Wouldn't it be cool to have super-powers?
That's the premise for a huge number of TV shows, movies, books, and of course comics. Apparently wondering what it would be like to be able to fly, read minds, teleport, or stop time is a pretty universal past-time.
And as every fan of superhero stories knows, one of the most important elements is the origin story--how the hero gets their powers. They could be from an alien planet, or be vested with an alien artifact. They could be an ordinary person with access to specialized technology. Radiation could be involved. Or it could be that humanity is evolving to its next state, and that state involves super-powers.
This last one is among the most popular. It's the basis for X-men, one of the biggest superhero franchises out there, as well as the TV show Heroes, and numerous other series. And it's the basis for the new TV series (which is a re-boot of the old TV series) The Tomorrow People.
I've watched the first couple of episodes of The Tomorrow People, and I liked it. I'm hopeful that, by focussing on just three powers, the show will be able to look at their implications with a little more depth than normal and avoid painting themselves into a corner (as in, "wait, doesn't Peter Patrelli have, like, every power? Why are there any world-threatening problems he can't solve?"). I also like the whole double-agent angle, and I hope the show has the courage to explore some murky waters and moral ambiguity around whether those with super-powers should be policed, and if so, how.
But what I want to talk about now is the science.
Yes, I'm sure you can already predict where this is going. "Evolution doesn't work like that, there would be many harmful mutations for every beneficial one, evolution can't 'look ahead', how could a single gene cause people to teleport..." Well, I'm not going to complain about those (mostly). I'm willing to cut a TV show some slack in its superhero origin stories; it's primarily entertainment after all. If I wasn't willing to suspend disbelief I wouldn't enjoy much media.
I do want to point out two things, though. First, the leader of the bad-guys is supposed to be an expert genetics researcher. At one point, when threatened by one of the super-mutants, he discusses how the tomorrow people can't kill anyone--they freeze up if they ever try to. Bad-guy-leader talks about how this will eventually be a beneficial mutation, but sadly right now it's a liability.
This is exactly the kind of mutation that can't evolve. Evolution has no "look-ahead"; genes proliferate because they're beneficial right now, not many generations from now. Having the scientist character basically rub the audience's face in bad science took me out of my suspension of disbelief for a moment. It's always better to leave some things unsaid and let viewer's imaginations fill in the details than to over-explain and blunder.
The more important issue is the show repeatedly referring to "the gene" that causes these superpowers. It also refers to the tomorrow people as being a new species, not entirely human--it's something they stress on multiple occasions in the first two episodes. The clear implication here is that a change in one gene can move you from "human" to "not-quite-human". And this, to me, is a problem.
In any species there is a fair bit of genetic variation--humans are no exception. You have different genes from the person standing next to you (unless you're standing next to your identical twin). A large part of that variation comes from sexual mixing--because you get half your genes from each parent (and because there's a lot of genes to pick each half from) you end up with a unique mix of genes.
And of course there are also mutations. Humans have an estimated average mutation rate of 175 mutations per generation--meaning the average person has 175 new mutations they didn't get from their parents. Since each person also inherits the 175 mutations that their parents had, and the 175 their grand-parents had, etc, etc, we're all walking around with thousands and thousands of mutations. (Sadly, after extensive testing, I can report that none of my mutations have led to latent super-powers.)
None of this variation makes any of us not human; it just means we're all unique. Humans simply aren't a mono-culture.
Why am I picking on this particular point? Because in our non-fictional world, people have used a small locus of genes to argue that certain other people weren't fully human. Genes like the ones controlling skin pigmentation, or hair texture, or even nose width. We have a long, sad history of classify some people as subhuman, and even today there's still some hold-outs to that view.
This may be part of the point in some superhero stories. Certainly in a number of the X-men stories the parallels between the mutants and oppressed minorities in the real world were intentional. I worry, though, that the emphasis The Tomorrow People puts on a single gene leading to a new species will lead audiences to internalize the message, "different genes always mean different (sub)species". This would be a disservice, regardless of what else the story might say about tolerance.
