The Two General's Problem

tlb wrote:I view Honor somewhat differently than you, because the Harrington line was "lost" more than four hundred years previously. So if Honor is still equivalent to the best that the Onion has, then there has been NO real progress in developing intellect in those years. There is NO sign that the current Alphas are savants and the only case mentioned of where they tried to develop one has failed miserably: Francesca Simões.

penny wrote:First off, we do not know that Honor is the equivalent to the best the Alignment has to offer.

What makes you think they need Alphas who are more intelligent than Honor? She already has no equal in the GA.

We’ve had this discussion before as well. It is illogical to keep harping on there being a lack of progress in the Alpha line as far as intelligence since Honor. There is only so much tinkering one can do to a limited brain and Honor is probably the limit before unwanted side effects take over.

It is also unfair/untrue that there have been no improvements since Honor. How do you know that? The Malign already stated that the improvements they are working on has to do with “accessories” and not intelligence.

Accessories, like, and I’m just guessing to use as an example, hardening against radiation exposure. Natural resistance to the elements, etc .

I am quite willing to agree that the Malign has been working on “accessories” and not intelligence. So there have been improvements on things other than intellect (for example, they have longer lives, even before using prolong).

But that calls into question all your statements about superior thinkers needing superior computers. There is no evidence that they have thinkers better than what can be found in the Honorverse at large (even excluding Honor). The prime evidence for this lack is the failed performance of their six century plan so far. The remaining Detweilers admit there have to be a lot of adjustments.

PS: Where is your evidence that Honor is smarter than anyone else in the Grand Alliance? The way that she is above the rest is in her empathetic abilities, not necessarily her intelligence.

penny wrote:How do I put this.

Unlike most of you, I do not belittle Malign genetic research. I have no doubt that they are successful at breeding true Alpha intelligences that are very far above the norm. And I am certainly not going to make the mistake of missing an irrefutable data point in Honor Harrington.

It doesn’t matter that she is only one data point. Oh what a data point she is. She counts as 25 votes anyway. Out of all of the characters revealed thus far, Honor is more intelligent than any of them. So, spare me the song and dance about the “alleged ability” of Alphas.

I'm not belittling the individual advancement that the MAlign has produced. On average, the Alignment member is going to be more intelligent, healthier, and and other positive attributes over the average non-member.

The problem I have is the law of averages. Let's say that the Gamma-line members are equivalent to one-in-ten-thousand of the general population in terms of intelligence, the Beta members are one in one a million and the Alphas are one in one hundred million. Let's say that of the population of Darius (3 billion), 30 million are Gammas, 300,000 are Betas and 3000 are Alphas. By working the averages back, you'll find 3000 Alpha-equivalent intelligences in the outside Galaxy for every 300 billion people and the same for Beta- and Gamma-level intelligences.

The population of the League alone is 2 trillion people or more (no one knows for sure) and there must be another trillion outside of it. That means the rest of the Galaxy has 10x more Alpha, Beta, and Gamma-level intelligences than the MAlign has concentrated on Darius.

The MAlign's advantage here is that they have it concentrated and most of them are loyal to the cause. The disadvantage is that they will meet their matches and those they will meet will have had more experience and will have had a more varied education.

My own higher reasoning assess that fact as naturally needing better tools for reasoning. Like, naturally, superior computers. If there are quantum algorithms that exist (if you’re an existentialist), and since they cannot be run by normal computers, and since they are superior algorithms, then it seems intuitive that these advanced thinkers would need advanced tools in which to execute the programs that they conceive.

Those are conclusions that do not logically follow from the premises. Very un-Alpha...

A person needs computer support for things they can't easily do. It could then mean the MAlign has not invested in better computers because they didn't see the need to. Moreover, there's no basis in the conclusion that quantum algorithms are superior in any way to classical ones where they do need support, even assuming such algorithms exist.

Again, necessity is the mother of invention.

I agree.

But the other side of that coin is that the lack of necessity fails to spur innovation.

I don’t think computers in the HV are less capable than today’s computers. Some of you might think so. I do not. There is no way our computers today can handle the threat level in the HV. Nope.

