You have pretty much no way of knowing exactly how far they can see, or how long their vehicle take to stop in optimum conditions, at any given speeds.
Add to that, that you cannot really expect people to slow down to 10 MPH every time the road conditions are not completely optimal, or to drive half the speed of your traffic peers.
An perfectly working average set of lights with 0 fog will illuminate 30 meters of road. Without illumination or lights, you would be invisible further away than that. An average person in perfect conditions, and on perfect roads, using perfect breaks, in an average vehicle would need to be driving under 40 MPH to stop in time. But in a real life situation, with slightly dusty lights and other factors, a real number might be half of that or less, depending on the situation.
My mind is not made up at all, I am playing Devil's Advocate with someone who has made up their mind.
You have already made up your mind, and then seeing data that fits your scenario, you claim it gives evidence for your case.
But there is simply no hard data here. I hear "He was hit from behind, and the driver slowed, and swerved", and I can imagine an invisible cyclist at night with inadequate lights and reflectors. I can imagine a driver at full alert level and adequate skill seeing this cyclist without enough time to stop. I can imagine them slamming on the breaks and trying to swerve out of the way. Then panic stricken, and with a lower responsibility for their actions, continue driving, as they cannot think or comprehend what has even happened.
Yes, because bicycling down the middle of a street in complete black and with zero lights or reflectors is not asking to be run over. This accident very well might of ruined the other guy's life as well, and might of been totally not his fault, for all we know.
It would still be traceable, as the source code still exists, you just do not have it. And in jail you are not going to be able to track down a bug anyways.
And this is the reason you would want closed source commercial software. Because then it would not just be you held responsible, but the vender who supplied the software as well.
No, not really. 90% of the time I get a KSer is because I know the game will have 200% more details than the developers had originally planed at that price point. And specifically, all money they raised must be spent designing the game, or it is fraud. I did see a KS project were the stretch goals were just more toys for the backers. But I personally thought that that went against the idea of KS backing, if not being technically fraud.
There is probably a civilization of super piranha, that have been surviving by cannibalism for 15 million years, creating a race of super big, super powerful, mean, man eating monsters.
You are right, I do not know where I got my info. But you also seem off. By my calculations I get.006% = (17.26 / 299792.458) km/s. Which is like an order of magnitude different than yours.
DVD videos, for example, have error correction, yada yada yada. But, at the same time you can put a tiny tiny nick in one and the entire thing can become unreadable. VHSes mean-while will degrade gracefully. I do not know anything about barcode encoding, but you should always consider how damaging a small amount of damage/warping is and how the data degrades when damaged.
Text degrades very gracefully, the entire page needs to be completely destroyed to lose the entire data set. No idea about barcodes.
Honestly I think there are more examples of less advanced barbarians destroying more advanced civilizations, while claiming be more advanced and doing the world and the opposing side a favour.
Everyone thinks it is like Star Trek. Given the age of the universe any other human-like life is either billions of years older than ours, or it will be billions of years until they exist. If there was an intelligent species that had any interest in finding/communicating with other life-forms even within a 200 ly distance they would have sent a probe, or colonization ship to Earth billions of years ago, or every 10 thousand years for the last billion years. If their was anything out there interested in talking to us, or conquering us for that mater, it would already have happened, or the ship is currently in transit (Though I would of supposed that they would of put some nearly indestructible message somewhere were life would find it if they were trying to find intelligent life).
Either way, doing either of your ideas is ridiculous.
Nice essay. You make a few leaps of logic, but the overall direction is mostly logical. I have a completely different, and similarly "logical leap" filled argument on never meeting other Aliens as well.
But before I copy paste it here, I wanted to address one of your points.
