STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE 9/24/'03: "Extinction" (1 Viewer)

[Glenn Overholt]

Since everybody is hung up on this language thing, couldn't their new speech be the result of some physical changes in their vocal cords? They would sound funny to us, but they would be able to (at the worst) say the word to themselves, and have it translated back into English.

We really shouldn't dwell on this transporter thing, either. Maybe it cannot be done now, but don't forget that the people of our planet knew scientifically, I might add, that the world was flat for thousands of years. We were the center of the universe, and the heavens revolved around us.

We could easily still be in the first stages of our potential knowledge.

Glenn

 

[TheLongshot]

Since everybody is hung up on this language thing, couldn't their new speech be the result of some physical changes in their vocal cords? They would sound funny to us, but they would be able to (at the worst) say the word to themselves, and have it translated back into English.

Thank you, Glenn. That's what I'm trying to get across to Rex, but apparantly I'm not being blunt enough.

Course, it is a silly argument anyways, since my friend who works in genetics, kept saying, "You can't do that!" Course, she says that often with most SciFi TV, so nothing new there...

Jason

 

[Jason Seaver]

Since everybody is hung up on this language thing, couldn't their new speech be the result of some physical changes in their vocal cords?

Doesn't explain them understanding each other.

 

[Will_B]

The problem here is that you seem to misapprehend what "skills" are. They are "learned"---they can, by definition, never come with the territory (i.e., the genes).

Never? What arrogance, to pretend to know all that could ever (or never) be.

Funny thing is that when that kind of arrogance gets aired in scientific circles, it is usually followed by the old "burden of proof" argument - the argument that to make a scientist revise what he knows, he needs to be hit over the head with overwhelming evidence or he can't be bothered to consider it.

This is why science tends to advance, as Thomas Kuhn pointed out, as one generation dies off and another replaces it. Because people get stubborn when they think they know all that is, or could ever be, according to their past experience.

 

[Jason Seaver]

We could easily still be in the first stages of our potential knowledge.

Well, sure. But if you're going to act like what we know now doesn't matter, then Enterprise's mission might as well be to throw an eeeeeeeeeeevil ring into the magic volcano at the center of the Expanse. After all, we don't know that malicious jewelry and the like don't exist anywhere, or can't in the future.

Star Trek is science fiction. The futher it gets away from currently known or reasonably speculative science (or, at the very least, internal consistency for its made-up science), the less it's going to appeal to a certain part of its audience. And it's not just that I find it distasteful; it's less suspenseful for an informed audience member if the writers don't feel the need to acknowledge do their research and get the details right (or at least believable).

 

[Rex Bachmann]

Will_B wrote (post #65):

and I seem to be saying the same thing.