Ideas for SF movies that need to be made
A more detailed outline has been mailed to Hollywood producers with replies expected any day now.
The Singularity Project
By 2050, self-improving computers will evolve beyond human comprehension. As nanoswarms float in digital space clouds coalescing into impossible structures, brilliant meta-minds will completely control post-humans, while fighting each other. Human-level minds may survive as paradise simulations, or as expendable servants performing basic and common tasks.
Reality Instability
The Doom Soon theory: the anthropic principle suggests that our universe is very unlikely and therefore unstable. The laws of physics appear perfectly balanced to allow intelligent life to evolve.
There must be many universes with slightly different physical laws in which life can't survive. In fact there must be vastly more 'flawed' universes than 'perfect' ones. What if we live in a slightly flawed universe, in which intelligent life can just barely evolve, but will inevitably fail? This explains why history is such a mess. It also means our existence could end without warning at any ti
Accurate Space Movie
Newton's First Law: spaceships keep going forever even after the engine stops.
Newton's Second Law: to slow down, a spaceship must flip around and fire its rocket backwards.
The Fermi Paradox: why does mankind appear to inhabit a dead universe, without intelligent aliens for any number of lightyears? Advanced life is very rare, since evolution must explore all the blind paths. There are uncountable planets with much simpler organisms than on Earth - and occasional advanced but non-intelligent life.
Space stations have to rotate (or otherwise change speed) to create artificial gravity. To cancel out existing gravity, a habitat would have to 'inverse-rotate', basically falling around (or through) the earth to the other side and back, like an orbiting satellite or an endlessly free-falling elevator.
Even our primitive twenty-first century spaceships, that would take tens of millennia to reach another star, travel so fast they would flash out of sight faster than an eye blink. You would not really be able to see them passing by.
Anthropic Philosophy Story
Ours is a mathematical universe. Physical reality does not actually exist. Nothing really exists. Everything is a solution to an equation in "mathematical space". Any mind pattern could be and is generated by many different equations. An observer's awareness is spread out among all the universes in which copies of the observer's mind pattern exist. Surprisingly, that would be almost all of them.
By changing their mind patterns and altering their memories, observers may attempt to limit the universes where they are likely to exist. They could appear to alter the laws of physics, and enter and control strange or absurd realities, of which there must be very many.
This could be the basis of a seemingly omnipotent supervillain film (like my Theory of Everything), or to contact or create a God-like being.
Post-USA Future
After the allegedly likely collapse of liberal or democratic society throughout the West, more flawed superpower states will arise to fill the void: China, India, parts of Europe, even the Middle East. More interesting would be the appearance of a entirely new type of political entity, like an open source or a virtual nation (with floating island-cities), a 'negative state' based on the rejection of power, or a loose world state.
Cyberspace
Mankind will inevitably try to escape into paradise simulations, a form of what is called "immanentizing the eschaton". Such terminal dreams will require powerful CPUs, displays, and VR paradigms.
Most of the film could be set inside a VR simulation filled with island asteroids, endless buildings with odd dimensions, or mythical forests. The scenery would be exaggerated but the characters could be simplified.
alien societies
(This was originally written before any of the Avatar films, which weren't nearly alien enough.) A realistic CGI non-human civilization has never been properly depicted. Often the viewer would have no idea what they were seeing. There might be balloon creatures, living jet engines, fractal beings made of smaller copies of themselves, and sentient bacteria networks.
The plot could be simple but filled with strange details. Some characters might appear bland (a robot or a guy in a spacesuit) to emphasize the surrounding strangeness.
Extreme Action-Adventure Movie
An escalating chain of deliberately over-the-top, but not quite impossible, confrontations, pursuits, destructions, and close escapes, like 'Commando' or 'Terminator 2', but hundreds of times more intense. The action would go around the world.
parallel worlds
There exist an infinite number of alternate universes in which history happened differently. These versions of Earth can be incredibly strange. And they are ALL real, if inaccessible.
For example: a world in which advanced computers or a complete theory of consciousness were developed before internal combustion engines. There are many branching points in history: the fall of the Roman empire, the Renaissance, World War Three:
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alternate histories idea list
parallel worlds
No one can prove that everything doesn't exist: uncountable parallel universes similar to ours, plus an infinitely larger number that are utterly alien.