"Getting us to Proxima Centauri in less than a few hundred years would require technology that is orders of magnitude beyond what we have now." I am not sure I agree. Within 10-15 lightyears even their are life-habitable planets. Right now we have the probe Voyager that travels at something like 15% of the speed of light. Really, given enough money and mostly today's tech I think it is plausible to imagine shipping off some sensor equipment on a 80 year journey to our best guess of a Earth-like planet. It would probably only have a 50% chance of succeeding at best, as it would necessarily have to be 100% automated, as input lag would be 20-30 years. And just getting a probe to the general area of the closest star would be very doable, given unlimited resources. Really, all you need to do is launch it pretty fast in the right direction and have a power source or a battery that lasts a century.
A thought experiment against Alien life, as depicted in Star Trek and popular belief.
Some people dream about colonizing the stars, some people draw up formulas calculating the possible billions of life filled planets, some people warn of future alien invasions.
For the purposes of this experiment, the ability to travel past the speed of light, or even just close to it is unnecessary.
I am here to tell you that these ideas are self contradictory. The oldest solar system (potentially life bearing planets) in our incredibly small neighbourhood is calculated as being about 13 billion year old. That leaves about 10 billion years of progress above and beyond Earth. That means that they were almost certainly driving around using petroleum based fuels, and launching themselves into space similarly, 10 billion years ago.
Even if the only other life in the universe was from a single planet on the far side of the Andromeda Galaxy, or any other galaxy even 100 times further away, if it was even slightly like the culture shown in film, TV, or how we imagine ourselves, it would have already colonised Earth, Billions of years ago. (note: In a billion years even conventional human manned spacecraft could make it to another Galaxy. Space is actually quite small compared to the vastness of time)
Ignoring the incredibly small chance that our situation is special in some way. That leaves us with few possibilities.
Life in general, or Human-like life specifically, necessarily destroys itself in short order. Human-like life necessarily changes to become non Human-like in incredibly short order. Colonizing planets is impossible.
The reason why we have not, and never will, discover any other alien life that we relate to is that it flashes into existence and vanishes in a blank of the cosmic eye. This is not just my opinion, this has 10 billion years of evidence to back it up. This would be like seeing a vast range of old rock that contains no fossils, and the explanation for this was that no fish or bacteria ever swam over that way in the billions of years that they could of done so.
I think it is pretty clear that none of these people care about any kindof truth or evidence. Many people, governments, organizations the world over have conducted experiments, given full disclosure, and performed thought experiences, and they are not interested at all in anything other that saying that Napoleon was abducted by aliens, or the US is involved in secret wars with subsurface dwelling Aliens.
That is a lot of communications. I understand the need to worry about overloading state infrastructure with that many calls, and why just picking up a 50 cell phone could not have fixed this problem.
"French tech firm Spotter has apparently devised an analytics platform capable of identifying sarcastic comments" Hence forth referred to as Sheldon Cooper.
I am Canadian, but we have the same basic system. There are systems and laws in place to stop you from even just learning one law. Unless you go to school and become a lawyer you cannot know the law, or what will get you arrested. And only then, will you have a best guess at a probability of getting arrested. Alternatively, if you have enough money to own a lawyer, you can also be generally safe, as you can ask their advise before doing anything.
I once tried to learn knife laws in Canada. We only have about 5 laws, maybe 100 words of laws concerning knives. But our systems are built on precedent, and really how much you can afford to spend on a lawyer. So there will be literally be hundreds of books law precedent, which is more important than the letter, to read with respect to knife law. And unless you can afford it, their is absolutely no talking to a lawyer before you are arrested.
What I got out of this. From my understanding, after reading the letter of the law over and over again is that technically I am allowed to do pretty much anything (carry any knife I would care to own anywhere in any way). And if I could afford a team of lawyers, I am pretty confident that I could protect that right. But in the real world were I do not own a cent, I absolutely should not even carry a Walmart pocket knife across the street to cut up a bunch of boxes. Because people have ended up going to jail for less.
You cannot know the law, because the real law is hidden (non lawyers are not allowed to give law advise, and lawyer cost too much). And even lawyers and the police do not know the law. it is all interpretable to mean anything that they want it to mean.
