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These brains spontaneously grew retinas. Sensory input please! https://bigthink.com/surprisin...

It all depends what sort of day I'm having and what the circumstances are. When I'm in the mood to fill in (silly) online quizzes I might be calm and relaxed, when working I am busy and juggling many things - or sometimes I am analytical and leading others. When socialising I can be thoughtful and kind, or exuberant. Sometimes I prefer to be on my own and other times I just think "screw it!" and want to stay in bed.

What is it with all this "one personality" stuff? Surely everyone adapts their thoughts and actions to the situation they find themselves in?

"Superhuman", "Infinite ability" just non-committal words, and no doubt.

Yeah, great words about the ability to learn which is exactly what I said. Now go back and read what you quoted to me. I'll highlight some for you:
The more data we feed it

This one gives AV lovers hard-ons The headline? "Google's Self-Driving Cars Are Ridiculously Safe' https://bigthink.com/ideafeed/... [bigthink.com]

So are you saying it's wrong? How many accidents have Google's self-driving cars caused in it's time? The answer is 1 in over 8 million kilometers of driving. That is a ridiculously AWESOME safety record, far better than even some of the best drivers out there.

If you want more, you can google it

Nope thanks I'll keep letting you reaffirm what I said. Got any more examples of safety far better than normal, and descriptions of self driving cars as something that has no limits to how well it will learn as we continuously feed it more info?

Validation makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside :-D

Remember when people were strutting around expounding how safe these self driving vehicles were?

No. Not at all. Because no one ever did. What they did say was that with consistency, repeatability, not wavering, not sleeping, and the ability to continuously improve they *will be* far safer than human drivers can ever hope to be. But absolutely no one has made a universal claim like you just have, not even really silly people.

Here's some reading material for the no one ever said that crowd:

Some of the words: "Driverless cars are designed to have almost a superhuman-like ability to recognize the world around them. This is because they use loads of sensors to gather tons of data about their environment so that they can seamlessly operate in a constantly changing environment."

"The more data we feed it the more vocabulary it has and the more it can recognize what a pedestrian is. And we do the same thing with bicyclists, cars, trucks, and we do it at all times of day and different weather conditions. So again, essentially it has this infinite capability to build up a memory and understanding of what all of these different types of things could encounter would look like," he said.

"Superhuman", "Infinite ability" just non-committal words, and no doubt.

This one gives AV lovers hard-ons The headline? "Google's Self-Driving Cars Are Ridiculously Safe' https://bigthink.com/ideafeed/...

So safe it is ridiculous - That must be superhumanly and infinitely safe, n'est-ce pas? Did you know that if you don't believe tht, you are suffering from Dunning - Kruger effect? Right there in the article. Jebuz Kryst - I save that insult for 1 step below inviting someone into the parking lot for a fistfight, and yet this calm rational person sticks it in his article. I suspect he really feels strongly positive about that there autonomous vehicle technology to call anyone who disagrees not smart enough to differ in opinion. Those stupid luddites, we'll nave no opposing opinions.

If you want more, you can google it, but don't piss on my leg and tell me it is raining - People on the internet, and people in here have long been insulting others if they don't believe in the brave and safe new world that will be ours, if only we eliminate the incompetent asses behind the wheel.

By they way - in a situation where the automobile must make adecision on who to kill in an unavoidable accident - are you willing to have your car kill you to save others? There will be situations where the autonomy must deliberately kill people.

Do you want a switch that will tell the car in such instances that you want it to save you and purposely kill others? Enjoy.

Well the fame is obviously because of the chair and the voice, because you don't get famous for doing physics. If you go through the list of Nobel prize winners I think the only one any significant number would remember is Albert Einstein, and if he'd been more serious and well-groomed I doubt even he'd reach that fame on merit alone. Maybe Schrödinger for the cat but very little else. So what's the merits if you try to take away all the fame? I honestly don't know enough physics to tell and you can't really go by other physicist's awards and whatnot if you assuming they were all swooning over his disability.

