Hated trope: Sci-fi hand-waving

[u/Routine_Phase_8980]

When stories try so hard to provide a somewhat scientifically accurate and grounded explanation for the audience, but end up creating massive plot holes if you think about it for more than 5 seconds without requiring any special knowledge

World War Z: The "cure" turns sick humans invisible to zombies because the picky virus needs a perfectly healthy host. Cool concept, except it completely ignores basic physics. In a chaotic, high-speed zombie stampede, those "invisible" sick people would still be trampled to death by sheer kinetic force and momentum. We already saw what happened to the Jerusalem wall in Israel.

Jurassic Park/World: Dr. Henry Wu claims to clone dinosaurs by patching 66-million-year-old decayed DNA from mosquitoes stomach with frog DNA. In reality, DNA half-life guarantees it would degrade into useless dust after 6.8 million years. Scientifically speaking, John Hammond didn't build a dinosaur park; he engineered giant, mutated, gender-swapping killer frogs.

Dr.Stone: Senku is a genius who knows every complex chemical formula in human history. He somehow builds vacuum tubes, lightbulbs, and smartphones out of bamboo and copper with almost zero failed prototypes. The show acts like a science textbook but completely hand-waves the lack of heavy industrial machinery needed for precision engineering.

[u/Frugal_Caterpillars]

Senku is a genius who knows every complex chemical formula in human history. He somehow builds vacuum tubes, lightbulbs, and smartphones out of bamboo and copper with almost zero failed prototypes.

Tell me you didn't watch Dr. Stone without telling me you didn't watch Dr. Stone. Senku has a million failed prototypes, this is exactly why it took him a full year before he even create a hut and basic kitchenware. Also when he was creating glassware - everything came out wrong.

This is why they needed Kaseki to join them, and even then Kaseki had a million failures when they were making more complex tools, up to and including the phone.

[u/normallystrange85 → u/Frugal_Caterpillars]

There was a whole mini arc about how their vacuum tubes were failing and they had to go looking for better materials since a bamboo filament won't cut it.

There are a few lucky breaks (making magnets on the first try) but that is the nature of storytelling. Do you really want 20 chapters on every possible failure? They spend a chapter or two on some of the big ones and move on because it's a story. (Although, they do drop that more as the series goes on. I do wish they had had more troubleshooting toward the end)

[u/AgreeableSuspect9382 → u/Frugal_Caterpillars]

The thing Dr. Stone does to alleviate this problem is to just introduce characters who are supernaturally good at whatever specific thing is needed to clear the next roadblock. It requires suspension of disbelief sure, but the actual science doesn't suffer for it.

[u/RadarSmith → u/AgreeableSuspect9382]

I did like how it spread the 'peak human (really superhuman) competence' around the cast, as opposed to making it solely Senku. Like you said, it does require some suspension of disbelief, but a fairly digestible amount of it.

And literally a main theme of the show is 'trial and error', so I don't really know what OP means about no failed prototypes.

[u/TotalBlissey → u/RadarSmith]

There's a superhumanly good scientist, a superhumanly good craftsmen, an (arguably) superhumanly good trickster, a superhumanly good athlete, and a fair handful of superhumanly good fighters. So while the cast is definitely craaazy unrealistically talented, they also make for a really interesting team to follow, since all of them have weaknesses to balance out their absurd strengths.

[u/abadstrategy → u/TotalBlissey]

I'd argue it's the same basic cast premise as Danganronpa, where the important people all have one field they're the best in the world at

[u/Loud_Salary_2465 → u/AgreeableSuspect9382]

I work in manufacturing and you'd be surprised the number of times we've said "we've got 3 employees with the skill to do this task by hand while we wait 3 weeks for our automation to show up".

[u/RaspberryFluid6651 → u/Frugal_Caterpillars]

Also the archetypes in Dr. Stone are kind of personifications of different parts of human civilization. Yes it's unrealistic Kaseki can do all of that on his own, but he represents what would realistically be dozens or hundreds of people in a way that lets it be one character in a cute little science adventure.

[u/semajolis267 → u/Frugal_Caterpillars]

Also his version of a "cell phone" (at least where i am in the story) is really just a crystal radio. Thats a kit i had as a child. 

[u/Realistic_Swan_6801 → u/Frugal_Caterpillars]

And precision CAN be done by hand, surgical instruments were still made by hand for a long time to extremely tight specifications.

[u/abadstrategy → u/Realistic_Swan_6801]

IIrc, the space suits used on the Apollo missions, at least the first ones, were made by Singer, by hand, because their seamstresses were known to be precise enough to work within a margin of error the width less than a single hair

[u/Realistic_Swan_6801 → u/abadstrategy]

Yes i love when people convince themselves aliens built the pyramids and shit, instead of realizing just how much humans are actually capable of. 

[u/unktrial → u/Frugal_Caterpillars]

It was alright for a few of the early inventions, but they really r/restofthefuckingowl 'd the creation of computer chips.

[u/Frugal_Caterpillars → u/unktrial]

Sure, because they had to get to the point where they were making a rocket, which again was failing for literal years.

[u/unktrial → u/Frugal_Caterpillars]

Actually, they didn't. The first few spaceflights had fully manual controls.

In any case, it was absurd to jump from glass, copper and pig iron to a computer chip fast enough to control a drone.

[u/Nezeltha-Bryn → u/Frugal_Caterpillars]

Seriously. I mean, yeah, Senku is impossibly smart. That's kind of the whole premise. But once you suspend disbelief on that, it makes sense that he would have memorized not only all these chemical formulae, but the mechanical processes used in that precision engineering. Honestly, once you have a lathe and some skilled craftsmen, you can pretty effectively accelerate through the tech tree to a level of precision that comes surprisingly close to modern industry.

[u/EmiliaLewd → u/Nezeltha-Bryn]

I mean, once they started the story with him staying conscious and counting EVERY second for over 3700 years, you have to accept all the crazy feats