Aside from the necessary calculations related to the hypergenerator, wedge, etc. that we have no theoretical basis to form an opinion on, there's nothing that they calculate there that a smartphone today couldn't. Orbits, relativistic effects, hyperbolic motions? That's easy, you can do in an Excel sheet if you needed to.

As others have said, computers in the HV are understated so they don't steal the show compared to the people. I don't think RFC is going to change his writing style. There will be no sudden AI Singularity.

What I have always thought is that the HV has concentrated on solving the density, heat and bottleneck problem of today’s computing technology. I have always thought that molycircs solve the density of transistors on a chip problem while simultaneously eliminating the data bottleneck and possibly the thermal problem which lead to the development of much faster CPUs with less heat.

That may be. But that doesn't change the nature of the problems that can be solved. More importantly, it does not lead to the conclusion that the MAlign will have better technology at this than the rest of the Galaxy.

tlb wrote:No, Storm from the Shadows also introduced the spider-drive and the various classes if spider-drive ships. So whatever argument you may have had occurred after AAC and before SftS. Since the first books were all concentrating on the conflict with Haven, we can agree that they are newer than that; however we still learn of them before they maneuvered the Solarian League into the fight. To say that we do not know anything about their technology is nonsense; we know about the spider drive, the streak drive, the three second graser and the genetic nano-tech. The only thing held back in the fight at Galton was the spider drive.

Actually they also held back their latest anti-ship missile (and I suspect that it is a true MDM; but there's no hard evidence I can recall for that)

To End In Fire (earc) wrote:Just as Gail had been denied the graser torpedoes, she’d also been denied the Ninurta, the Alignment’s latest anti-ship missile. The ones she’d been allowed instead were basically improved versions of the Solarian League’s Cataphracts, considerably inferior to the Ninurta, especially in terms of drive endurance

penny wrote:Again, necessity is the mother of invention.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:I agree.

But the other side of that coin is that the lack of necessity fails to spur innovation.

The innovations spurred by necessity are focused at specific perceived problems and so do not explain all that involved in the process of invention. For example, the necessity for faster computation will not automatically clear the bottlenecks in conventional computer design, although they may cause incremental change. However quantum computing may develop in the future, it required an enormous amount of research into fields that had nothing to do with computing, no matter how great the need for computation speed may have been.

From Wikipedia on "Necessity is the mother of invention":

In an address to the Mathematical Association of England on the importance of education in 1917, Alfred North Whitehead, a philosopher-mathematician, argued that "the basis of invention is science, and science is almost wholly the outgrowth of pleasurable intellectual curiosity," and in contrast to the old proverb "Necessity is the mother of futile dodges" is much nearer to the truth.

The "futile dodges" are those incremental changes that rarely result in a paradigm shift.

tlb wrote:No, Storm from the Shadows also introduced the spider-drive and the various classes if spider-drive ships. So whatever argument you may have had occurred after AAC and before SftS. Since the first books were all concentrating on the conflict with Haven, we can agree that they are newer than that; however we still learn of them before they maneuvered the Solarian League into the fight. To say that we do not know anything about their technology is nonsense; we know about the spider drive, the streak drive, the three second graser and the genetic nano-tech. The only thing held back in the fight at Galton was the spider drive.

Jonathan_S wrote:Actually they also held back their latest anti-ship missile (and I suspect that it is a true MDM; but there's no hard evidence I can recall for that)

To End In Fire (earc) wrote:Just as Gail had been denied the graser torpedoes, she’d also been denied the Ninurta, the Alignment’s latest anti-ship missile. The ones she’d been allowed instead were basically improved versions of the Solarian League’s Cataphracts, considerably inferior to the Ninurta, especially in terms of drive endurance

Interesting, but is that the result of innovation or espionage?

Mostly we know of their tech, not about their tech. Mostly.

penny wrote:Mostly we know of their tech, not about their tech. Mostly.

I am not sure how to approach this statement, because it seems to be true of EVERY piece of technology in the Honorverse.

For example, the hyper-generator: why does it contain a rotating shaft? How does contra-gravity work? Why can't a wedge drive ship travel in reverse (like a square-sail ship could)? How does a mass driver generate an action without a reaction?