He was pretty clearly a very bright young student bordering on genius before he was diagnosed with the condition though. And I doubt physicists are really handing out participation awards, I don't think any of them would hold back from arresting Hawking on any flaws in his theories. His main theory of Hawking radiation isn't proven yet which is why he doesn't have a Nobel prize, but it certainly could be true. I know he plays into a human idea that mind and body are in balance so an extraordinary mind and crippled go together like Xavier in X-Men but reality is they're quite orthogonal. His condition doesn't make his mind that special, but it doesn't preclude that possibility either.

Here's an article:
http://bigthink.com/neurobonke...

About this similar study:
https://link.springer.com/arti...

I'm sure you can find more with about 60 seconds on Google.

First of, this is an adults world, so the kids among us should drink they milk and go to bed before 22.

Much has been attained by the sword. That includes the pax americana and also some slavery abolishment in some places. Let's compare how many countries the US has occupied, enslaved and drained of resources since ever compared to the homologous number the commies (that also now rule in NK) have done. Tell me again how many houdreds of millions of ppl has the US condemned to abject poverty ?

What's that you say ? The USSR/China never created NK ?


Ignorant hippies. I'll just leave this here: http://assets4.bigthink.com/sy... (if the bottom is the American way then only a madman would argue with observable reality)

What's interesting is that humans who can't feel emotions have trouble making simple decisions like what to eat.

More patents hinder innovation. Especially stupid patents. Or patents not supported by innovation or actual invention.

And people wonder why the US has dropped off the list of most innovative countries.

You want to insert the FCC into the internet to manage traffic?

I never said such a thing. All they need is to keep ISPs classified as common carriers, otherwise trouble will follow.

http://bigthink.com/design-for...

Meh, I wouldn't worry about antifa. They're all just a bunch of pimply pasty little pussies that act tough when they're in big numbers, but if they find themselves facing a real threat (the police aren't, btw, and antifa knows it,) they run and hide. Videos of this happening are all over youtube -- antifa keeps shouting about how cops are evil, they then block the wrong person from walking to work who beats the fuck out of one of them, and all of a sudden they start cowering and asking why the police aren't there to protect them.

IMO the real threats to democracy right now are social media (in the form of echo chambers) and far left universities that are actively working towards limiting free speech (Evergreen State, for example.)

http://www.newsweek.com/social...
http://bigthink.com/21st-centu...

And honestly, I think groups like antifa and the alt-right are way overblown by the media. Think the killer bees scare, the anthrax scare, the satanism scare of the 80's, and the myth that kids have been poisoned by Halloween candy that keeps coming around every year, even though there's no actual evidence that this has happened.

I mean fuck, the alt-right wouldn't even have an identity if it weren't for the media constantly shouting its name at the rooftops every fucking night. Seriously, the term was coined in 2010, and nobody had any idea who the fuck they were until the media started using them as their latest clickbait headline a year ago.

I don't know what level of critical thinking goes into people's objections to Obamacare versus how much they deny Evolution (maybe none). All I'm saying is that there's a very clear correlation (not causation) between people (some conservatives) who for the last seven years have been trying to repeal Obamacare (because, and let me call a spade a spade here, they're RACIST) and those who don't believe in Evolution. (Now that they actually have the opportunity to overturn it, they realize that without the black man behind it, it's not so bad.)

http://bigthink.com/neurobonke...

Of course what this article brings up is that these "beliefs", and yes they are beliefs because they are not coming from facts (hence the flip-flop on Obamacare) are based on IDENTITY POLITICS. So the same person who believes that Obama was a muslim, wasn't born in the U.S., is part of a worldwide Jihad, etc. is likely to not believe in Evolution, Climate Change or that Obamacare was a carefully thought out negotiated plan with over 100 public hearings (and still far from perfect but short of completely changing the entire "free-market" medical industry, the best they could do). Of course, beliefs (like religion) Trumps all so when a person has these beliefs they'll bend whatever facts there are to fit them, hence the more certainty against climate change amongst better educated Republicans.

