Questions tagged [science-in-society]
For questions about the use and perception of science by the inhabitants of a fictional world. Contrast with [science-based] which is for explaining fictional things with real-world science. Whereas [science-based] builds worlds using science (ex. "How could a dragon realistically breathe fire?"), [science-in-society] asks how people treat and use science in-world (ex. "How would a society with a taboo on dissecting people develop medicine?").
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Materials Revolution [closed]
It's 2012, and a big extraterrestrial space vehicle (Secretly created by an ET ultra-intelligent entity) explodes in Earth's orbit, and its pieces crash on the surface and into the oceans.
(The ...
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Non-electrical technology that pre-modern people would see as magic?
My world was colonized by spacefaring humans who lost the vast majority of their technology in an unknown catastrophe at least 12,000 years before the present. They have now redeveloped roughly up to ...
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Why would/wouldn't *humanoid* robots become popular, rather than any other robotic body-form?
Most robots that exist in the world today are factory robots. Not particularly humanoid, except the arm+hand concept. When you design a robot to replace the human task of pushing a vacuum cleaner ...
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What factors do you need for a self sustaining cube building [closed]
In my world, there is the working class, who live in a giant cube called three cubed, there are 27 districts and each are responsible for different things. Three cubed can not only provide for itself, ...
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Scooped up for military research: How realistic is it in this day and age?
Being 'scooped up' for military research - or being a creation of military research - has been a common trope of movies and TV for many years. However, in most western nations, if not most nations ...
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How would a blind underwater species do science? [duplicate]
Assume a species of blind squid that communicates through and can perceive sonar with high fidelity, has active, precise electroreception, is able to produce a strong voltage like the electric eel, ...
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In a righty-dominated society, how can authorities prevent a right-handed child from being born to two lefty parents?
In this society, superstitions regarding right- and left-handed people are accepted as fact. (I'm going to be politically incorrect and call them "righties" and "lefties" ...
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Can there be an Underwater Advanced Civilization? [closed]
After watching Aquaman and, most recently, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, which features Namor and his underwater empire, I got curious about the feasibility of an underwater civilization composed of ...
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What could be the justification for having isolated domes all over a planet with people living inside them and not knowing about the real world?
To elaborate a bit further: let's say there's a planet in which some higher power installed several giant "domes" where people live. Each of these domes, which are the size of a small city, ...
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What should an underground shelter, bunker or “regular” home look like if it’s designed to keep two people isolated for at least two years? [closed]
I’m asking this question because I was just thinking of how people would actually survive in the medium term in an apocalypse scenario with “reasonable and realistic” limits. The key world being ...
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Implications Of Peak Humans in Sports [closed]
In a world where genetic mods can substancially alter people's physiology even after they've reached maturity, do you think that sports that are physical conditioning based will die out in favor of ...
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Which numeric base should I use for universal measurement unit prefixes? [closed]
I'm developing a story where Earth is obliterated by an asteroid and the small mars colony collapses into chaos shortly after.
The last survivor enters a criogenic chamber for indefinite amount of ...
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How to prove "lactose intolerance" is a real thing people from 1000AD
There was a theory that the conflict between Viking settlers and native people in Newfoundland region of Canada in 1000 AD started when the Viking settler offered milk to the lactose-intolerant ...
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Would veganism become much more popular in society mostly made up of shapeshifters? [closed]
In my story the western world and other wealthy countries have access to shape shifting technology. How it works is that tiny microscopic nanobots flow through the bloodstream and can kinda turn a ...
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Geopolitical ramifications of a faked Apollo 11 Moon landing being exposed?
Imagine it's an alternate July 20th, 1969. The American people and anybody with a television set watch as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin step out of the Apollo Lunar Module Eagle and become the first ...
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A nation is using its citizens as a distributed computing network to solve some kind of problem. What kind of problem is it trying to solve? [closed]
Long story short, the government of The People's Representative Democratic Federated Republic of Southeast Countryistan has its citizens fill out a couple of forms per day, each with some kind of ...
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The advantages and the drawbacks of being an android in comparison to being a human [closed]
Judging from many science fiction stuff I played and watched I think that being a robot has many advantages like being ageless and immortal (I mean not aging visually and having an unlimited lifespan ...
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Would a civilization without war develop spaceflight? [closed]
Could a peaceful extraterrestrial civilization (purely hypothetical) ever get to space?
I ask this because the vast majority of our technological milestones have come as the result of conflict:
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How will the future of work look like? [closed]
A few observations.
Actual job - which fill directly and efficiently real human basic needs - are getting scarce, there is a surge of bullshit jobs, an accrual of complex and rhetorical organizations ...
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How would a groups of scientists, engineers, architects, survival experts, smiths and archeologists survive back in the mesolithic-era-ish of humans? [closed]
A group of 25 people, which consist of scientists, a musician, a linguist, engineers, architects, survival experts, smiths and archeologists from the year 2021, lets assume all of them are experienced ...
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How would warfare differ in a futuristic world without satellites?
In my soft sci fi/science fantasy world, humanity lives in a hollow planet. A long, long time ago, an alien species put them there and created a field that prevents anything from entering the planet's ...
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Why combat machines in this world are colorful
For all of the combat machine we see in real life, they are painted in colors to blend into the background and lower visibility in every spectrum. Except for when they are participating in a parade, ...
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What are the side effects of long term Cryo Sleep? [closed]
I am writing a film about a group of people who wake up from cryosleep after 5-10 years. I would like to know what kind of side effects these people would have upon awakening.
I've tried googling, but ...
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How to convince a lot of people to join a cage anarchist country?
The experiment requires 250 million people and a lifetime dedication; once in there's no way out. It consists on enclosing people in 5 artificial countries, each country with fixed rules. Each person ...