Counterfactual history changes the outcome of a single battle or an assassination to set mankind on a new path. Pivotal decisions reverberate forever.
It turns out that most parallel Earths have far fewer people and are much less advanced. Our civilization is the result of a long chain of improbable improvements.
Common patterns may be seen in history. This seems to be a real devil planet (and it's not just the Microsoft programmers). Evil sprouts evil, groups eliminate and enslave each other, and a few winners accumulate most benefits, leaving the rest below average. The dregs just want to survive, and tend to resist change.
Two human species
It almost happened: a world with two or more types of people, unable to interbreed or communicate well. They would have evolved on separate continents. The Neanderthals were unlucky enough to occupy Europe before the Cro-Magnons left Africa. If they could have reached the Americas, they might have blocked later settlers. No doubt they would eventually have been enslaved anyway.
If the two species had co-evolved, like humans and wildlife in Africa, they could have occupied separate territories, like a network of small reservations within larger nations.
They could have formed an integrated society with different roles. The smarter species would make all the decisions, a master/slave relationship that both sides consider a solemn duty.
If Homo Sapiens hadn't been the smarter species of the two, it would likely have degenerated.
the Roman Empire never collapsed
Mired in corruption, Rome's collapse is said to have been inevitable by the fifth century. There were just too many dumb people who were willing and able to mess things up. Latin had already diverged into other languages. To continue ruling Europe, the whole empire would have had to reform.
Maybe an early economist could have invented free markets, or an innovative general could have created an incorruptible police force. If the barbarians had been slightly more barbaric, their threat could have united the provinces.
To endure to the present day, the Roman Empire would also have had to resist further change, like the Chinese and Ottoman empires managed for centuries. Progress might even be outlawed.
Surrounded by enemies, besieged emperors might have only allowed military development, and unleashed the first arms race. If the subsequent rate of progress had been only slightly faster than in our reality, the world would now be unimaginably more advanced, or it would not exist at all.
Christianity and Islam were never invented.
The Middle East developed many religions. With less competition, the Zoroastrians and Jews would have had more converts. Somewhat more tolerant of other gods, they wouldn't have tried as hard to suppress them. The Arabs almost ended up like India, with up to a hundred thousand gods.
Europe would have been more fragmented while China was building its empire. With fewer external threats, it would have expanded westward.
In the Middle Ages, Europe could easily have been colonized by Asia. The civilized invaders would have been tolerated by most. Today, the main languages of North and South America would be various Chinese dialects.
no Dark Ages
For Europe, the years AD 600 to 900 were like a return to normalcy. The population decline wasn't that fast, and life expectancy even increased in many places. The preceding centuries revealed the flaws of distant central government. With nothing to replace it, society collapsed into self-ruled groups with feudalism and small wars. What if this arrangement had been slightly more stable, with many civilized outposts and trading networks? This almost happened in Scandinavia and Ireland.
They would have had to generate a surplus bigger than the subsequent baby boom could consume for at least a century or two. That would have required Big Ideas: ocean fishing, better plows, firearms, military organization, ways to form stable alliances.
At several points in history, a well organized nation state could have conquered the world, forming a loose empire of many cultures under one army. Alexander the Great and the Mongols came closest. In some distant timeline, Swedish might now be the world language.
imagine no USA
What if the North American colonies had never revolted, because they needed British aid against a European or American Indian threat? Canada would extend halfway down the East Coast. The southern colonies would have split when Britain outlawed slavery. There would be Spanish and French speaking countries in North America, with inevitable wars.
If the US had never become a superpower, Latin America and Europe wouldn't have had what it takes. A Latin American Union with many states would be based on exploitation, with few rights or opportunities for the peasants.
A European superpower would be unstable, with intrigue and shifting alliances. It would encourage surrounding regions to form affiliated unions, eliminating rivals before they became too powerful. There could have been many small world wars, with various powers uniting against threats like Russia.
no World War Two
Europe could have avoided WW2 if WW1 had been fought to its logical conclusion: the total defeat and occupation of Germany. It could have become an economic superpower thirty years ahead of schedule. The other European powers would have over-exploited their colonies.
A European alliance could have kept the peace, maybe forming a superstate on the Swiss model with regional autonomy.
