Look for stuff in the Milky Way at least, we'll NEVER get there unless we figure out FTL and even finding intelligent life in another galaxy sending a message to another galaxy is so impractical that dozens of generations would pass before getting a response and then responding to that you'd pass a dozen more generations.
Space is so huge that even those who realize this are off relatively often. It would take a hundred thousand generation or 10-15 times the age of our species to get a message to M31. A dozen generations would correspond to maybe 300-400 light years, about 1 percent of the distance to the centre of our own galaxy.
Every massive objects creates a gravitational lens effect: for example it is used to detect extrasolar planets. As a star passes behind a solar system (as seen from Earth) its apparent brightness increases first because of the lensing effect of the foreground star then due the planet. Some of the smallest exoplanets have been discovered using this technique.
As for black holes acting as gravitational lenses, I'm not sure it has ever been observed. Some of the problems would be the environemnt of the black hole drowning out any background image, lack of backgroud objects, or in the case of microlensing surveys not recognizing that the lensing object is a black hole.
I've got a solution to your bullying situation, it's the one they used to do back before the complete pussification of our youth, and worked for me back in high school just a few short years ago (I'm 22 in ~16 days).
Someone is bullying you? Talking shit, pushing you, etc? Turn around, shove him, and if the case is that he was pushing you or something, punch him square in the nose. He won't do it again.
More like people don't want to believe in complex problems that require a lot of attention and might not be possible to solve completely. They want simple solutions like banning violent games or installing metal detectors in schools.
As for lead poisoning or head injuries being a major cause: that's a pretty weird guess. How about constant bullying combined by a (possibly in part genetic) antisocial personality and a tendency towards revenge. With some neglect from their environment these kids might not have the coping mechanisms some others do and violent games show an example for how to handle these situations.
But how many crashes remain unexplained after a few days of investigation? Quite a few and probably most of those that happen over sea. It's not that the sum probability is irrelevant, it's just not the correct estimate for the probability for this accident in particular.
Obviously treating this airplane as a random one is wrong too, since this one crashed and most don't...
Another thing I've noted is how pointless it is to talk with Chinese about their politics. They are extremely sensitive and immediately get defensive. A hong kong girl was talking about this event with a mainland student and she became very agitated. The chinese guy was absolutely overwhelmed by the critics, didn't know how to react (he was the only chinese in a group of international students) and immediately started to defend the government's action, saying things like sometimes politics has to use violence to achieve it's goal... (basically implying that they did the right thing)
Did this happen in China? If yes, did you consider the possibility that he simply didn't consider it safe to say what he really thought?
If you accept that the economically sound decision isn't socially feasible then what's the point of using it as a comparison?
A more sensible question would be whether it's better than the status quo (probably), or if there are any obvious politically achievable alternatives which are superior.
The logical conclusion is to use this technology for mind reading. All you need is excellent resolution and a huge database which matches patterns to thoughts. If there are enough common pattern among different people's brain activity, voila you have a mind reading device.
And since there are legitimate uses for this technology, first in prosthetics then probably a bunch of other thought controlled devices, we are likely going to have the necessary investment where the whole thing becomes viable.
I can't even see how this could be stopped: once you have the technology people will want to use it. First maybe just to see if the guy on death row really did commit the crime he was sentenced for, then for any violent crime and finally for traffic violations. And of course if your future employer wants to know why you really left your last job or your attitude towards overtime why shouldn't he if you both agree?
Bottom line is, if the technology is viable it will be developed and put to use. You might want to fight it but realistically it should be a losing a battle. But when the technology is here why not use it for good? Use it to catch potential terrorists and warn about potential pedophiles and also use it to test for antisocial personality traits in politicians.
It would be a very different world, a scary one for sure. But it doesn't need to be one of tyranny.
Some questions in Economics are empirical in nature. For example classical economics makes certain assumptions about the preferences and choices of a buyer. These assumptions are ultimately testable: for example it does seem like consumers' choices can vary over so short timescales that the notion of preferences brakes down in a lot of situations.
You can also ask whether revealed preferences really do correspond to higher levels of reported happiness. I remember reading an article (not journal article, just science news) which claimed that when faced with wider choice people were more likely to report they were unhappy with their purchase, which is exactly the opposite of what classical economics predict.
Anyway, there are no corresponding methods for large-scale economic behaviour. So if by Economics you mean predicting economic activity on a large scale then Economics is not a Natural Science and probably won't be in the foreseeable future.