It would be nice to hear, just once, in a story about mutants with super-powers, someone point out that mutations aren't rare, and that genetic variation doesn't make some people not human.
Can we work on that, TV writers?
Showing posts with label science fiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label science fiction. Show all posts
Monday, 21 October 2013
Monday, 5 August 2013
Humans vs Robots, in Space!
I noticed a couple of stories popping up over the weekend.
First, there was this one, about a Japanese robot that is heading to the International Space Station as part of a study to see if talking robots can provide emotional support to astronauts on long missions.
The second story was Chris Hadfield's official retirement, and the angst this prompted about the future of Canada's human spaceflight program, which is set to be overhauled soon.
It seems like there's something about the humanoid shape. After all, there are tons of robots in space; there's a giant one crawling around Mars right now (that just celebrated its first birthday there!). Given that almost any human-less space probe fits the definition of "robot", robots have done by far the bulk of the space exploration to date. But now that we're sending a human-shaped robot into space, well isn't that something?
The angst over human spaceflight is also a little puzzling. After all, there is the aforementioned giant robot crawling around Mars. There have also been high-profile missions to Jupiter and Saturn in the past few years. Looking at the enormous recent progress in miniature robots and the interfaces we might use to control them, and the nascent rise of private space flight, and it's tempting to conclude that we're on the cusp of a golden age of space exploration. The angst is understandable for those people who have dedicated their careers to getting bodily into space, but for the rest of us the future looks exciting.
Perhaps it's a narrative failure. After all, we have all kinds of stories of the intrepid space pilot piloting their intrepid spaceship (more than a few times the stories have even gone so far as to name the spaceship "Intrepid"). Not so much with the autonomous robot probes.
It's worth noting, though, that the intrepid space pilot largely came out of a piece of government propaganda. As Tom Wolfe notes in The Right Stuff, when NASA originally looked for people to send into space, they weren't looking for pilot skills. They knew better than anyone that whomever they sent up needed primarily to be able to keep their cool and occasionally press the right buttons; there was no actual flying involved. The decision to pick astronauts from the test pilot ranks was due to simple expedience: the test pilots had already signed up for dangerous work, had already passed security checks, had already passed fitness checks, etc. Once that decision was made, then the government started putting it around that these were the best pilots on earth, and that they were chosen for their supreme piloting skills.
As for the humanoid robots? The main reason to tell stories about them is the technical issue that it's a lot easier on a TV or movie screen to portray a sentient robot by putting makeup on a human actor than by creating something guided by ideas about what functional future robots might actually look like. Humanoid robots really only make sense in a limited number of situations--like if they have to operate in an environment designed for humans. Floating freely in space, or even crawling, flying, jumping, or swimming around an unknown world, opens up possibilities for form limited only to the imagination.
So given that astronauts never actually needed mad pilot skills (well, except for landing the Shuttle, but that's a whole different kettle of WHY!?!?!), and robots don't need to look like humans, maybe it's time to build some new narratives. Unless the structure of space, time, and energy is very different than what we now think it is, non-humanoid robotic exploration is the future. I refuse to believe that we as a species might have the imagination to build machines to explore the cosmos, but not the imagination to put them in a compelling narrative.
So bring on the robot stories!
First, there was this one, about a Japanese robot that is heading to the International Space Station as part of a study to see if talking robots can provide emotional support to astronauts on long missions.
The second story was Chris Hadfield's official retirement, and the angst this prompted about the future of Canada's human spaceflight program, which is set to be overhauled soon.
It seems like there's something about the humanoid shape. After all, there are tons of robots in space; there's a giant one crawling around Mars right now (that just celebrated its first birthday there!). Given that almost any human-less space probe fits the definition of "robot", robots have done by far the bulk of the space exploration to date. But now that we're sending a human-shaped robot into space, well isn't that something?