War with the Soviet Union could have been delayed until the invention of nuclear weapons made it impractical. Without its eastern European empire, the USSR would have been smaller and even more paranoid. America would have tried to stay neutral.
Japan could have expanded its brutal East Asian empire with impunity. Eventually, war with the US, Russia, and European colonial powers would seem likely. A less weakened Europe might have tried to 'civilize' Asia on its own terms, even breaking up China and India.
the Axis win WW2
Germany and Japan could have won if they had been more practical about it. God would not have intervened to stop them. All sides came close to using poison gas, nerve gas, and even bioweapons, but the technology wasn't quite ready. The Nazis were ahead of everyone, and by 1945 owned the necessary missile delivery systems. The unrestricted use of Sarin or anthrax could have halted most fighting in months, leaving an unstable stalemate. Eventually, the USSR might have collapsed. Germany would have established puppet regimes throughout Europe, and exploited what remained of the Ukraine and the poisoned wastelands formerly known as Britain.
After their costly victory, things might have gotten dark. Most of Europe could have been Germanized within a few generations. Resistance would become inconceivable.
Japan would still have needed outside help to prevent a US invasion. In this universe, Germany could have ended up fighting the Vietnam War.
The nuclear stalemate would have lasted indefinitely. The Nazis might have to make limited concessions to prevent a global suicide war. Surrounded by implacable enemies, the US might have succumbed to totalitarianism itself.
Step by step, the world would turn into a totalitarian machine. State subjects would be regulated around the clock, enslaved by drugs, assigned marriage partners as a reward for meeting labor targets, and forced to carry out increasingly obscure long-range plans.
Eventually, society might evolve into an Overmind controlling its subjects' very thoughts. Instead of rediscovering the rules of morality, it would have overwritten them.
Communism wins
What if communism had been slightly less brutal? Its failure was by no means assured.
In the second quarter of the twentieth century, the world tried to hit the reset button. Most countries, including the USA under Roosevelt, implemented socialist policies.
If the USSR had been too weak to invade China after WW2, and Mao and Chiang Kai-shek had been less maniacal, China might have formed a socialist coalition government. Maybe China needed to hit rock bottom first. It would have taken generations to reverse its legacy of centuries of violent stagnation.
Today, China could have been almost free (to the extent that is possible there), with independent corporations, associations, and unions, something it may never achieve in our reality. However, the government would own the means of production.
With ancient traditions of central control, all of Asia could have turned communist. Russia has always been an enforced collective society. It could have built its industrial capacity with less violence, and nationalized only 90% of all farms, while still allowing limited incentives. It would have been bad, but not as bad as what really happened.
Without a Marshall Plan, Europe could only have rebuilt through heavy borrowing and taxes. The various national governments would have ended up owning everything. Countries would be run like corporations. Every citizen could be like a limited shareholder, voting for whatever benefited their region. They would have to give up personal control. Central Planning would become more powerful than figurehead parliaments.
The Third World has never been stable enough for free markets. Every family and tribe has to look out for itself. Central governments could have guaranteed prices and made basic investments. Economies of scale could have delivered simple education and infrastructure. They could also have prevented local kleptocrats from enriching themselves too much, keeping everyone at the same low level, and making almost everyone slightly less miserable.
The ultimate result would have been a much poorer, but seemingly more 'civilized' planet. It would still have been fragmented, with competing types of command economy. After half a century or so, this primitive communism would have served its purpose, and more advanced free markets could take over again.
That would have been the time of greatest danger.
World War Three
Humanity almost tried to commit suicide. The annual risk to every human alive during the Cold War was comparable to smoking.
There are many ways it could have started, but the end result would have been as final as the movie '300' (only add seven zeroes).
Humanity's last war (for a century) could have started as a third-world coup or an unprovoked attack against a minor ally that escalated. The initial death toll of a worst-case US/USSR strategic exchange would have been under a billion, with most of the planet relatively untouched at first. The skies would have darkened for months, followed by cold years of global famine.
In the war zones, agriculture would have become 95% less efficient as everything collapsed. The first year would have seen vast refugee camps in rural areas, with mass suicides of starving survivors. Fallout cancers and epidemics would have added another billion fatalities, and economic disruptions and population movements would have killed off the final billion more slowly, for a combined 60% human mortality rate.