I do hope that perhaps there is a point where facts will overwhelm one's misguided "beliefs" like the assertion that "this storm season isn't anything special" in the face of the fact of possibly TWO 500 year storms happening in a few weeks of each other. (The probability of that occurring in a single year let alone a few weeks is 0.002 x 0.002 or 0.000004. That's four chances in a Million! Do you play the lottery? Do you EXPECT to win?).

That's why misguided beliefs can ruin a nation and one's own finances. If you think otherwise, you should buy waterfront property in Texas or Florida, it'll be cheap and the next storm this big won't be back for another 500 years. The only good thing about the accelerated pace of Climate Change is that, when I started following it more than a decade ago, I didn't think it's effects would be locally obvious while I was still alive (and it was only a problem for our unfortunate children). Now only the most die-hard denialist would think about investing in these properties. Will you? Then give my regards to Bankruptcy court!

The evidence for no other intelligent life is that we haven't seen any, and there are numerous plausible scenarios in which we would have detected other intelligent life. There's also plausible scenarios where they're out there and we haven't detected them for a variety of reasons. I know of no hypotheses treated as fact with such little evidence.

everything you said there is wrong

First, the burden of proof is on the claim that intelligent life *does* exist not the other way around.

2nd, ever heard of General Relativity?

Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity predicted that the gravity of stars could brighten and bend the light coming from other stars like a magnifying lens. Yet this is something Einstein did not think we could ever see due to the great distance between stars, writing in a 1936 article that "there is no hope of observing this phenomenon directly."

Yet, as science persists, this phenomenon, called “gravitational microlensing”, has now been observed by an international team of researchers

Source

We have several Physics theories that we treat as fact but haven't proven with direct observation, like General Relativity until this year.

I don't think you are aware enough of the facts of this topic to converse intelligently, so I'm done here.

small group of incredibly wealthy people who could afford

It is always like that, is not it? Flush toilets were only accessible to the wealthy as well, when introduced in 1890-ies. In 1900-ies houses for "skilled workers" already had them...

could do cellular and be affordable is a fairly recent thing (think mid 80s).

The cellular phones went from "incredibly wealthy" to "who needs a land-line?" in 15-20 years. Had that count started in the 1950-ies instead of 1980-ies, we would've had the current saturation in the 1970-ies. And it could've started even earlier — Tesla, for example, first floated the idea in 1926!

But instead we kept the AT&T's monopoly (notch another one for the beloved F.D.R.!) and directed our surplus collective scientific and otherwise creative energies into Moon landing...

This is a race to the bottom where stopping it is in the interest of everyone involved.

Imagine if you will, the coming brain drain. As there are less and less opportunies for the best and brightest, many will leave. Considering the present hatred towards science, there will be a short time of wild applause for the loss.

http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/con... is very interesting, as it speaks to a coming brain drain, as foreign born students in the US opt out of staying here and go back to their own countries to work their careers. Interesting in that these are not regular Americans! So where are the smart Americans going?

Here: http://www.npr.org/2012/02/05/... The finance sector.

Well, that's kinda nice now isn't it? Smart kid. Goes and gets get holed up in a cubicle at Goldman Sachs, and creates and innovates. ..... nothing.

I forsee the day where a bright young US student interested in science or technology relocates to China or India, while the US tries to make money selling our hats to each other. Meanwhile an increasingly poor and uneducated public cheers the loss of the liberal egghead with his bible and common sense defying ideas. https://newrepublic.com/articl... Yeah, I know - it's New Republic. Bigthink has an article as well http://bigthink.com/dr-kakus-u... . Its a little older but still good food for thought.

I'm I missing something or this have already been done? There's even a Billboard that filter the humidity in air to make drinkable water : http://bigthink.com/design-for...

Citation missing.

I can help with that:

http://bigthink.com/ideafeed/s...

And here are links to the actual studies (11 of which are peer-reviewed).

https://www.motorists.org/issu...

Here ya go

Not the OP, but here is a citation.

