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Since we already have questions like Could electronics be developed by water-based life forms? and When did Obe-wan Kenobi learn that Anakin was “dead”? I'd like to discuss the following:

As of the nature of those questions, they are highly subjective and In case two I think impossible to answer "correctly".

Also another question like "If you'd be able to give 3 laws to humans like Asimovs Robot Laws, which would they be?" occupy my mind.

I'd love to read and argue about those questions. A lot of science-fiction also copes with these topics (Just the title "Do androids dream of electric sheep" is highly philosophical), so they will come sooner or later.

Do we want those as category, maybe with an own tag?
How do we cope with those questions, since an answer might not be possible?

Update:
I found Asimov's Psychohistory looks like the scientic evolution of Marx's Historical Materialism; does this mean he was Marxist? in the example questions, isn't it philosophical?
If so my question would be answered with yes, or am I mixing two different things up?

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  • And here I thought this was going to be a complaint about my own question about Cyclonopedia and what works of philosophy and theory I should be reading to get more out of it.
    – LessPop_MoreFizz
    Jan 12, 2011 at 23:33

2 Answers 2

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Uh? Neither of them is about philosophy.

Could electronics be developed by water-based life forms? is about science. Science is off-topic here, but the science of science-fiction is on-topic (I hope), and water-based life forms and alien technologies are common sf themes. This is an open-ended question, but not subjective, and I think it can have (and has had by now) reasonable answers.

I don't see any philosophy either in When did Obe-wan Kenobi learn that Anakin was “dead”?. It's a question about a plot detail in an sf work, how could that not be an appropriate question?

Asimov's Psychohistory looks like the scientic evolution of Marx's Historical Materialism; does this mean he was Marxist? is about the philosophy behind an sf work. Again, this looks perfectly reasonable on a site about sf. There is a flaw in the question though, which is that it asks about Asimov's philosophical opinions (which no one knows but him); but if the question is interpreted as to only relating possible interpretations of the Foundations series, I think it's fine.

“If you'd be able to give 3 laws to humans like Asimov's Robot Laws, which would they be?” is not a good question because it's extremely open-ended and highly subjective. A better question would focus on particular objectives (are you trying to enslave humanity to a different species? to ensure the survival of the fittest? to make people live in peace and harmony? to solve world hunger? …).

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  • thx for this response, at least now i'll be able to distinguish the subtle differences.
    – Samuel Herzog
    Jan 12, 2011 at 20:40
  • mmmh well now i understand what those questions intended to be. I will vote +1 for convincing me ;)
    – Iceag
    Jan 12, 2011 at 22:50
  • ah, they weren't in the beginning, but it somehow evolved, and helped :D
    – Samuel Herzog
    Jan 12, 2011 at 23:55
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Personally i would say the question : Could electronics be developed by water-based life forms? is not part of scifi.stackexchange. Although the thinking about such kind of technology is SciFi. But the answer ist mostly speculative , we can't give an explicit answer to that. I don't know, maybe a revised question could be postet on : Theoretical Computer Science?

The second question is adverted to Science Fiction and i believe there is an specific answer to that question.

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  • And what about my 'Question proposal' ?
    – Samuel Herzog
    Jan 12, 2011 at 15:26
  • @samuel if we decide to allow those questions with an extra tag, then surely this site will be flooded with those "philosophy" questions. I don't think that we want that?!
    – Iceag
    Jan 12, 2011 at 15:56
  • I don't know, a fact is those questions seem to rise, and they're hard to answer. Hence my question. An tag simply would make them organizable and ignoreable i think.
    – Samuel Herzog
    Jan 12, 2011 at 16:12
  • @Samuel Good Point i didn't think about Organization. So we make a tag to make them organizable. But shouldn't we close those questions directly?
    – Iceag
    Jan 12, 2011 at 16:17
  • I argue to not, as philosphy is often an integral part of a novel. If people want to clarify or collect oppinions about e.g. Datas right to life (ok, very bad example, but there are books about it ^^), why not? A thing i simply don't know, could we force such questions to be community wiki? If that makes sense?
    – Samuel Herzog
    Jan 12, 2011 at 16:32

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