene where a character apologizes that he can't speak as he's in a public space.

Oh, if only that were true, huh!?

So who would have predicted pronoun choice as a sociocultural prediction? I know some authors wrote about variant genders, or the ability to change sex, but who would've thought that this would lead to people introducing themselves with a declaration of their preferred gender?

Not me. Yet here we are.

I had to go away and think about this, have been mulling it over for several years. At one level I'm bothered by people declaring their gender pronouns, but on the other hand I'm a boring old fart and the times they are a changing. I generally predisposed to accept changes if they are for the better.

I mean, you'd be crazy not to. Amirite? Hah!

So while I may not be in the habit of declaring my preferred pronoun, I'm cool with it.

Of course if pushed my instinctual reaction would be, you're smart, figure it out. Yeah, guess I've gotta work on being more agreeable. However, an exchange I had with a friend who suggested, fucker, you fucker as the new go to pronoun, which I should've seen coming.

So, the unintended consequences of social change may lead to unintended outcomes, and therefore one should be careful what you wish for. The future's bright and stranger than you can imagine.

Twenty Predictions for 2020

 
Just for fun, no guarantees, my predictions for 2020:

1. Well intentioned people will remain ill informed.

2. We have not reached peak Donner-Kruger, the stupid will burn the world.

3. Ad hominem attacks will continue to push people into opposite camps.

4. Disagreeing with a person will be evidence of you being a racist, fascist, homophobe etc.

5. Social media continues to hack our behaviours.

6. Pedantic debates will rise over the correct use of language and pronouns etc.

7. People will be outraged at other people being outrageous.

8. The drive to increase diversity will lead to less diversity of opinions.

9. Speaking truth to power will continue creating an unlikely alliance of left wing feminists supporting Alt-right misogynists.

10. Freedom of speech has become a weapons used by both left and right to define the other side as evil.

11. Debates will center on feelings and the lack of good faith by both sides.

12. People will forget that other people's opinions are not their concern.

13. Civility in discourse is drowned out by cancel culture.

14.  Everybody on both sides of the political divide will be disappointed in:
     a. Any political outcomes.
     b. Efforts to address climate change.
     c. Arguing over capitalism versus Marxism.

15. People still don’t understand the scientific method.

16. People still want simple solutions to complex problems.

17. The A.I apocalypse will not happen.

18. We will not meet aliens, but that isn’t proof of the Fermi paradox either.

19. World War 3 won’t start (edgy prediction).

20. Comedians will be more politically astute than the mainstream media.

Have at it. Catch you on the bounce.

Looking Back in the Mirror of Life

 
I've had a lovely Xmas break with my partner, and while it was quiet with only one trip out for lunch with friends on New Years day, we've both been enjoying the chance to chillax.

Mostly we've been catching up with TV shows: watched the Good Place Season one, which was so good we had to immediately get Season two, an excellent show that tickled my interest in philosophy (the discipline I love and hate in equal measure); followed by Season two of The Orville, which was excellent; then Season two of Discovery, which was also very good, but I could have done with a little less emoting in some of the scenes that interrupted the pace.

We've both been reading, and I managed to finished a lot of good books.

First up were the six books in the space opera/Mil-SF Frontlines series by Mark Kloos, highly recommended. Read books nine through to thirteen of Jim Butcher's Dresden Files, which are compulsively readable; and after that it was Diane Rowland's White Trash Zombie series books five and six.

And as a result I've been a feeling a lot brighter.

In other news about the state of the author, on New Years eve I had a steroid injection into my right thumb. Hopefully this means in a week or so I will be able to use both hands at the same time, which will be a relief (given that not being able to use both hands made the last year suck big time).

Just one of the many fall-outs of my rheumatoid arthritis returning in 2018. An unwelcome relapse caused by the stress from my old job with the NHS. But 2019 was made worse when the side-effects of my anti-rheumatoid medication sent me down into the depths of despair, which knocked me for six.

Though, as I sit here thinking back over the last ten years, I really need to remember how bad things were back in 2010 for a sense of perspective.

Back then I was taking methotrexate to treat my rheumatoid arthritis. Unfortunately, the medication suppresses the immune system, which meant the cysts in my breasts, became inflamed and went septic. That landed me in hospital and having emergency surgery.

So 2019 wasn't as bad as 2010.

However, the realization that no matter how much I enjoy being a therapist, the stress of dealing with patient's emotional upsets is not doing my health any good, and that career is over.

But, I must be grateful for the chance this has afforded me to start writing. Bringing my stories to market has been a challenge, but I've learnt so much that I see the past experiences as a silver lining of the cloud that has blighted my career.

Anyway, enough maudlin reflection.

I've been happily working on collecting the first three novelettes of my World of Drei stories. This will be the first volume of an open ended series about the emergence of an AI during a Russian civil war. It has been fun to do, and an interesting direction has emerged from it, but more news about that in another post.

In the meantime I'm waiting for the book to come back from copy editing, so while I'm waiting I've put the cover up as a tease for everyone to enjoy. You may also have noticed I re-did the covers of the first three stories too.