Still, trying to replace empirical methods with pure logic seems hopeless to me. The problem is that logic is just so damn powerful. If your system contains one inherent contradiction you can prove absolutely anything. Add the uncertainty of natural languages and you can easily come up with any conclusions you want without making any obvious logical error.
It seems to me that when you have such complex problems as the economy or societies in general the correct thing to do is to rely more, rather than less on observation and accept that you can make very few reliable predictions or even meaningful comments outside your immediate experience.
What does this even mean? The subject matter is not a useful criteria for telling what's science and what isn't.
For example if someone is trying to model economic behaviour and is testing those models on how people actually act how is that not science?
Maybe mainstream economic thinking is not good science in the sense that it wasn't tested enough and economists are more confident in their conclusions than they actually should be. But even if they are it doesn't mean Economics isn't a science, just that they are doing it wrong.
I guess someone could make an argument that a question can be hard enough where there's no hope of reaching any reliable conclusions. But there's still some value in describing what we see without trying very hard to explain the underlying dynamic. And of course once you have the data people can't help but speculate why it looks the way it does, even if they have no means to test it rigorously. Then you could say that the speculation part isn't science (as long as there's no way to test it) but collecting the data certainly is.
Um, please read up on Falun Gong. You seem blissfully ignorant of the reality of this cult.
Why not enlighten us then? While probably most readers are pro Falun Gong/anti Chinese government in this conflict I'm sure some of us can be convinced with well-reasoned arguments and documented cases of whatever nefarious activities Falun Gong members generally engage in.
I mean we could probably do the research ourselves but since you're obviously better informed you could just point us towards the highest quality sources yourself.
Isn't it the other way around? If Minnesota wants to ban gambling on moral grounds they might have the right to do so but if they're only protecting casinos from competition they are interfering with interstate commerce.
Too many people are spouting off and running off at the mouth because they are imposing their cultural views on the Thai people.
The king of Thailand is protected by a set of old laws called Lese Majeste, which essentially means it is a crime to injure the king in any way (including verbally).You may not agree with it, and in fact, the Thai king himself is against these laws, but this is their way.
And mocking stupidity is our way. Please respect that.
Are we existentially okay with our fate as a species being completely contained in this world? I think we can be.
Without the possibility to colonize other planets humanity will almost certainly tend towards conformity and ultimately stagnation. In many ways I find that fate as sad as extinction.
The consequences and benefits of greenhouse gas emission should be evaluated in itself not as part of meaningless proposition about the utility of human generated change in general.
Otherwise you could justify any action by saying that human generated change on average is positive (and probably destroy the premise in the process).
You mean you agree with everything in it? As in you strongly deplore psychological assults (or incitements thereto) of religious symbols or venerated personalities of any religion?
No more Xenu jokes for you, I guess.
It's not as if their scientific credibility (cough, cold-fusion) will be questioned.
Yeah, cause the guys who came up with cold fusion never had their credibility questioned. They're still well respected members of the scientific community (not).
Actually there's a precise answer to this. I think they announce a new particle at 8 sigma confidence level, so if there's no new particle there's still a ~1/10.000.000 chance they find one.
To be fair Earth is exceptional in one sense. It is probably the only planetary body, out of millions, in the solar system with complex life. Complex life is less common in the solar system than people believed in the 19th/early 20th century.
So the Copernican principle is not absolute - it can't be extended indiscriminately to any field.
Whether Earth is unique or not should be determined by observation not through philosophical arguments.
Funny how the American psyche still sees Russia as its big nemesis. In reality Russia doesn't have anywhere near the resources to pull off a Mars mission or even to sustain an independent space program with any meaningful goals.
What is seen as a re-emerging, aggressive Russia is actually just them trying to reassert some influence in areas where 15 years ago no one would have dared to challenge them.
They simply don't have the time to complete a detailed investigation of whether or not you're actually guilty.
Why not? Some of the time they are going to save time by not prosecuting cases they had little chance of winning. And the work he does in this phase is actually valuable if the case does go to court, so it's never really a complete waste of time.
Plus you can't really say that the responsibility of getting it right rests entirely with the courts. Even if the courts did get it right 100% of the time there would be substantial costs for society and the defendant in particular. Now, some of this is simply unavoidable but in this case if the prosecutor took maybe an hour to review the case objectively he would could have reached the correct conclusion.
There are few other professions where you can get away with causing this much damage through negligence, laziness or even time pressure and hope to get away with it. Finally if you do mess up you don't get to blackmail the other guy into not suing you, which the prosecutor in this case pretty much did.