However, I would say the jury is still out as this is a small effect and is one study. It looks like they reduce head on and head to side crashes that are caused when a car runs a red light, but they increase or do not effect rear end crashes when a lead car stops, but a following car does not stop. The head on and head to side crashes are deadlier than the rear end crashes (insert pinto, corsair and Kardashian jokes here).

You can also find studies, on the sites of red-light camera suppliers, that say red light cameras reduce accidents and that tax payers should support the red light camera industry with unlimited funding. Think of the children.

Far from limiting them, the hydrogen bomb and slavery were creations of governments and legislatures.

The bit about slavery here is an absolute corker, by the way. I'm very pleased to learn that you have unparalleled insight into human pre-history, and can state definitively that prior to legislatures being created, humans not only did not enslave other humans, but could not do so. It's exciting news for slavery experts, who had previously laboured (pun!) under the misapprehension that slavery pre-dated money, pre-dated legal codes, and pre-dated written records. I'm glad you're here to set them straight.

http://bigthink.com/videos/sla...

I know it's uncomfortable, but it is really quite important to acknowledge cognitive bias and attempt to see the world as it is (to take a random example, replete with good laws that restrict how businesses operate in the public interest. and do so effectively) and not just how you would like it to be (a libertarian want-fest version of the US that has never actually existed, to take another random example).

http://bigthink.com/laurie-vaz...

A group of top cancer researchers out of the University of Sydney pored over 29-years of data to come to that conclusion. They pulled their data from the Australian National Cancer Registry because all cancer diagnoses in Australia have to be legally registered. The team compared “age and gender-specific incidence rates of 19,858 male and 14,222 females diagnosed with brain cancer between 1982 and 2012, and mobile phone usage data from 1987 to 2012,” writes lead researcher Simon Chapman in the study, published by The International Journal of Cancer Epidemiology. The cell phone data begins in 1987 because that’s when they were first widely available in Australia.

After factoring in age-specific rates of cancer diagnoses, the immense increase of cell phone use, and a 10-year timeframe to develop a diagnosis, the researchers came to a very reassuring conclusion: “We found no increase in brain cancer incidence compatible with the steep increase in mobile phone use.”

There's decent science on this:

http://bigthink.com/dollars-an...

POWs in Solitary May Have Tapped Unused Parts of Their Brains

http://bigthink.com/strange-ma...

Feel free to read up on it and enlighten yourself.

I will reply to you with the same thing I replied to the AC above you. Do you realize how much land we are talking about here?

http://bigthink.com/strange-ma...

So I am assuming you have zero clue how much land we are speaking of?

http://bigthink.com/strange-ma...

The majority of several states are owned by the federal government. This isn't a national park, it is a totally different system.

Neil deGrasse Tyson said in Season 1 Episode 2 of the Cosmos reboot, near the end of the episode,

"Nobody knows how life got started. Most of the evidence from that time was destroyed by impact and erosion. Science works on the frontier between knowledge and ignorance. Not afraid to admit what we don't know. There's no shame in that. The only shame is to pretend that we have all the answers. Maybe someone watching this will be the first to solve the mystery of how life on Earth began."

So tell me this. Why do people keep calling evolution "fact" when there still is no clear answer to how life started? There's plenty of research on how the "building blocks" might have formed, but noting solid beyond that. There is missing information. It's a "best guess". In scientific terms, a "best guess" is called a hypothesis, not even a theory. So it's actually the Hypothesis of Evolution.

In continuing to call evolution "fact", people are pretending to "have all the answers", and as Tyson said, they should be ashamed.

Unless of course people would like to try and separate Abiogenesis from the other aspects of evolution, in which case it becomes very obvious that those people are attempting to hide the missing information. It's like people fighting to prove that the speed of light is a constant, despite the repeated experiments that show variations, so that General Relativity isn't broken in the process.

