Very nice work. An experiment log would be an interesting addition, I think. It would be particularly fascinating to read the experiment/incident that proved a break room visit would be unwise.
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Actually, the cooking chamber of a microwave oven is a Faraday cage, so none of the microwave radiation is capable of escaping. That's why microwaves cook things inside them, but not someone standing right next to them. As no microwave radiation is emitted, the red contacts would detect nothing, so that should probably be changed.
These were obviously constructed to be used, and a series of experiments would be logical for the Foundation to conduct to determine if 558 could be safely used in the field in any capacity. It's all well and good to say "don't look at the microwave", but it has a more dramatic effect if we see how the particular restrictions upon utility were determined.
Only a good one needs an experiment log, because it means there's more narrative to mine from the idea.
Hmm. I suppose. I just can't see experiments being particularly interesting for this object. I mean, they're perfectly well-summarized in the document itself. I think this one stands very well on its own as a complete report.
I don't think this needs an open experiment log, for sure. Most of the time, unless the object is sufficiently interesting, they just become cheap ways to squeeze paragraphs out of a concept. This concept is concise and there's no need for ongoing testing. Well, at least not that I can see, and as an anon I'm certainly in no position to influence people.
I can't see them being used in the field. Think of how many normal contact lenses people lose. Now imagine that the lenses are being actively stolen by rival groups.
Also, 342's creature is the creature that lives in the web.
It doesn't make sense for these contacts to have advanced technology capable of evaluating eye shape, lens shape, focal length, distance to the fovea, etc., and adjusting on the fly to fit any eye and grant 20/20 vision, yet at the same time don't they have basic filters in place so as not to overstimulate photoreceptors in the eye. The manufacturer would have to have been willfully stupid to do this. This effect is not central to the concept of your SCP, and seems like it was just lumped on for additional "cool factor", so I'd suggest just removing the claim that these contacts fit anybody and correct their vision.
Having the containers manufacture limitless amounts of saline solution to keep the contacts moisturized during storage is super lame. Virtually every SCP that has anything to do with any sort of liquid always has the capability to infinitely replenish the liquid so it never runs out. It's a horribly overdone cliche which is almost never justifiable. Get rid of it.
As I mentioned in a comment above, the red contacts would not be able to detect microwave radiation coming out of a microwave oven, since the cooking chamber is a Faraday cage. Additionally, modern x-ray machines don't make x-rays powerful enough to penetrate several hundred meters of intervening air/people/walls, so several hundred meters away from the medical examination room there would be no x-rays for the green contacts to detect. Lastly, the spectrum emitted by the sun is actually most energetic in the visual spectrum, which is why eyes evolved to detect it. Even if the violet contacts allow the wearer to see the entire spectrum emitted by the sun, it would only be about three times as bright as normal, which would be bright but not "blinding." (See here for a graph of the solar spectrum.)
Having all these different kinds of contacts that do the exact same thing (convert light from one wavelength to another wavelength in the visible spectrum) seems kind of redundant. In light of both that redundancy and your poor attempt at technobabble to fill out three paragraphs on three separate kinds of contacts, I'd suggest combining the red, green, and violet contacts into one. This new contact would simply render all wavelengths of light visible to the wearer. I'm not sure what to do about grey since it just kind of sucks and makes no sense.
The black contacts also don't make any sense. I know you're trying to make something spooky and mysterious, but there is really nothing you can cause the eye to perceive that a normal brain isn't capable of handling. Yes, you can overload the photoreceptors so that they are no longer capable of converting light into an electrical signal to send to the brain, but there is no way you can stimulate them such that the signal they send to the brain can damage it. Of course, the major exception to that is photosensitive epilepsy, which most people don't have. This points to an interesting new direction for the black contacts, though. Perhaps they could grant visions only to people with photosensitive epilepsy? Normal people see only weird flashing lights, but for people with a particular neurological disorder, the brain misfires in such a way as to render strange images (which may be from the future, whatever.)
Anyway, all of these issues has led to me downvoting this SCP for now. Take care of my concerns above, though, and you'll definitely get me to change my vote.
I'd agree with most of these points, however, I'd have to object to the black lenses one. The effect didn't seem to be physical damage stemming from overpowering the eyes so they send a boku bad signal that fries the brain. Instead, it seems to lie in the process of the brain interpreting the signal. Obviously there are, at the very least, some form of signals that can be damaging when interpreted by the brain (PTSD, for example) and signals that can effect certain people certain ways (in the photosensitive epileptic case). In terms of the speculative fiction of the entry, I feel the malicious signal of the black lenses doesn't strain my suspension of disbelief.
However, the "It seems that the human brain is not capable of handling this sensory input and in most cases it shuts down as a defensive reaction." line does leave me a little cold. It's not so much the raw input the brain is having trouble with, in my mind, it's the mental processes as the signal propagates and is interpreted by the brain that causes the problem.
The other points do require some address, so I'll leave it to the SCP author to make any changes he sees fit.
