I sort of disagree with
"It's actually harder to conceive an FTL system that can't also double as a Weapon Of Mass Destruction than it is to conceive one that can."
FTL travel is outside of our understanding of physics anyway, so it wouldn't necessarily mean a large momentum. Some games/movies/etc. also state that FTL doesn't work near a gravity well, which makes them useless even as a weapon delivery device. Then again, maybe I'm nitpicking, I dunno.
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Yes, can anyone explain what that statement is supposed to mean? While it is true that high speed non-FTL space travel usually implies Weapon of Mass Destruction, FTL travel doesn't normally imply high velocity since, as everyone knows, acceleration in real space will never get you FTL. Typically warp drive / hyperdrive just involve ways of getting places faster than you are actually travelling, not clear how that is a WMD except insofar as it allows you to time travel.
any FTL drive will require one of the below:
1. massive amounts of energy
2. extremely high velocities
3. warping space.
if you can't tell what any of these 3 will do to, say, a highly populated city...
Edited by 173.183.98.50
In the Force Unleashed example, Vader's noted for being one of the wealthiest people in the galaxy and for pouring almost all of that wealth into projects like PROXY. Economic factors are probably at play, especially given the Gameplay and Story Segregation aspect of PROXY's performance - EU wise, Vader does have a personal line of (extremely expensive) lightsaber training droids some time after the game's period. Which he keeps pushing the supplier to improve, as none of them can ever last more than a handful of seconds against him, and they take long enough to replace that he has to space their destruction out like a child with Halloween candy. Given that PROXY can't really pass for a non-droid (holoprojected bodies don't fool competent observers or security systems; human replica droids in-verse are far more complex) and supposedly (from the novelization) can't mimic Force powers or lightsaber use at anything approaching real Jedi ability, it's questionable there's any police or military goal the Empire would have after the elimination of the Jedi that something cheaper couldn't do better.
On the Portal example: if the effect could be limited to pass water specifically, a shower cubicle consisting mostly of portals could be revolutionary. We use up a lot of water cleaning things, and while there are certainly other obvious uses, if there's any reason to keep linked portals close to each other a "shower curtain" could be an entirely sane and valuable first application of the technology.
Edited by DanaO
- A better example would be the online storage systems. These store and teleport hundreds of living creatures (and in some games furniture and dolls as well). These could surely be used as houses, storing populations of whole countries.
All...righty then. Once everyone is stored in a system, how are people supposed to get out? Or are we looking at a Matrix here?
There's also the consideration that the Storage Boxes (if not the balls themselves) are a forme of Stasis. So there goes the applications for the Penitential System, though it could be utilized as an emergency medical stopgap while the search for cures to debilitating diseases is ongoing.
Point-to-Point matter Teleportation is a viable complaint, though. My guess is that this, as well as several similar examples regarding reconstituting matter, is a demonstration of The Dark Side of What Measure Is a Non-Human? (which applies all too often in Real Life). Think back to Star Trek The Motion Picture. How did they justify putting Spock back on the crew? By having his would-be replacement suffer a Transporter Malfunction. It could be that the Pokeball provides an extra boundary layer, i.e. "Start Pokemon" and "End Pokemon" codes, but uncaughts and humans don't have this. In any event, a few malfunctions in testing, or reports on malfunctions of test subjects taken to their logical conclusion, would shut-down human applications because "We Just Can't Take That Chance".
In the Pokemon case, it's now becoming shown that Pokemon are more complex than originally given credit for, yet it'll still be a long while before humans get to go into teleporters. Essentially, Technology and Biology have marched on and the standard bureaucratic Skeleton Government Can't Catch Up.* As for Sabrina? Well, even discounting her Anime forme, she can still be, in most media, considered slightly "touched".
Edited by DonaldthePotholer Ketchum's corollary to Clarke's Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced tactic is indistinguishable from blind luck.
Telekinesis is moving things with your mind, usually only matter.
Screwing around with the atomic structure of the universe is A: Extremely difficult, B: Ludicrisly dangerous, and C: bound to be a very bad idea.
Seeing thigns with your mind is clairvoyance.
Also tele/pychokinesis is poorly understood, and its rules are inconsistant.
What is the image about? I don't understand the context nor how it relates to the trope in any way.