There continues to be debate on other aspects. Some have claimed that the Dover trial was "proof" against Irreducible Complexity, when it was actually a straw man argument against Behe claiming that he said the components couldn't have worked anywhere else in the organism, which is not what he said. Also evidence submitted as "proof" was nothing more than an opinion piece buried in a document that had nothing to do with Irreducible Complexity, which itself should have resulted in charges of falsifying evidence. The entire trial was an embarrassment to people seriously researching evolution. But that hasn't stopped internet atheists from parading it around as some triumph of science over religion.

http://www.discovery.org/a/142...
http://www.discovery.org/a/856...

And one other thing, since I mentioned "Black Science Man". He was in a Big Think interview a few years ago where he explained that there is no conflict between science and faith. I only mention this because these forum "debates" always contain raging atheists desperate to create a straw man argument of religion opposing science so they can attack that instead of providing actual scientific information.
http://bigthink.com/videos/nei...

Likewise, Michio Kaku has spoken about many physicists being spiritual if not fully religious. And I will remind you that not only does the current Pope have a masters degree in Chemistry, but also the Vatican employs 4 astrophysicists. So kindly shove the straw man attacks and focus on a lack of proof for Abiogenesis, among other holes in evolution that continue to be researched.

What are you talking about?

http://bigthink.com/videos/nei...

http://articles.latimes.com/20...

The Planetary Society just wants to see space exploration and the advances in technology that make it possible.

Almost everybody wants that. The question is how to go about it. Nye wants to redirect funding within NASA from programs like the ISS to interplanetary probes and pure science, which is certainly an improvement. Tyson, on the other hand, talks a lot about the supposed impossibility of financing private space exploration, which is a bad thing.

In the end, I think both of these guys simple have stepped into shoes that are too big for them to fill and have no credible agenda for advancing the cause of space exploration. By needlessly speaking out against private space exploration, Tyson actually causes harm; he could easily take a more conciliatory tone even if he thinks public funding is important.

I used to support the Planetary Society, but I don't think it's worthwhile anymore.

Relax about the evidence thing. This is how superpowers do things. If you don't know stuff then just make it up, no-one's going to argue.

The USS Maine blew up from a boiler and ammunition explosion and that was enough for the US to start the 1898 Spanish-American War.

Wars are odd things, they can be started by a stamp http://bigthink.com/strange-ma...,
a Newspaper where "Hearst was personally dedicated to the cause of the Cuban rebels" your Spanish-American War http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W..., or a cow crossing an imaginary line, no cite it was an old and local war between clans (damn hard to Google) :)

I have no idea what you're talking about. Evolution never "stopped" and no one credible said that.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sci...
http://bigthink.com/videos/we-...

Ray Kurzweil may be optimistic (to put it mildy) but I think his calculations about how much solar energy we would need to harvest is pretty good. http://bigthink.com/think-tank... So maybe 1/10000 of the total sunlight energy that falls on the earth. Here's another interesting link, wikipedia this time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...

You believe that right-wing trope about Jamestown failed due to communism/socialism? As usual I wouldn't expect a reasoned analysis of a complex issue from you, Michael. It's so much easier to lean on your prejudices.

(These links aren't intended to convince Michael. They're for the edification of those who don't know what he's on about)
http://bigthink.com/think-tank/the-first-thanksgiving-reclaiming-jamestown-from-the-dustbin-of-history
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/04/01/91478/some-conservatives-rewrite-history.html

Yeah, you shouldn't question everything. There are certain areas off-limits. Cross them at your peril. The authorities will let you know what can be questioned and what can not.

Historically the world has gone about creating it's political boundaries completely backwards, using waterways as division lines. Understandable or even intuitive as this may be (it's a dead-simple visual reference that can't be disputed), it has not served the people well. Take for example the polluting factory or livestock yard that simply builds on the opposite side of the same river where it has fewer pollution regulations, however continuing to affect the same river and the population on the other side who have no say in the regulation of said factory, because it's in a different state/county/whathaveyou.

The USA (every country, for that matter) should be redistricted from the state level, down to county level, down to political districts should be strictly based on watersheds. Think about that - It would have the potential to solve many current problems, including putting an end to gerrymandering once and for all, improving local autonomy, ending irrigation squabbles, improving environmental & health protection, etc.