I'd think that the contact lenses being one-size-fits-all-and-we-mean-all would have been intended by the manufacturer so as not to limit accessibility. There's no reason for the manufacturer to put limits on the lenses so you don't harm yourself; they're probably not interested in user-friendliness beyond allowing people to wear the things. The intended recipients of these lenses, in all likelihood, would know exactly what they were and what not to do with them.
I don't see why we should combine the red, green, and violet contacts; what if you're interested in seeing only a certain part of the spectrum? Allowing someone to see the entire spectrum as visible light would be confusing and less-than-useful, if not blinding.
The grey contacts I agree could be worked out a little better, though I can't provide any suggestions as to how to do so. Perhaps…. perhaps they could offer a glimpse of other spatial dimensions? Such a thing wouldn't be necessarily useful, but it seems more true to the spirit of the item. Well, it's up to the author.
As for the black contacts making people faint, take it up with Lovecraft. I think the idea is that what is perceived is so unsettling and so alien that it confuses people to the point of information overload. (I… CAN SEE… EVERYTHINGGGGGGG)
These black contacts remind me of an old movie called "X: The Man With The X-Ray Eyes", in which this doctor experiments "enhancing" his vision with an experimental eye-drops.
His vision becomes so "clear", that in the end he plucks his own eyes to remain sane; however, the director's cut version clearly has the doctor saying something before the abrupt cut.
It was "I can still see!".
And, yeah, about this lenses being "against the laws of science"… uh… isn't it the POINT of it being a SCP? Because it can do something unexplainable?
Paragraph 1:
You're making two assumptions with this criticism.
First, you're assuming the manufacturer knew its clients would need such protection, without even knowing who - or what - that manufacturer is. These contacts may not have been made for or by regular humans or for use in this world. That might be why the green lenses are there…
Second, you're assuming that just because the manufacturer has one kind of advanced technology, it must have another. We don't know how these lenses work. For all we know, the "basic filters" you describe might not be compatible with the other things going into the manufacture of these lenses, if the manufacturer knows how to make such filters at all. It's like saying the manufacturers of the Space Shuttle were willfully stupid for not adding a feature allowing the passengers to safely eject if the shuttle broke up during atmospheric reentry.
Paragraph 2:
This one I totally agree with. The lenses are the focus here, not their container.
Paragraph 3:
Mostly agreed on the issue of the red contacts and the microwave. However, the issue of the X-Rays and what I assume you meant to be the violet lenses is different.
The only way there could be no x-rays for the lenses to detect would be if the combined effects of reflection and attenuation due to the intervening air, walls, and people led to an x-ray transmission rate of 0 for all angles. This is physically impossible - the Fresnel equations for determining the fraction of light transmitted instead of reflected are dependent on the incident angle, so no barrier can reflect all incoming x-rays, and the Beer-Lambert law for determining Attenuation length is exponential (and, therefor, never zero), so the probability of an x-ray photon making it through the complete length of a barrier without being absorbed is never zero.
What would happen, no matter how "weak" the x-ray source was, is that the final x-ray intensity would be reduced not to zero but to the point where most other means of detection wouldn't pick them up. Which, incidentally, explains exactly why the lens users were blinded by the ultraviolet portions of the sun's light - in order to see the massively attenuated x-rays from the examining room, the lenses would have to multiply the intensity enormously, turning your "about three times as bright as normal" into "bright enough to fry your eyes".
Paragraph 4:
First off, the lenses don't all do the same thing.
Second off, what technobabble? All the paragraphs were perfectly understandable to me.
Third off, I don't think the grey lenses suck at all. I think they're the coolest ones - at the expense of vertigo, headaches, and your ability to see colors, they let you bend your vision around corners, past the point where your peripheral vision would normally stop, and farther than your long-distance vision would normally allow you to see clearly.
Paragraph 5:
… there is really nothing you can cause the eye to perceive that a normal brain isn't capable of handling.
Ever heard of the Motif of Harmful Sensation? This is the SCP Foundation! We've got all kinds of things locked up here that break your mind, one way or another, if you look at them. It might not damage your brain physically, but whatever these people see could certainly traumatize them beyond belief or drive them insane. Besides, how do you know these lenses only affect your eyes? They could be affecting the wearers' minds more directly, for all we know.
Paragraph 6:
I think it's a great entry. I upvoted it.
Your paragraph 3 critique is fanciful and filled with nice links but your discussion displays a fundamental lack of understanding in how to apply them to the real world, which is not a continuous probability function but is rather discrete and quantized. The nature of the world is not such that you can fire an x-ray at a lead wall and always (or even often) pick up a super-attenuated signal on the other side. Yes, there is a nonzero probability that an x-ray will make it through without being absorbed, but the probability is so low that it's extremely unlikely in any given case it will happen. In the cases where it does not happen, there will be nothing to detect. Not a super-attenuated signal that can be amplified — but nothing. So it is actually perfectly valid to say the x-ray contacts will not see any x-rays a few hundred meters away. (Or to be accurate you could bust out your equations and say it's likely you'd detect one every hundred million years, or whatever.)
Anyway, it's not at all clear to me the author's original intention was to have these contact amplify light, I think he merely wanted them to convert from one wavelength to another. If they amplify light (with no power source) then why doesn't the Foundation stop experimenting on them and just use them for free energy? Line up 10 in a row, fire a flashlight in one end, and get the surface of the sun out the other.