The end result would have been a grim world order, in which all nations would become subordinate to some version of the UN. Civilization would not have returned to pre-war levels until 2100.
a world state
It would have been inevitable - if by some miracle there had been no world war in the twentieth century. One new idea can change everything; fortunately most ideas aren't new. This grand vision would have been a united planet.
After decades of uninterrupted investment, trade, and slowly rising complacency, the world's rich countries would have reached their full potential, creating a global network of superhighways, planned cities, and desert factories. The first worldwide TV network would have started by the 1960s (as opposed to never in our timeline).
The Unification Plan would allow for local autonomy, imposing a global tax of no more than 10%. Poor areas would greatly benefit, without having to give up their traditional ways at first. Ultimately, the goal would have been a world society, unlike anything that came before, with a planetary language and culture.
Hippie paradise
In the 1960s, a culture shift affected about 1% of mankind. What if this group had been larger and less Boomer-centered?
It could have started as a new religion, its ideas absorbed by competing groups. It could have required an aborted world war, a great depression, or some other global catastrophe. In this scenario, civilization would not have been destroyed but atomized.
Today's world might have been littered with a hundred thousand communes and micro-nations, from highly liberal to totalitarian. Villages would be run more like countries, with bizarre belief systems and traditions. Communities would try to grow their own food, hold festivals, and specialize in trades.
With less economic competition from the West, the Third World would have reverted to its own traditions. The world economy would have shrunk precipitously, declining birth rates causing a 'greening' planet.
In the West, there would be fewer taboos, and people would act more impulsively. The goal would be personal and spiritual development in as many ways as possible. Small religions and cults would experiment with conflicting morals.
Those who couldn't handle the freedom would be encouraged to pursue pleasure for its own sake, perhaps drugs or even deathly tournaments.
A hidden consensus would prevent any group from gaining too much power. It would take a lot of chaos, but such a world might eventually stabilize itself and endure for a thousand centuries.
the Soul Decoded
The world we inhabit is an aberration. What if science had chosen to focus on the mind instead of increasingly clever technology?
If we actually understood ourselves, we might know what really matters. There would be less technology, but the quality of life could be incomparably higher. It might be a Utopia, every moment as meaningful as would be practical. Education would be vastly easier so workers could be more productive while working less.
In this artificial heaven, money and most forms of wealth would be unnecessary. There would be few outward signs of success. People might live modest lives in dormitories or underground. Food might be colored pastes, fashions could be non-existent. Like Zen monks, life would focus on higher states of awareness.
After developing a science of philosophy, humanity might learn there are things even more meaningful than pleasure. Perhaps the mind is an illusion, a jungle of competing alarm signals.
Then the goal would be to create the next highest level of being. Humans could become like cells of a larger soul.
Eventually, these cells would still have to be replaced by machines.
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Breaking news from the future
What would it be like to skip the next three decades? How would a medieval peasant perceive the results of a thousand years of crappy improvements?
This initial perception would be more interesting for us than for him. First impressions are the most profound, representing unreproducible insights. A newcomer to a country notices many things they eventually train themselves to forget.
Most attempts to look ahead aren't really attempts at all. A mental block prevents us from noticing the small changes that over time will overthrow all existing arrangements. It's easier to just extrapolate.
Visitors to the future would be disappointed at first. Most new technology will be non-ornamental and even ugly. But they would soon realize it was unlike anything they had thought of.
Dates
-2025: The greatest hoax ever. Cyber-terrorists persuade Homeland Security that a nuclear bomb is about to detonate in Los Angeles. Many perish in the mass evacuation gridlock.
-2027: The top operatives of several Islamic terror groups attack nuclear power plants with homemade cruise missiles (converted light aircraft), causing a core meltdown. Dozens are killed, with thousands of cancer cases in the following decades. Oh, and there's a trillion dollar cleanup bill.
-2029: After several natural and man-made disasters, China breaks up along its language lines, but retains a common army.
-2030: The Middle East forms a common market to rival the EU.
-2036: The first underground city, a network of self-contained pods and tunnels near Russia's Pacific coast, is made habitable with virtual reality. It accepts residents from every country.
-2041: During the break-up of most existing nation states, some strange temporary states form and are disbanded.
Arcalon's spring 2007 prediction for the 2008 presidential election: Obama for president, Clinton for vice-president will defeat: McCain for president, conservative guy I haven't heard of for VP.