Slashdot Mirror
Look for stuff in the Milky Way at least, we'll NEVER get there unless we figure out FTL and even finding intelligent life in another galaxy sending a message to another galaxy is so impractical that dozens of generations would pass before getting a response and then responding to that you'd pass a dozen more generations.
Space is so huge that even those who realize this are off relatively often. It would take a hundred thousand generation or 10-15 times the age of our species to get a message to M31. A dozen generations would correspond to maybe 300-400 light years, about 1 percent of the distance to the centre of our own galaxy.
Every massive objects creates a gravitational lens effect: for example it is used to detect extrasolar planets. As a star passes behind a solar system (as seen from Earth) its apparent brightness increases first because of the lensing effect of the foreground star then due the planet. Some of the smallest exoplanets have been discovered using this technique.
As for black holes acting as gravitational lenses, I'm not sure it has ever been observed. Some of the problems would be the environemnt of the black hole drowning out any background image, lack of backgroud objects, or in the case of microlensing surveys not recognizing that the lensing object is a black hole.
I've got a solution to your bullying situation, it's the one they used to do back before the complete pussification of our youth, and worked for me back in high school just a few short years ago (I'm 22 in ~16 days). Someone is bullying you? Talking shit, pushing you, etc? Turn around, shove him, and if the case is that he was pushing you or something, punch him square in the nose. He won't do it again.
Thanks. For illustrating my point.
More like people don't want to believe in complex problems that require a lot of attention and might not be possible to solve completely. They want simple solutions like banning violent games or installing metal detectors in schools.
As for lead poisoning or head injuries being a major cause: that's a pretty weird guess. How about constant bullying combined by a (possibly in part genetic) antisocial personality and a tendency towards revenge. With some neglect from their environment these kids might not have the coping mechanisms some others do and violent games show an example for how to handle these situations.
Nothing wrong with having a black box and transmitting the info too.
But how many crashes remain unexplained after a few days of investigation? Quite a few and probably most of those that happen over sea. It's not that the sum probability is irrelevant, it's just not the correct estimate for the probability for this accident in particular.
Obviously treating this airplane as a random one is wrong too, since this one crashed and most don't...
Another thing I've noted is how pointless it is to talk with Chinese about their politics. They are extremely sensitive and immediately get defensive. A hong kong girl was talking about this event with a mainland student and she became very agitated. The chinese guy was absolutely overwhelmed by the critics, didn't know how to react (he was the only chinese in a group of international students) and immediately started to defend the government's action, saying things like sometimes politics has to use violence to achieve it's goal... (basically implying that they did the right thing)
Did this happen in China? If yes, did you consider the possibility that he simply didn't consider it safe to say what he really thought?
If you accept that the economically sound decision isn't socially feasible then what's the point of using it as a comparison?
A more sensible question would be whether it's better than the status quo (probably), or if there are any obvious politically achievable alternatives which are superior.
The logical conclusion is to use this technology for mind reading. All you need is excellent resolution and a huge database which matches patterns to thoughts. If there are enough common pattern among different people's brain activity, voila you have a mind reading device.
And since there are legitimate uses for this technology, first in prosthetics then probably a bunch of other thought controlled devices, we are likely going to have the necessary investment where the whole thing becomes viable.
I can't even see how this could be stopped: once you have the technology people will want to use it. First maybe just to see if the guy on death row really did commit the crime he was sentenced for, then for any violent crime and finally for traffic violations. And of course if your future employer wants to know why you really left your last job or your attitude towards overtime why shouldn't he if you both agree?
Bottom line is, if the technology is viable it will be developed and put to use. You might want to fight it but realistically it should be a losing a battle. But when the technology is here why not use it for good? Use it to catch potential terrorists and warn about potential pedophiles and also use it to test for antisocial personality traits in politicians.
It would be a very different world, a scary one for sure. But it doesn't need to be one of tyranny.
Some questions in Economics are empirical in nature. For example classical economics makes certain assumptions about the preferences and choices of a buyer. These assumptions are ultimately testable: for example it does seem like consumers' choices can vary over so short timescales that the notion of preferences brakes down in a lot of situations.
You can also ask whether revealed preferences really do correspond to higher levels of reported happiness. I remember reading an article (not journal article, just science news) which claimed that when faced with wider choice people were more likely to report they were unhappy with their purchase, which is exactly the opposite of what classical economics predict.
Anyway, there are no corresponding methods for large-scale economic behaviour. So if by Economics you mean predicting economic activity on a large scale then Economics is not a Natural Science and probably won't be in the foreseeable future.