I am Canadian, but we have the same basic system. There are systems and laws in place to stop you from even just learning one law. Unless you go to school and become a lawyer you cannot know the law, or what will get you arrested. And only then, will you have a best guess at a probability of getting arrested. Alternatively, if you have enough money to own a lawyer, you can also be generally safe, as you can ask their advise before doing anything.
I once tried to learn knife laws in Canada. We only have about 5 laws, maybe 100 words of laws concerning knives. But our systems are built on precedent, and really how much you can afford to spend on a lawyer. So there will be literally be hundreds of books law precedent, which is more important than the letter, to read with respect to knife law. And unless you can afford it, their is absolutely no talking to a lawyer before you are arrested.
What I got out of this. From my understanding, after reading the letter of the law over and over again is that technically I am allowed to do pretty much anything (carry any knife I would care to own anywhere in any way). And if I could afford a team of lawyers, I am pretty confident that I could protect that right. But in the real world were I do not own a cent, I absolutely should not even carry a Walmart pocket knife across the street to cut up a bunch of boxes. Because people have ended up going to jail for less.
You cannot know the law, because the real law is hidden (non lawyers are not allowed to give law advise, and lawyer cost too much). And even lawyers and the police do not know the law. it is all interpretable to mean anything that they want it to mean.
While there are loads of horror stories on both sides, outsourcing has more. They are not even in the same country/legal jurisdiction, you never meet them, you are not even awake when they are. Outsources can be just as incompetent as American IT companies, but have a truckload of potential issues on top.
Slashdot Mirror
You have pretty much no way of knowing exactly how far they can see, or how long their vehicle take to stop in optimum conditions, at any given speeds.
Add to that, that you cannot really expect people to slow down to 10 MPH every time the road conditions are not completely optimal, or to drive half the speed of your traffic peers.
An perfectly working average set of lights with 0 fog will illuminate 30 meters of road. Without illumination or lights, you would be invisible further away than that.
An average person in perfect conditions, and on perfect roads, using perfect breaks, in an average vehicle would need to be driving under 40 MPH to stop in time. But in a real life situation, with slightly dusty lights and other factors, a real number might be half of that or less, depending on the situation.
My mind is not made up at all, I am playing Devil's Advocate with someone who has made up their mind.
You have already made up your mind, and then seeing data that fits your scenario, you claim it gives evidence for your case.
But there is simply no hard data here. I hear "He was hit from behind, and the driver slowed, and swerved", and I can imagine an invisible cyclist at night with inadequate lights and reflectors. I can imagine a driver at full alert level and adequate skill seeing this cyclist without enough time to stop. I can imagine them slamming on the breaks and trying to swerve out of the way. Then panic stricken, and with a lower responsibility for their actions, continue driving, as they cannot think or comprehend what has even happened.
And it is entirely possible to run by accident.
That is false, it is entirely possible to accidentally perform a hit and run.
And no amount of driving skill can protect you from invisible stupid bicyclers.
"I think we can assume that they place no value on the lives of others."
Or they did not want to go to jail for 20 years for a no-fault accident.
Yes, because bicycling down the middle of a street in complete black and with zero lights or reflectors is not asking to be run over.
This accident very well might of ruined the other guy's life as well, and might of been totally not his fault, for all we know.
It would still be traceable, as the source code still exists, you just do not have it.
And in jail you are not going to be able to track down a bug anyways.
And this is the reason you would want closed source commercial software. Because then it would not just be you held responsible, but the vender who supplied the software as well.
No, not really.
90% of the time I get a KSer is because I know the game will have 200% more details than the developers had originally planed at that price point.
And specifically, all money they raised must be spent designing the game, or it is fraud.
I did see a KS project were the stretch goals were just more toys for the backers. But I personally thought that that went against the idea of KS backing, if not being technically fraud.