OK, that covers everything I want to say, so I will end now by wishing all my readers a happy and prosperous New Year. Catch you all on the bounce.

Merry Christmas 2019

And I sit here typing these words, wondering where the heck did December go?

But they have flown by, so it must be time to wish you all a very Merry Christmas.

See you all on the bounce.

Dead Authors Dinner Party

 
The other night I awoke thinking about which dead authors I would like to talk to.

The first one would be Isaac Asimov. Having my bum pinched by him would be a small price to pay for talking to the man who aroused my interest in science. Besides it's apparent that he was a damaged person whose neuroses impacted him, if I could go back and offer him therapy, who knows how it may have changed him.

After that it would Robert A. Heinlein, the first science fiction author whose books I bought as a lonely child, to pass the time during a wet summer holiday in Ilfracombe, where my family went every year (BTW: William Shatner's comment about Ilfracombe makes me laugh). He was a survivor of tuberculosis and a life long stammerer.

Arthur C. Clarke, who I saw once and met at a one day convention in London, back when it was possible to meet authors at really tiny events. It would be nice to sit down and talk to the man who has probably inspired my writing the most. The pillars in my Gate Walker series are a homage to the Monoliths of 2001. Another author who struggled with prejudice.

After that, A. E. van Vogt would be the next author I would've liked to have met and talked to. Much derided by Damon Knight, which destroyed van Vogt's reputation, his story The Black Destroyer, which I read in The Voyage of the Space Beagle, stands as a testament to how wrong Damon was.

Then Cordwainer Smith, pseudonym of Paul Linebarger. Gosh, I imagine a great discourse ranging from his Godfather Sun Yat-sen to his work in American intelligence, psychological warfare, and perhaps even talking about his experiences with psychotherapy.

Also Robert E. Howard, along with Novalyne Price. I would admit that the temptation to do couple therapy with them, and help Howard with his depression would be a thing. Imagine if they'd married, and he had lived.

Finally, H. P. Lovecraft and Sonia Greene, again this would be one of those situations where I would be tempted to do couple counseling, and help the very damaged Lovecraft with his crippling neuroses to live a happier life.

Sweet dreams are made of this.

PS: A takeaway from this is that all the authors I admire were products of their time and damaged in some way or another.

The Fermi Paradox

I imagine that most science fiction fans will be familiar with the so called Fermi Paradox. From Wikipedia that quotes the Hart-Tipler argument:

1. There are billions of stars in the galaxy that are similar to the Sun, and many of these stars are billions of years older than the Solar system.

2. With high probability*, some of these stars have Earth-like planets, and if the Earth is typical, some may have already developed intelligent life. And some of these civilizations may have developed interstellar travel, a step the Earth is investigating now (but we would only see these aliens only if they have faster than light travel).

3. Even at the slow pace of currently envisioned interstellar travel, the Milky Way galaxy could be completely traversed in a few million years.**

I don't think there is an actual paradox, and I'm not the first to come to this conclusion. I'd be shocked if I was.

The Argument

But here's the thing I realized.

A first order approximation for going around our galaxy at light speed, assuming you don't stop, would take 314 thousand years. The minimum if stopping once (as in go halfway around the galaxy and colonize one planet), and you would have to quadruple that to allow for acceleration and deceleration, which means 1,236,000 million years have passed.

Okay, that doesn't sound so bad, but assuming you want to stop at all the planets that can support life (minimum approximation 100,000***), then one has to make a decision how many expeditions can be sent at the same time.

This leaves a range that falls between a minimum of 1,236,000 million years up to 123,600,000,000 one hundred and twenty-three billion years (1 to 100,000 expeditions) to colonize the galaxy. Not a very useful range, but hopefully you can where I'm going with this?

But I seriously doubt that one can colonize the galaxy at a one-to-one equivalent of light-speed.

Therefore, starting again with the assumption that the galaxy can be colonized, then it will have to be done at sub-light speeds. The best theoretical drive would be a black hole (the interesting stuff in the video start at around 8 minutes). For a more detailed explanation of a black hole drive aka Torch engine .

Even so, my best guess for the maximum speed would be 0.5c or 0.25 average for a journey to allow for deceleration again. But that's a highball number, 0.1c or 0.05c average might be more realistic (for definitions of realistic when applied to engineering that's way beyond our current level).

So a minimum of 4,944,000 million years up to 494,400,000,000 four hundred and ninety-four billion years and change.

At 0.1c then the quickest the galaxy can be colonized (100,000 worlds) is 12,360,000 million years up to a staggering 1,236,000,000,000 one point two trillion years.

If we take an average of the highest and lowest times then it would roughly take 31.4 billion years to colonize the galaxy.

So, the universe hasn't been around long enough for us to meet aliens.

NB: When I finished this I realized that there was yet another way to calculate the time to explore/colonize the galaxy and that was work out the average distance between habitable star systems, which a ball park figures comes out to 3,126 light years.****

So running the numbers will depends on how many expeditions you send out. The minimum would again be quite modest 3,142 years, but I don't think it's feasible to travel that fast.