Still, trying to replace empirical methods with pure logic seems hopeless to me. The problem is that logic is just so damn powerful. If your system contains one inherent contradiction you can prove absolutely anything. Add the uncertainty of natural languages and you can easily come up with any conclusions you want without making any obvious logical error.
It seems to me that when you have such complex problems as the economy or societies in general the correct thing to do is to rely more, rather than less on observation and accept that you can make very few reliable predictions or even meaningful comments outside your immediate experience.
What does this even mean? The subject matter is not a useful criteria for telling what's science and what isn't.
For example if someone is trying to model economic behaviour and is testing those models on how people actually act how is that not science?
Maybe mainstream economic thinking is not good science in the sense that it wasn't tested enough and economists are more confident in their conclusions than they actually should be. But even if they are it doesn't mean Economics isn't a science, just that they are doing it wrong.
I guess someone could make an argument that a question can be hard enough where there's no hope of reaching any reliable conclusions. But there's still some value in describing what we see without trying very hard to explain the underlying dynamic. And of course once you have the data people can't help but speculate why it looks the way it does, even if they have no means to test it rigorously. Then you could say that the speculation part isn't science (as long as there's no way to test it) but collecting the data certainly is.
I don't get it. A person creates something, somebody else through very little effort on their part makes money off that work.
I always wanted to ask that from my boss.
Um, please read up on Falun Gong. You seem blissfully ignorant of the reality of this cult.
Why not enlighten us then? While probably most readers are pro Falun Gong/anti Chinese government in this conflict I'm sure some of us can be convinced with well-reasoned arguments and documented cases of whatever nefarious activities Falun Gong members generally engage in.
I mean we could probably do the research ourselves but since you're obviously better informed you could just point us towards the highest quality sources yourself.
Isn't it the other way around? If Minnesota wants to ban gambling on moral grounds they might have the right to do so but if they're only protecting casinos from competition they are interfering with interstate commerce.
Too many people are spouting off and running off at the mouth because they are imposing their cultural views on the Thai people.
The king of Thailand is protected by a set of old laws called Lese Majeste, which essentially means it is a crime to injure the king in any way (including verbally).You may not agree with it, and in fact, the Thai king himself is against these laws, but this is their way.
And mocking stupidity is our way. Please respect that.
Are we existentially okay with our fate as a species being completely contained in this world? I think we can be.
Without the possibility to colonize other planets humanity will almost certainly tend towards conformity and ultimately stagnation. In many ways I find that fate as sad as extinction.
Otherwise you could justify any action by saying that human generated change on average is positive (and probably destroy the premise in the process).
With their 3 million troops, 860 warships, 60 submarines, 400 nuclear missiles and 1400 fighter aircraft.
Who's going to keep an eye on the 1.3 billion people left behind then?
You mean you agree with everything in it? As in you strongly deplore psychological assults (or incitements thereto) of religious symbols or venerated personalities of any religion? No more Xenu jokes for you, I guess.
I'd say the Space Shuttle and the ISS has been a welfare program too, for the last 15 years at least.
It's not as if their scientific credibility (cough, cold-fusion) will be questioned.
Yeah, cause the guys who came up with cold fusion never had their credibility questioned. They're still well respected members of the scientific community (not).
Actually there's a precise answer to this. I think they announce a new particle at 8 sigma confidence level, so if there's no new particle there's still a ~1/10.000.000 chance they find one.
To be fair Earth is exceptional in one sense. It is probably the only planetary body, out of millions, in the solar system with complex life. Complex life is less common in the solar system than people believed in the 19th/early 20th century. So the Copernican principle is not absolute - it can't be extended indiscriminately to any field. Whether Earth is unique or not should be determined by observation not through philosophical arguments.
What is seen as a re-emerging, aggressive Russia is actually just them trying to reassert some influence in areas where 15 years ago no one would have dared to challenge them.
They simply don't have the time to complete a detailed investigation of whether or not you're actually guilty.
Why not? Some of the time they are going to save time by not prosecuting cases they had little chance of winning. And the work he does in this phase is actually valuable if the case does go to court, so it's never really a complete waste of time.
Plus you can't really say that the responsibility of getting it right rests entirely with the courts. Even if the courts did get it right 100% of the time there would be substantial costs for society and the defendant in particular. Now, some of this is simply unavoidable but in this case if the prosecutor took maybe an hour to review the case objectively he would could have reached the correct conclusion.
There are few other professions where you can get away with causing this much damage through negligence, laziness or even time pressure and hope to get away with it. Finally if you do mess up you don't get to blackmail the other guy into not suing you, which the prosecutor in this case pretty much did.