Let's say commercial drones becomes common technology. How do they tell which drones are being flow by licensed operators and which ones aren't?
Maybe they could require registration for commercially purchased drones. But what stops me from building a drone in my garage and zipping it around the neighborhood?
There is a potential userbase for augmented reality devices. But what those potential users expect is an full field of vision display that responds to head & eye movement in real time. A smart phone monocle just isn't going to cut it.
The God in the Bible, particularly the Old Testament, is a physical being that is physically seen by the people like Moses. He communicates with people and performs miracles to prove his existence and power. Strangely, he is not omniscient and not all powerful. There are several times when God is tricked, negotiated with, shown to have incomplete knowledge or had his power overcome. The Bible is also clear that other gods exist and they do have power, but God of Abraham is simply the most powerful.
The Bible is kind of a crazy book that has very little to do with what's taught modern Churches. You really should read it some time.
Your statement just is empirically incorrect. The 20th century was the largest increase in human population AND the greatest increase in overall standard of living. We might someday reach the point where exhausting resources starts to diminish standard of living, but it hasn't happened yet.
Your hypothetical higher being is interesting, but completely different than the "God" described in the Bible and most other religious works. That's half the problem with these arguments: as soon as science reaches a point where it really can disprove "God", the believers change their definition to something more obscure and intangible. You are now describing something so abstract that its completely meaningless either way.
Not necessarily. Reducing the space program could mean more money for other research topics. NASA budget is twice that of the NSF. Does it really make sense to spend twice as much on space research as all other non-medical sciences combined?
Generally speaking modernity in Europe is considered to be about the mid 15th century to the present day. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...
Two the countries you name didn't even exist until the modern era. Try again.
Wanderers are different than explorers. Nomadic people follow established cycles in known locations. Trading with the village in the next valley over is different than sailing into the unknown. Moving between established cities is different than spending trillions of dollars to hurdle a person through the void of space to a dead rock that's inhospitable to life in every conceivable way.
Exceptions that prove the rule. Out of thousands of cultures, the number of premodern societies that attempted any serious, sustained exploration can be counted on one hand. And really, its doubtful that premodern migrations to the Americas were any kind of deliberate exploration effort. It was probably just nomads following the herds.
Look at this way, modern humans have been around for about a quarter of a million years. The first migrations out of Africa were only about 30,000 years ago. If exploration were really some fundamental human constant, it seems odd that we spent 90% of our time in a relatively small portion of one continent.
Actually too many to name. There have been thousands of countries, nations, empires, etc. and very few of them had any policy of active exploration. The romantic notion of exploration is a very recent development. Throughout most of history, wandering beyond the horizon would have been suicidally insane and very few to attempted it were ever heard from again.
Exploration in the 1400s was taking a profitable venture (the spice trade, later precious metals) and finding new ways to make it more efficient (new trade routes). Discovery of new lands was incidental. Nobody wandered around the ocean without a particular destination in mind, that would have been suicide. So if we really follow your analogy, then we should stop manned space exploration, focus on activities that have immediate profit, and be satisfied knowing that new discoveries will take place whether we pursue them deliberately or not.
So people care more about the planet we're living on and the policies used to govern it more than they care about some dead rocks in space. Is that really so surprising?
Manned space exploration is not unique in that regard. Any field of research will lead to new ideas and new technologies if we throw enough money at it.
Plenty of species managed to survive the last rock from space. If birds and crocodiles managed to survive, then humans have a good chance, too. No matter what catastrophe you can imagine happening to Earth, there is no way other planets in the solar system would be more suitable to life.
Why? If an AI can be created that can do a better job running the world than human governments do, why shouldn't we let it? And honestly, doing a better job than human run governments isn't setting that high of a bar.
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Even if you start a successful company in a particular field does not mean you have insight into where that field is headed.
Might depend on the strain of e. coli, but sure, why not? Especially if the water is otherwise sterile and I don't have to drink it all at once.
Maybe they could require registration for commercially purchased drones. But what stops me from building a drone in my garage and zipping it around the neighborhood?
There is a potential userbase for augmented reality devices. But what those potential users expect is an full field of vision display that responds to head & eye movement in real time. A smart phone monocle just isn't going to cut it.
Care to name some countries that have better television? Particularly historical documentaries.
The Bible is kind of a crazy book that has very little to do with what's taught modern Churches. You really should read it some time.
Your statement just is empirically incorrect. The 20th century was the largest increase in human population AND the greatest increase in overall standard of living. We might someday reach the point where exhausting resources starts to diminish standard of living, but it hasn't happened yet.
Your hypothetical higher being is interesting, but completely different than the "God" described in the Bible and most other religious works. That's half the problem with these arguments: as soon as science reaches a point where it really can disprove "God", the believers change their definition to something more obscure and intangible. You are now describing something so abstract that its completely meaningless either way.
Not necessarily. Reducing the space program could mean more money for other research topics. NASA budget is twice that of the NSF. Does it really make sense to spend twice as much on space research as all other non-medical sciences combined?
Generally speaking modernity in Europe is considered to be about the mid 15th century to the present day. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M... Two the countries you name didn't even exist until the modern era. Try again.
Wanderers are different than explorers. Nomadic people follow established cycles in known locations. Trading with the village in the next valley over is different than sailing into the unknown. Moving between established cities is different than spending trillions of dollars to hurdle a person through the void of space to a dead rock that's inhospitable to life in every conceivable way.
Sure, why not? Its not like space is a limited resource than can be monopolized the first mover.
Look at this way, modern humans have been around for about a quarter of a million years. The first migrations out of Africa were only about 30,000 years ago. If exploration were really some fundamental human constant, it seems odd that we spent 90% of our time in a relatively small portion of one continent.
Actually too many to name. There have been thousands of countries, nations, empires, etc. and very few of them had any policy of active exploration. The romantic notion of exploration is a very recent development. Throughout most of history, wandering beyond the horizon would have been suicidally insane and very few to attempted it were ever heard from again.
Exploration in the 1400s was taking a profitable venture (the spice trade, later precious metals) and finding new ways to make it more efficient (new trade routes). Discovery of new lands was incidental. Nobody wandered around the ocean without a particular destination in mind, that would have been suicide. So if we really follow your analogy, then we should stop manned space exploration, focus on activities that have immediate profit, and be satisfied knowing that new discoveries will take place whether we pursue them deliberately or not.
Apples and oranges. The manned space program and the ISS in particular contribute just about nothing to the development of satellites.
So people care more about the planet we're living on and the policies used to govern it more than they care about some dead rocks in space. Is that really so surprising?
It's subject to US laws and courts, but it can't be said to reflect US policy or values.
Look at the pictures. Those Greenpeacers don't look like Millennials to me.
The arsenic replaces phosphate. Those lifeforms are still carbon and water based.
Manned space exploration is not unique in that regard. Any field of research will lead to new ideas and new technologies if we throw enough money at it.
You don't need to put people into space to study astronomy. There is nothing that a person can do in space that a robot can't do better.
Plenty of species managed to survive the last rock from space. If birds and crocodiles managed to survive, then humans have a good chance, too. No matter what catastrophe you can imagine happening to Earth, there is no way other planets in the solar system would be more suitable to life.
Why? If an AI can be created that can do a better job running the world than human governments do, why shouldn't we let it? And honestly, doing a better job than human run governments isn't setting that high of a bar.
That falls into the first category. Using a computer program to govern society is no longer the mind-blowing concept that it once was in 1942.