The angst over human spaceflight is also a little puzzling. After all, there is the aforementioned giant robot crawling around Mars. There have also been high-profile missions to Jupiter and Saturn in the past few years. Looking at the enormous recent progress in miniature robots and the interfaces we might use to control them, and the nascent rise of private space flight, and it's tempting to conclude that we're on the cusp of a golden age of space exploration. The angst is understandable for those people who have dedicated their careers to getting bodily into space, but for the rest of us the future looks exciting.
Perhaps it's a narrative failure. After all, we have all kinds of stories of the intrepid space pilot piloting their intrepid spaceship (more than a few times the stories have even gone so far as to name the spaceship "Intrepid"). Not so much with the autonomous robot probes.
It's worth noting, though, that the intrepid space pilot largely came out of a piece of government propaganda. As Tom Wolfe notes in The Right Stuff, when NASA originally looked for people to send into space, they weren't looking for pilot skills. They knew better than anyone that whomever they sent up needed primarily to be able to keep their cool and occasionally press the right buttons; there was no actual flying involved. The decision to pick astronauts from the test pilot ranks was due to simple expedience: the test pilots had already signed up for dangerous work, had already passed security checks, had already passed fitness checks, etc. Once that decision was made, then the government started putting it around that these were the best pilots on earth, and that they were chosen for their supreme piloting skills.
As for the humanoid robots? The main reason to tell stories about them is the technical issue that it's a lot easier on a TV or movie screen to portray a sentient robot by putting makeup on a human actor than by creating something guided by ideas about what functional future robots might actually look like. Humanoid robots really only make sense in a limited number of situations--like if they have to operate in an environment designed for humans. Floating freely in space, or even crawling, flying, jumping, or swimming around an unknown world, opens up possibilities for form limited only to the imagination.
So given that astronauts never actually needed mad pilot skills (well, except for landing the Shuttle, but that's a whole different kettle of WHY!?!?!), and robots don't need to look like humans, maybe it's time to build some new narratives. Unless the structure of space, time, and energy is very different than what we now think it is, non-humanoid robotic exploration is the future. I refuse to believe that we as a species might have the imagination to build machines to explore the cosmos, but not the imagination to put them in a compelling narrative.
So bring on the robot stories!
Saturday, 27 July 2013
The power of narratives
We've all heard about how science fiction can inspire real science. If you frequent the type of nerdy, techy blogs I do, you'll see with some regularity "6 discoveries that science fiction thought of first", or some variant along those lines. We get it: science fiction gives us context for understanding science and technology and how it fits into our society.
The assumption, though, is that this is done more or less on purpose. That is, the science fiction writers are trying to extrapolate existing technology and imaging how it will affect society. They're doing thorough research into where technology might be headed; they're talking to engineers and scientists; they're making the best predictions they can. While this is true of a number of science fiction writers, many others are far more concerned with net effects of being able to do a particular thing, rather than the science that would go into doing it. This latter type of story can still provide powerful narratives for shaping our understanding of and reactions to new science.
An interesting example of this happened last week. In this article in Science, researchers reported being able to implant a memory into a mouse. How they did it is super cool, but I'm not going to go into it here; it's covered in the many articles I'm about to link to.
If, upon hearing that researchers could implant a memory, you thought of the 2010 movie Inception, you're not alone. A lot of other people did too. In fact, one of the authors of the study referred to the movie in talking to the press, and other one used the term "incept" to refer to the memory implantation process.
And here's what I find fascinating about this: the movie had nothing to do with the actual science that went into the mouse study. One of the things that I find by turns brilliant and infuriating about Christopher Nolan (who wrote and directed Inception) is that he has a keen sense for paring away details that aren't relevant to the story he's telling. In the case of Inception, the important points are that people can enter other people's dreams, and in doing so extract information or, rarely, implant ("incept") new ideas. Everything else is swept away; we don't find out anything about how people share dreams or where that technology comes from (other than that the military developed it), and we don't find out any psychological reason why moving an inanimate object in someone's dream would cause an idea to germinate and flower in their mind--we're simply told it is so. Nolan gives us only enough details to move the plot forward; the last thing he's trying to do is teach the audience some science.