This is not a new idea, and now more than ever needs more popular discussion. A couple of maps:
Wikipedia: Drainage basin
US Watershed map (just from a quick web search, I'm sure a more useful map exists but this gives a good idea)

It reminds me of the map of the world as seen by Ronald Reagan. The area of each nation or continent is in proportion to how much thought he gave to it.

http://bigthink.com/strange-maps/38-the-world-according-to-ronald-reagan

[Scroll down]

Considering that is representing people from a country that teaches to deny evolution and refuse vaccination, i would say that is coherent with that. Idiocracy should start somewhere after all.

The most religious president in the past couple decades has been Clinton. I do not understand why you seem to think the republicans have this locked up. Perhaps it is just your perception and new found phobias that is different.

do we know off the top of our heads the most religious president in history in terms of references⦠referencing to god⦠references to god and in terms of appearing in churches? Who the most religious president in history was? Itâ(TM)s an interesting answer and I got this information from NPR, so itâ(TM)s probably not slanted in the way you think. The most religious president in history in terms of appearances in churches and mentions of the bible was Clinton.

Bill Clinton is the most religious president weâ(TM)ve had. He beats George Bush hands down and he beats Carter, who we know was a born-again Christian. He beats him hands down. So Obama does that too. I mean at the 9/11 thing, maybe appropriately he read from the Bible. But you have two choices with Obama. You either believe that he is a man of Christ who prays for decisions in the White House, which he said he was or you think heâ(TM)s a liar. And Iâ(TM)m surprised by the number of atheist free thinkers that support Obama and their argument is essentially, heâ(TM)s lying about being religious âcause you have to do that to be elected.

This was stated by Penn Jilliete in a talk he did on something about atheists and the elections. You can find it elsewhere but this has a transcript that's easy to follow.

http://bigthink.com/ideas/41033

I just found this website accidentally. It discusses the possibility and ramifications of erasing "bad" memories ... http://bigthink.com/dangerous-ideas/3-erase-traumatic-memories-and-achieve-your-own-eternal-sunshine

What if we could help these google 'contractors' forget what they've seen? ... http://bigthink.com/dangerous-ideas/3-erase-traumatic-memories-and-achieve-your-own-eternal-sunshine

I think the question might be, will we actually be human in 4-5 billion years or evolved through several species along the way to some other solar system? But, thats an evolutionary idea.

Where might we be in 1000 years... http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-489653/Human-race-split-different-species.html Stephen Hawking on where we will be in 5 million years... http://bigthink.com/dangerous-ideas/5-stephen-hawkings-warning-abandon-earth-or-face-extinction

From the mid 1990s by the Vice-provost of Caltech: http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html
"Peer review is usually quite a good way to identify valid science. Of course, a referee will occasionally fail to appreciate a truly visionary or revolutionary idea, but by and large, peer review works pretty well so long as scientific validity is the only issue at stake. However, it is not at all suited to arbitrate an intense competition for research funds or for editorial space in prestigious journals. There are many reasons for this, not the least being the fact that the referees have an obvious conflict of interest, since they are themselves competitors for the same resources. This point seems to be another one of those relativistic anomalies, obvious to any outside observer, but invisible to those of us who are falling into the black hole. It would take impossibly high ethical standards for referees to avoid taking advantage of their privileged anonymity to advance their own interests, but as time goes on, more and more referees have their ethical standards eroded as a consequence of having themselves been victimized by unfair reviews when they were authors. Peer review is thus one among many examples of practices that were well suited to the time of exponential expansion, but will become increasingly dysfunctional in the difficult future we face."