Assuming 0.1c, then the minimum would rise to 31,400,000 and obviously rise higher since the assumption is sending 100,000 expeditions out at once. Your guess is as good as mine about how many expeditions would be sent and how much time would occur between them.

So again I'm left with the conclusion that we haven't been around long enough to have met or discovered aliens.

Addendum: There is another explanation for lack of contact too. It's by Geoffrey A. Landis and is called, The Fermi Paradox: An Approach Based on Percolation Theory . It comes to the conclusion that given how large space is, not all possible planets will be colonized (physic theory of percolation).

In conclusion, this is what I research when writing. Enjoy.

* The Drake Equation.
** Not feasible unless you have faster than light travel.  
*** No one really knows (see The Drake Equation for the assumptions) as there could be one or two trillion stars in our galaxy (1,000,000,000,0000 to 2,000,000,000,0000 stars).
**** Figure derived from a first order approximation of the volume of the galaxy divided by the number of habital star systems to arrive at an average distance between them.

The Divisiveness Around Transgendered People

Disclaimer

This is a long response, to a furore on another blog. A fellow writer, who is a good man with a lovely wife. I posted a version of this on his blog, but I have no wish to troll him with continued comments there.

Hence this post where people can kick the ball in my playpen.

For my British readers, I'm being aware of different sensibilities between myself and Americans.

Conditional Assumptions

I look up to the American Constitution in amazement.

I wish I were an American, but life events have left me unable to realize my dream of being a citizen of the greatest force for good in the world. Without you guys we'd all be speaking German or Russian, and with all due to respect to any Germans and Russians readers, no thank you.

The preamble to the Constitution begins:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

These assumptions get us/me to...

The affirmation that the government of the United States exists to serve its citizens, and safeguard the interests of majority rule and minority rights of liberty and equality, and of the federal and state governments.

I disavow communism, because it's a utopian ideology. Homo sapiens didn't evolve to live in utopias. For communism to work, humanity would have to stop being human beings.

For the record, I regard myself as a pragmatic humanist. A flawed human being like everyone else.

Issues Arising

There are a number of issues, but this should not be thought of as a complete list of all the issues.

1. The refusal to use he for she and vice versa, because it's a lie, and therefore an ethical problem.

People who believe this must be an absolute blast to live with. Imagine when their wife/girlfriend asks, "Does my bum look big in this dress?"

Parties must be a total hoot too, when you truthfully tell friends and family what you really think.

2. The refusal to be forced to use a gender pronoun, restricts the freedom of speech.

I agree with the right for people to have of freedom of speech. But right to say what you want comes with the responsibility for any offense you cause. In my experience, a lack of politeness often leads to a smack in the mouth.

Even Jordan Peterson calls transgendered women she. I've seen him do it

3. Tired of facts being twisted for political correctness. There are two genders, not 54. Your sex comes from the chromosomes that cannot be changed. Getting a boob job and a choppadickoffame surgery is simply cosmetic surgery.

I agree that gender reassignment surgery doesn't change a persons sex.

I agree that gender reassignment surgery is cosmetic.

If by genders you mean what is observable, measurable, and can be replicated, then the science establishes that sex isn’t so much binary, but a bimodal distribution that appears to be binary at coarse scales

Therefore science or facts are irrelevant when you say you are presenting yourself as a member of the opposite sex.

So, I support trans rights, but it’s fundamentally not a fact based scientific issue.

4. Wanting to change your gender is a mental illness

Vague, unscientific, wishy-washy and meaningless dog whistling.

5. You can call yourself (insert choice of: gorilla, attack helicopter, etc.)

Gorillas in the room often go unseen. But the argument is fallacious, because they're aimed at straw gorillas that don't exist.

6. They're Trannies.

This is a slur against cross-dressers. Feel free to use slurs, but again you must take responsibility for what you said, and not be surprised when someone smacks you in the mouth.

7. It's insanity, this means War!

Over the top hyperbole, because it isn't a war, yet. And let's hope the current madness in American politics doesn't degenerate into war. The last time you guys had at it, more American died than had been killed in all the wars up until the recent one in Afghanistan.

8. It's a perversion that can't be excused.

The agenda that drives this argument goes against against everything that makes America and Americans great.

9. Luring men into sex with men who look like women or vice versa.

Here's a link to an openly transgendered woman

So I can see that being tricked might make you feel ashamed, or disgusted. These are powerful emotions. But feelings are not facts, as I've discussed above, so just mind your own business.

Besides, I seriously doubt that the first thing on any man's mind when he looks at her is whether she has XX chromosomes.

I think she looks like a woman. Pretty too. I wouldn't kick her out of bed. I'm a lesbian, go figure.

Conclusion

If you've got this far, and you agree with me, excellent. If I've triggered an emotional response sorry, but it's not my problem. If you use any of the arguments above to justify your opinions about transgender issues, I'm afraid to tell you this, but you are ill informed.

However, all is not lost, if you go away and challenge your beliefs

Start with this question: How do you know?