The study on mice doesn't even use dreams. Nor does it plant the seed of an idea in the mice and allow it to grow. In fact, it's not even really about implanting ideas, but rather a particular remembered fear reaction. The only thing it has in common with the movie is that they both involve someone deliberately changing someone else's conception of reality.
Of course, that in and of itself is scary. The simple idea that there might come a time when our memories and ideas might not deliberately manipulated by someone else has terrifying implications for our sense of self. And that is why we turn to narratives to help us understand what's going on. Humans are story oriented. A significant part of what makes up a culture, and what distinguishes it from other cultures, is a collection of shared stories. We moderns may have moved away from myths as our explanations for how the world works, but that doesn't mean we don't have a need to frame those explanations in terms of stories. And Inception has given us a powerful, shared story about altering memories.
Put a bunch of science geeks (I category I willingly admit to belonging in) together and ask them about movies, and you'll find out that we love to nitpick. My undergraduate physics society once hosted a showing of The Core precisely because the science in it was so terrible that it gave us hours of enjoyable discussion about how bad it was. Sometimes, though, the details aren't the most important part; sometimes narratives get repurposed in ways the authors couldn't have imagined. And sometimes we in science should remember this, assuming of course that what we remember is really up to us.
The assumption, though, is that this is done more or less on purpose. That is, the science fiction writers are trying to extrapolate existing technology and imaging how it will affect society. They're doing thorough research into where technology might be headed; they're talking to engineers and scientists; they're making the best predictions they can. While this is true of a number of science fiction writers, many others are far more concerned with net effects of being able to do a particular thing, rather than the science that would go into doing it. This latter type of story can still provide powerful narratives for shaping our understanding of and reactions to new science.
An interesting example of this happened last week. In this article in Science, researchers reported being able to implant a memory into a mouse. How they did it is super cool, but I'm not going to go into it here; it's covered in the many articles I'm about to link to.
If, upon hearing that researchers could implant a memory, you thought of the 2010 movie Inception, you're not alone. A lot of other people did too. In fact, one of the authors of the study referred to the movie in talking to the press, and other one used the term "incept" to refer to the memory implantation process.
And here's what I find fascinating about this: the movie had nothing to do with the actual science that went into the mouse study. One of the things that I find by turns brilliant and infuriating about Christopher Nolan (who wrote and directed Inception) is that he has a keen sense for paring away details that aren't relevant to the story he's telling. In the case of Inception, the important points are that people can enter other people's dreams, and in doing so extract information or, rarely, implant ("incept") new ideas. Everything else is swept away; we don't find out anything about how people share dreams or where that technology comes from (other than that the military developed it), and we don't find out any psychological reason why moving an inanimate object in someone's dream would cause an idea to germinate and flower in their mind--we're simply told it is so. Nolan gives us only enough details to move the plot forward; the last thing he's trying to do is teach the audience some science.
The study on mice doesn't even use dreams. Nor does it plant the seed of an idea in the mice and allow it to grow. In fact, it's not even really about implanting ideas, but rather a particular remembered fear reaction. The only thing it has in common with the movie is that they both involve someone deliberately changing someone else's conception of reality.
Of course, that in and of itself is scary. The simple idea that there might come a time when our memories and ideas might not deliberately manipulated by someone else has terrifying implications for our sense of self. And that is why we turn to narratives to help us understand what's going on. Humans are story oriented. A significant part of what makes up a culture, and what distinguishes it from other cultures, is a collection of shared stories. We moderns may have moved away from myths as our explanations for how the world works, but that doesn't mean we don't have a need to frame those explanations in terms of stories. And Inception has given us a powerful, shared story about altering memories.
Put a bunch of science geeks (I category I willingly admit to belonging in) together and ask them about movies, and you'll find out that we love to nitpick. My undergraduate physics society once hosted a showing of The Core precisely because the science in it was so terrible that it gave us hours of enjoyable discussion about how bad it was. Sometimes, though, the details aren't the most important part; sometimes narratives get repurposed in ways the authors couldn't have imagined. And sometimes we in science should remember this, assuming of course that what we remember is really up to us.
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