Cannibal is not like vegetarian, it is not exclusive.
There is probably a civilization of super piranha, that have been surviving by cannibalism for 15 million years, creating a race of super big, super powerful, mean, man eating monsters.
You are right, I do not know where I got my info. .006% = (17.26 / 299792.458) km/s. Which is like an order of magnitude different than yours.
But you also seem off.
By my calculations I get
DVD videos, for example, have error correction, yada yada yada.
But, at the same time you can put a tiny tiny nick in one and the entire thing can become unreadable.
VHSes mean-while will degrade gracefully.
I do not know anything about barcode encoding, but you should always consider how damaging a small amount of damage/warping is and how the data degrades when damaged.
Text degrades very gracefully, the entire page needs to be completely destroyed to lose the entire data set.
No idea about barcodes.
Honestly I think there are more examples of less advanced barbarians destroying more advanced civilizations, while claiming be more advanced and doing the world and the opposing side a favour.
Everyone thinks it is like Star Trek.
Given the age of the universe any other human-like life is either billions of years older than ours, or it will be billions of years until they exist.
If there was an intelligent species that had any interest in finding/communicating with other life-forms even within a 200 ly distance they would have sent a probe, or colonization ship to Earth billions of years ago, or every 10 thousand years for the last billion years. If their was anything out there interested in talking to us, or conquering us for that mater, it would already have happened, or the ship is currently in transit (Though I would of supposed that they would of put some nearly indestructible message somewhere were life would find it if they were trying to find intelligent life).
Either way, doing either of your ideas is ridiculous.
Nice essay.
You make a few leaps of logic, but the overall direction is mostly logical.
I have a completely different, and similarly "logical leap" filled argument on never meeting other Aliens as well.
But before I copy paste it here, I wanted to address one of your points.
"Getting us to Proxima Centauri in less than a few hundred years would require technology that is orders of magnitude beyond what we have now."
I am not sure I agree. Within 10-15 lightyears even their are life-habitable planets. Right now we have the probe Voyager that travels at something like 15% of the speed of light.
Really, given enough money and mostly today's tech I think it is plausible to imagine shipping off some sensor equipment on a 80 year journey to our best guess of a Earth-like planet. It would probably only have a 50% chance of succeeding at best, as it would necessarily have to be 100% automated, as input lag would be 20-30 years. And just getting a probe to the general area of the closest star would be very doable, given unlimited resources. Really, all you need to do is launch it pretty fast in the right direction and have a power source or a battery that lasts a century.
A thought experiment against Alien life, as depicted in Star Trek and popular belief.
Some people dream about colonizing the stars, some people draw up formulas calculating the possible billions of life filled planets, some people warn of future alien invasions.
For the purposes of this experiment, the ability to travel past the speed of light, or even just close to it is unnecessary.
I am here to tell you that these ideas are self contradictory.
The oldest solar system (potentially life bearing planets) in our incredibly small neighbourhood is calculated as being about 13 billion year old. That leaves about 10 billion years of progress above and beyond Earth. That means that they were almost certainly driving around using petroleum based fuels, and launching themselves into space similarly, 10 billion years ago.
Even if the only other life in the universe was from a single planet on the far side of the Andromeda Galaxy, or any other galaxy even 100 times further away, if it was even slightly like the culture shown in film, TV, or how we imagine ourselves, it would have already colonised Earth, Billions of years ago. (note: In a billion years even conventional human manned spacecraft could make it to another Galaxy. Space is actually quite small compared to the vastness of time)
Ignoring the incredibly small chance that our situation is special in some way.
That leaves us with few possibilities.
Life in general, or Human-like life specifically, necessarily destroys itself in short order.
Human-like life necessarily changes to become non Human-like in incredibly short order.
Colonizing planets is impossible.