More like that:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/to-james-randi-on-skepticism-about-mainstream-science.html#Some_quotes_on_social_problems_in_science

Also:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2010/02/26/peer-review-as-censorship/

All reasoning is also based on emotion, which relate to perceptions, assumptions, priorities and preferences which are, to some extent, outside of pure rationality (which why "technocracy" has many issues).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descartes'_Error

But the biggest issue is that our socio-economic-political system is not well-adapted to handle "externalities" including systemic risks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality

Any reasonable projection over the next twenty years shows we will almost certainly have dirt-cheap PV given exponential growth of that industry and rapidly dropping costs. We may even have hot or cold fusion in that time (and other things). With alternatives on the way, there is not a very good case to be made for risking destroy our groundwater for just a bit more fossil fuels:
http://cleantechnica.com/2011/05/29/ge-solar-power-cheaper-than-fossil-fuels-in-5-years/
http://www.solarbuzz.com/facts-and-figures/retail-price-environment/module-prices
http://bigthink.com/think-tank/ray-kurzweil-solar-will-power-the-world-in-16-years
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_parity#Solar_power
http://pesn.com/2012/07/19/9602138_LENR-to-Market_Weekly_July19/
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/414559/a-new-approach-to-fusion/
And so on...

Accounting for externalities (including US defense spending for long oil supply lines), renewables (and energy efficiency) have been *cheaper* than fossil fuels since the 1970s... Two resources on that from around 1980:

This approach has been used to rehabilitate terrorists as well. This idea is hardly new. http://bigthink.com/ideas/17036 "This is based on the belief that you’ve got to give these young men a stake in society and it’s been reasonably successful, although Al-Qaida is so cunning." It has some merit, but its an expensive and difficult process.

Give you a hint, almost all of us are anti-war. It's kind of personal, you see. I don't like being shot at. I despise killing people. I hate war. However, given the option, I pick the time and place, so cowards like you can whine and snivel. See, I read history. A lot of it. So, when I see beans and rice at a Spanish restaurant labeled "moros y cristianos" I know that's an artifact of a Muslim invasion of Southern Europe. Here is the 100 year plan.

We both offered reasoned arguments and examples to buttress our diametrically different POV. So far, both our arguments have gotten 5 stars. Let's see if we can pick this apart.

You argument depends on the concept of "other people's money". One set of people pony up the cash, another set merrily invests, yet another profits - the owners- if things go well.

This description is fallacious in this circumstance for a number of reasons, which I'll point out just below, but also, and even more interesting, is the fallacious mental model you used to construct your argument from. That model is what is especially instructive.

About your description of the three separate players. First, the taxes invested are not "other people's (the taxpayer's) money". It is the government's money. That what a tax is. Taxes are not optional, they are the mutually agreed upon - through your legislature- revenue stream of the US government and you never "owned" that money. It's not now nor ever was "your" money, apoint elaborated on by Dean Baker here:

http://deanbaker.net/images/stories/documents/cns.html#9

(More on Dean Baker here: http://bigthink.com/ideas/15481 )

Secondly, the amount of money the government spent on Solyndra was a vanishingly small part of the federal budget, yet the financial payoff to the federal government in advances of either solar technology or the deployment economics of solar energy would be enormous, making this exactly the small-risk/ big-payoff type of investment any wise investor looks for.

The government has bills it pays in a million ways for necessary remedial action as a result of fossil fuels. it pays to protect and undo damage to the environment, to support foreign war wars, to cover the health consequences to the population of burning coal, in the destructive effects of acid rain on buildings and estuaries and rivers and lakes on and on and on.

Three, considering the savings the government would incur if more people used solar, the real winner would not be Solyndra's owners but the government itself. Suppose Solyndra makes its investors a handsome yearly 10% profit on their investment. That 10% is the least of the government's payback for investing because of the nationwide, permanently repeating reduction in the above cited ongoing costs.

Your perspective came from the misinterpretation of the relationship between the government and the people. Your mental model is we are opposing sides in some zero-sum game over a pot of gold. We are not two separate entities. We have a government for, of and by the American people. The government is We The People, for better or for worse. I don't complain about the government in say, Tennessee allowing creationism into the classrooms there. I complain about the stupid Tennesseans who form that majority opinion.

Ditto the tar sands in Alberta and the Federal government.

If you're really worried about the corrupting influence of election money on politicians, then why don't you support publicly funded elections instead of the Citizen's United sewer we live in presently?