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How Would Mathematics and Technology evolve in a world where people can teleport [closed]
I've already talked about this world in this How would criminals be punished in a world where everyone can teleport?
Everyone in this world from the age of 5 can teleport to anywhere they have been ...
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If people had different views on biology/nature since the 1600s, would scientific and technological development be different or would it be the same? [closed]
I was reading this article, https://aeon.co/essays/can-animals-be-usefully-described-as-clockwork-machines, and was wondering if people kept viewing animals as machine like would technology and ...
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Proving to the past that I am from the future [closed]
Let's say I've been able to travel in time and I am back in the past (just by a few years or even centuries). I do not have any modern gadgets or even modern clothes, just me and my 21st century mind.
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How feasible is it that aliens would use a number field other than the standard real numbers?
I will begin this with a disclaimer that I barely understand the p-adic analysis beyond very general ideas of what the p-adic numbers are and how they are constructed. But this is a question I've been ...
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How to have a religion that would not impede scientific development
The world setting is as follows:
The main species is human and beastoid(animals that walk on two legs and have hands capable of dexterity, mostly like dog, wolf, cat, bear, rabbit, goat). Half-blood ...
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What feminine products will become commonplace for men in the future? [closed]
I think it is totally unfair that there are clothes and products for men and women. I believe it is possible to create feminine products for guys and many brands will create in the future.
Exemples:
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Would it ever be possible to "vaccinate" against feelings/ideas/beliefs?
If we think of some world views as viruses... Would it hypothetically be possible to create a vaccine for this or, in another way, make a person immune to these views? I'm thinking racism, xenophobia, ...
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How to incorporate scientific development into fantasy/sci-fi?
In the Avatar the Last Airbender manga/comic and Avatar The Legend of Korra, scientific advancement took over industrial work replacing bending. Eventually nuclear weapons would be found (as well as ...
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What technology would mermaids excel at?
I regularly see people speaking about the difficulties of technology underwater, and see questions about whether underwater civilizations could produce fire, electricity, etc.. But I haven't seen any ...
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Would it be possible for a self healing castle to work/function with the "healing" bacteria used in concrete roads?
This idea is mainly based around the self-healing concrete idea that has appeared in the past and scientific posts have been made about the self healing concrete using bacteria to self heal cracks. ...
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What is the first problem an agrarian civilization try to solve with bio-circuitry?
Imagine an Agrarian civilisation (whose entire economy is based on producing and maintaining crops and farmland.) had developed a way to cultivate something like Cable Bacteria into large basic ...
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Speedrun to the moon in one lifetime?
Imagine you have a large population of adolescent humans (as large as you need) on a completely uncultivated Earth, initially containing no artificial structures whatsoever, only natural resources. ...
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In a culture where magic is common, how does the cost of magic affect common practices?
In this world, magic is very common. For around a thousand years, most people can do magic while those who can't are considered disabled (instead of most people being normal and those who can perform ...
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How could I make cameras fit in with a middle ages inspired culture?
One thing I've always admired about The Legend of Zelda series of video games is how fairly modern technology and even groundbreaking futuristic technology is intertwined into a fantasy setting so ...
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Replacing the science paradigm [closed]
I am building a fantasy setting that includes magic. The mere existence of said magic has strong impacts on reality. Basically, science in general (mathematics, physics, chemistry, logic) is no longer ...
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How would a desert civilization develop their battlesuits and powered armors efficiently?
I had did one for a jungle civilization How would a jungle dwelling civilization utilize powered armor efficiently? , so I decided to do another one, but this one for desert dwellers. Since desert ...
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How would a jungle dwelling civilization utilize powered armor efficiently?
Let's take for example an society that dwells in a jungle (75% of the world is jungle). Now, how would this civilization be able to develop and use powered armor and battlesuits efficiently?
As we ...
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Would drugs and 'eugenics' be the key to human offworld survival?
On my book, there are rules that all humans that leave earth or go to a new planet need to have the necessary biological upgrades to survive alien vessels, worlds, and cosmic issues that go hand-in-...
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Does echolocation work in these conditions?
The inhabitants of a small city carved into the side of a cliff are blind and use echolocation to navigate.
There is a lot of empty space, around a kilometer of between the cliff side where the ...
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What do you call a person who studies, but does not perform, magic? [closed]
I want to distinguish between two types of magician. I'm going to provisionally name them magipraxists and magiologists, and my request is for more familiar terminology to replace my invented and ...
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Summoning Circles and Time Travel
The world I am working on is a soft science fiction realm dressed up in the trappings of magic and the occult. A world where there are loosely defined scientific principles behind the rituals and ...
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Could Volcanism Provide a Large “Heat Oasis” in a Polar Desert?
So there is an Antarctic like continent in my setting; and just like Antarctica it is the largest and most inhospitable desert in the planet due to how absolutely cold it is.
But what if there was a ...
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Would sedation treat a seizure?
Medical-related question for my science-fiction story.
My character is in a facility with modern BUT limited medical supplies. This character is suffering from seizures due to withdrawal from a ...
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How to explain a planet with visible cosmos at daytime?
So I'm working on a fictional planet which would experience a daytime sky similar to this.
This particular picture is from the movie Valerian: City of a Thousand Planets. Fictional alien atmospheres ...
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How would aliens abduct an entire nation of millions from a planet?
I am looking for as hard science answers as possible, but I am willing to bend some rules for a good answer.
Assume they need to move 10 million 100 million people off of a planet
what technology ...
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Could Megapodes be a Superior Food Source than Chicken?
The Megapodes are a family of birds in the galliformes order. They live primarily in Australia and are notable in being extremely precocial and laying more eggs than any other bird. They build large ...
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