2014 prediction for 2016: Biden/Clinton defeat Christie/Huntsman. Trump had not yet been heard of at that time. (Bonus for 2020: Muhammad/Gonzalez defeat Chang/Mobutu). (Bonus for 2024: DeSantis/Root barely defeat Harris/Cuban).
When will mankind return to the moon?
-2001 prediction: in 2018. By then the Chinese will play a larger role than the Russians.
-2008 comment: Correct!
-2014 prediction: no wait that was much too soon. Not before 2026.
-2015 prediction: not before 2027.
-2016 prediction: not before 2028.
-2017 prediction: not before 2029.
-2018 prediction: not before 2030.
-2023 prediction: not before 2028.
When will the first manned landing on Mars occur?
-2001 prediction: in 2019, around the fiftieth anniversary of the Apollo landings. Ways will be found to do it relatively cheaply. The Martian atmosphere's CO2 can be combined with H2 using nuclear power to refuel the ascent stage and the return flight. The crew size will be kept small, perhaps as few as three.
-2008 comment: That seems too soon. In seven years, the goal has receded about a decade, yet another sign of social stagnation.
-2012 prediction: not before 2032, or maybe never.
-2014 prediction: not before 2034, or maybe never (2018: 2038) (2023: 2033).
When will a machine become self-aware?
-2001 prediction: in 2030, just barely at great expense. It won't be able to pass the Turing test (the first AI will be unlike any human). It will rely on brute-force computation, using an immense database.
-2014 comment: still somewhat plausible but maybe the date should be moved out a bit just to be safe.
-2018 comment: a universal deep learning program will oversee a three-level hierarchy of many more specialized knowledge aggregators around that time?
-2023: 2028 seems possible now . . .
When will nuclear fusion become practical?
-2001 prediction: in 2040. A Tokomak reactor with intelligent coils will focus electromagnetic fields in a high-energy loop.
-2016 prediction: add 15 years to that.
-2023 prediction: it seems about twenty-five years away.
When will the first machine reach another solar system?
-2001 prediction: in 2069. The probe will weigh less than an ounce. It will ride a particle beam past Proxima Centauri, unless some undiscovered faint star is closer.
-2014 comment: who knows, it might even be sooner.
-2023: 2067.
When will poverty cease to exist?
-2001 prediction: in 2040. It will never completely vanish. Income differences are still rising, but technology will come to the rescue. The field of robotics has been in a recession since its birth, but the 2010s will change that. Eventually machines will do all the unpleasant work. Everyone can have a tolerable living standard.
-2015 comment: when the majority wants it.
-2023 comment: 2045.
When will there be a world government?
-2001 prediction: in 2050, once the dangers [of runaway technology to mankind] become undeniable. Most politics will remain local.
-2023: when AI has been maximally aligned sometime after 2040.
When will the aliens arrive?
-2001 prediction: in [the year] 5,000,000,000, give or take a few weeks. There have been no alien visits during the entire existence of planet Earth, or to this region of the galaxy for almost ten billion years before that. Anyone who expects first contact during their lifetime has an exaggerated sense of self-importance. The odds are a hundred million to one. (This will look silly if they land a minute from now.)
What are the correct terms of the simplified Drake equation?
-2001 analysis:
Proportion of Sun-like stars in our galaxy: 1%
Proportion of those stars with planets: 90%
Of those, with planets in suitable orbits for life: 10%
percentage that have simple life: (the most difficult to guess) 0.1%
intelligent life: 0.0001%
This gives the number of human-level civilizations in the galaxy at this time:
1
And in the observable universe: 100,000,000,000
Something may be wrong in the last term.
-2008 comment: Creationists do have one small point: the evolution of complex organisms like owls and lobbyists is incredibly unlikely. However, just because something is absurdly complex doesn't make it supernatural. It would take a lifetime of work to fully understand just how a PC turns itself on. [Supposedly 'designed' human technology has evolved in a process similar to natural evolution.]
Most planets with life are vastly less advanced than Earth. Very few are vastly more advanced.
-2015 comment: the Drake equation needs more terms for pre-life (increasingly elaborate molecule chains), and for sophisticated aliens who don't care about science and technology, but only want to self-improve. These hurdles further reduce the number of civilizations.
-2023: aliens won't arrive from across space but from across mathematics.
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