Anne, if I may quote something from your post to refute your argument.
x-ray contacts
That is all. Thank you.
(I think I'm just going to quote whatever people are debating about so they don't lose sight and forgot the inherit absurdity about trying to make something impossible as scientific as possible. I'll go around from thread to thread doing it. If anyone wants to help, that be great. I mean it's like this:
so the quantum signifiers exit a black hole singularity only when it spins 345 degree of a tessert time circle, and the tendrils in its left qualular arm would only work if the lasers were six point E=nine slower then the speed of light, not the equivalent of the moons radius spinning as you were saying, which is completely wrong, only an idiot would mess up her basic chemistry and think neutrons are larger then Nesslleon particles-
Hey.
Giant space laser chicken.
)
Okay, I've made some major revisions, taking all your comments into account. Hopefully it's a more solid article now, and criticism is still always welcome. I'm not dead set on this version, mind. I might end up blending the two.
I liked it better in the previous version.
Admin, SCP Wiki
@Anna Graham:
We're not dealing with the real world here, so stop acting like the SCP are real , just to name a few: a rope that goes all the way to space guarded by monks; and capsules to grow a castle in seven days! Are those things feasible real? No.
Are they cool? Yes, and that's the point.
You can even argue and complain about all the laws of physics that thoses things break. But they work as it is, it's part of their charm. It's part of the mistery, of "why the hell it works".
If you want a rational answer for everything, well, i think you will always have many disagreements here.
Also, wall of text.
@Skali: I really didn't like the new version at all!
Fish and I don't agree on a lot of things.
We agree on this.
Anna Graham, please take a step back and repeat to yourself, "It's just SCP, I should really just relax."
Or Crow and Tom Servo are going to get very sad and cry. :(
I'm afraid I don't much like the new article. Sometimes the SCPs work better as concepts realized than anything else. We might be able to use standard scientific techniques to investigate them, but it's not necessary for them to make "sense".
The revised sentence about the saline solution is a bit awkward; it makes it sound like they were expecting some sort of extraordinary solution for what are essentially just contact lenses. I'd just take it out entirely. It's up to you.
Frankly, I don't see the need to condense the three lenses; they may operate similarly, but there's no reason to make a contact lens that makes the entire electromagnetic spectrum visible. The concept may be simpler, but now I imagine they're just confusing to wear. I see you've given them the ability to filter out certain parts of the spectrum; in my opinion this just makes them seem magical.
Maybe I'm just afraid of change, but I think the original article was cleaner, easier to understand, and purer of concept than what we have now. Just fix the more egregious violations of physics that Anna Graham's pointed out, and leave the rest alone.
Oh good lord, not the Anna Graham show again.
To inject the correct amount of silliness into this thread, I will now present anagrams of "Anna Graham":
- A Hanger Man
- Ah, Nag An Arm
- Aha! Man Rang!
- Manna Rag? Ha!
Shame there aren't enough letters to work "Ayn Rand" in there.
Skali—still a solid concept, but it was indeed good before.
You don't deserve an internet rave party in your discussion thread, but where DJ A.G. goes, they follow.
Not all criticism (or praise) needs to be acknowledged.
Hey now, that wasn't an internet rave party.
THIS IS AN INTERNET RAVE PARTY!
Man SCP-558-3 would make a rave AWESOME. You might also have an aneurysm.
You know what?
Every time someone brings OTT real world physics in an SCP discussion to deliberately disprove it, I'm going to systematically feed mutant puppies to babies.
Every time a thread becomes so engorged with idiotic infighting, I'm going to step it up a notch and launch an AIDS purge through the entire thread, and wipe it from the system.
And finally, every time a thread dealing with idiotic infighting is closed and the argument finished, and someone tries to reinstate said idiot argument…
I WILL FUCKING BAN EVERY SINGLE GODDAMN PERSON INVOLVED, REGARDLESS OF THEIR ARGUMENT OR PLACEMENT THEREIN, BE THEY ANON, MEMBER OR EVEN STAFF, BECAUSE I FUCKING CAN
Seriously, this shit is old, and I'm tired of it clogging up the tubes. Suck it up and move on.
Sigh…
Now if you don't mind, there's an internet rave party I need to get back to.
I fully support this decision. In addition, anything that can make Kain, one of the nicest dogs i know, fly into a rage is something people need to be careful of.
I have to agree with everything stated here as well. The whole point of the SCP is that they tie physics in knots. a little realism can be nice, and help suspend disbelief, but too much can kill.
We really need to not fight. As a rule of thumb, if a argument goes beyond 3-4 posts, there's a slim chance that any good will come from it.
Let's make this the last times this happens. The constant raves are really cutting into my sleep.
(account deleted)Teehee, the whole time I was reading this, I was thinking how annoying contacts are, especially when they dry out.
I wonder what would happen if you wore one color in one eye, and another in another eye….
You'd walk into things, probably, and your head would hurt. "teehee"?
/forum/t-140713/scp-558#post-
page revision: 2, last edited: 15 Jan 2023 15:06