The reason why we have not, and never will, discover any other alien life that we relate to is that it flashes into existence and vanishes in a blank of the cosmic eye. This is not just my opinion, this has 10 billion years of evidence to back it up. This would be like seeing a vast range of old rock that contains no fossils, and the explanation for this was that no fish or bacteria ever swam over that way in the billions of years that they could of done so.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox#Explaining_the_paradox_hypothetically
I think it is pretty clear that none of these people care about any kindof truth or evidence. Many people, governments, organizations the world over have conducted experiments, given full disclosure, and performed thought experiences, and they are not interested at all in anything other that saying that Napoleon was abducted by aliens, or the US is involved in secret wars with subsurface dwelling Aliens.
And featuring prominently in the credits is 50 cent.
This documentary just lost all credibility with me.
Responsibility, it always slides down hill.
That is a lot of communications.
I understand the need to worry about overloading state infrastructure with that many calls, and why just picking up a 50 cell phone could not have fixed this problem.
Egyptians revere cats.
So obviously they are fascinated with laser pointers as well.
"French tech firm Spotter has apparently devised an analytics platform capable of identifying sarcastic comments" Hence forth referred to as Sheldon Cooper.
That is just the beginning
I am Canadian, but we have the same basic system. There are systems and laws in place to stop you from even just learning one law.
Unless you go to school and become a lawyer you cannot know the law, or what will get you arrested. And only then, will you have a best guess at a probability of getting arrested. Alternatively, if you have enough money to own a lawyer, you can also be generally safe, as you can ask their advise before doing anything.
I once tried to learn knife laws in Canada. We only have about 5 laws, maybe 100 words of laws concerning knives.
But our systems are built on precedent, and really how much you can afford to spend on a lawyer.
So there will be literally be hundreds of books law precedent, which is more important than the letter, to read with respect to knife law. And unless you can afford it, their is absolutely no talking to a lawyer before you are arrested.
What I got out of this.
From my understanding, after reading the letter of the law over and over again is that technically I am allowed to do pretty much anything (carry any knife I would care to own anywhere in any way). And if I could afford a team of lawyers, I am pretty confident that I could protect that right. But in the real world were I do not own a cent, I absolutely should not even carry a Walmart pocket knife across the street to cut up a bunch of boxes. Because people have ended up going to jail for less.
You cannot know the law, because the real law is hidden (non lawyers are not allowed to give law advise, and lawyer cost too much). And even lawyers and the police do not know the law. it is all interpretable to mean anything that they want it to mean.
It goes way deeper than that.
I am Canadian, but we have the same basic system. There are systems and laws in place to stop you from even just learning one law.
Unless you go to school and become a lawyer you cannot know the law, or what will get you arrested. And only then, will you have a best guess at a probability of getting arrested. Alternatively, if you have enough money to own a lawyer, you can also be generally safe, as you can ask their advise before doing anything.
I once tried to learn knife laws in Canada. We only have about 5 laws, maybe 100 words of laws concerning knives.
But our systems are built on precedent, and really how much you can afford to spend on a lawyer.
So there will be literally be hundreds of books law precedent, which is more important than the letter, to read with respect to knife law. And unless you can afford it, their is absolutely no talking to a lawyer before you are arrested.
What I got out of this.
From my understanding, after reading the letter of the law over and over again is that technically I am allowed to do pretty much anything (carry any knife I would care to own anywhere in any way). And if I could afford a team of lawyers, I am pretty confident that I could protect that right. But in the real world were I do not own a cent, I absolutely should not even carry a Walmart pocket knife across the street to cut up a bunch of boxes. Because people have ended up going to jail for less.
You cannot know the law, because the real law is hidden (non lawyers are not allowed to give law advise, and lawyer cost too much). And even lawyers and the police do not know the law. it is all interpretable to mean anything that they want it to mean.
While there are loads of horror stories on both sides, outsourcing has more.
They are not even in the same country/legal jurisdiction, you never meet them, you are not even awake when they are. Outsources can be just as incompetent as American IT companies, but have a truckload of potential issues on top.