Your example of Mitt Romney has built into it the belief that all politicians are and always will be as venal as they can possibly be, harboring no real interest in the public good. There would be no reason to invest in Koch industries given how profitable they are and the economic model - no charge for externalities they impose on society- that's currently working in their favor. So there is no real world upside to such an investment the way there is to investing in solar. Such an investment would indeed be objectionable but only a mind that models the world as only competing political ideologies, a world from which any objective measure of goodness has been removed can possibly equate those two examples.

Finally, as if another argument is needed, you have no

It's not a ghost town if it has never been occupied. This would be a sham city, like the sham Paris of World War I.

Imagine if the North Sea was actually landmass... and if you have trouble imagining, use this map.

The Department of Energy manages the nation's power supplies,

The power companies are quite capable of that.

Department of Commerce collects taxes,

I thought this was the responsibility of the Treasury Department.

the Interior governs our damn national parks and the immense stretches of government-owned land along with all our environmental efforts

It's worth noting that the federal government owns 30% of all US territory. Should it?

The Department of Education mandates school curriculum and is perhaps the only way social mobility even exists, let alone educated poor (free lunches etc.),

The DoE oversees a few school services that should be provided by states or other organizations. It also regulates, often detrimentally, state education as if the states or school districts are unable to do so themselves.

weather forecasting would be impossible without NOAA, and neither would our current understanding of climate change, without NIST our clocks wouldn't run on time and our industry would not have any baseline standards, and without the USGS, well, we'd have no idea what our natural resources look like--or our flood risk, earthquake data, and so on.

Private companies and other organizations do many similar things - satellite imagery, weather forecasting, standardization, risk assessment. Why not also do these?

Without government spending a great many things that people take for granted would disappear and the world would become a much more unpleasant place.

How do we get bread baked and distributed to stores? What federal agency oversees the care of abandoned pets? Services we consider unthinkable without the government are services that have been provided elsewhere, separate from a massive institution that claims authority to rule us under threat of violence.

During his latest Big Think interview, Kurweil explained:

"Solar panels are coming down dramatically in cost per watt. And as a result of that, the total amount of solar energy is growing, not linearly, but exponentially. Itâ(TM)s doubling every 2 years and has been for 20 years. And again, itâ(TM)s a very smooth curve. Thereâ(TM)s all these arguments, subsidies and political battles and companies going bankrupt, theyâ(TM)re raising billions of dollars, but behind all that chaos is this very smooth progression."

So how far away is solar from meeting 100% of the world's energy needs? Eight doublings, says Kurzweil, which will take just 16 years. And supply is not an issue either, he adds: "After we double eight more times and weâ(TM)re meeting all of the worldâ(TM)s energy needs through solar, weâ(TM)ll be using 1 part in 10,000 of the sunlight that falls on the earth. And we could put efficient solar farms on a few percent of the unused deserts of the world and meet all of our energy needs."

To me, that says that companies building solar products today are far better off aiming at small, niche use cases than they are a general market. That said, though, there's still far more of a market in solar technology today than there was when I was a kid in the '70s. Much more choice, cheaper prices, better availability, you name it.

And no, I don't think it's all due to government subsidies. Some of it is aimed at the kind of use case that I'm thinking of. Think about warning signs near construction sites, for example. Remember those huge diesel generators that used to be mounted on the trailer as the sign? I don't see those very often these days.

If Kurzweil is right about the exponential improvement in technology, I think solar companies should be spending at least some R&D today to build more general use products starting in the next 8-10 years. They should be aiming at much more general use products in 12-16 years. Otherwise they risk getting run over by more nimble competitors.

I recommend Erik Klemetti's blog Eruptions to anyone who wants to follow Grimsvotn in detail. He has two posts on it already: http://bigthink.com/ideas/38526 and http://bigthink.com/ideas/38530, and they include links to webcams and other information sources.

I recommend Erik Klemetti's blog Eruptions to anyone who wants to follow Grimsvotn in detail. He has two posts on it already: http://bigthink.com/ideas/38526 and http://bigthink.com/ideas/38530, and they include links to webcams and other information sources.