You're just stupid to think it might be a bomb in the first place. It's a risk only in movie plots, not in real life. Don't let your need to pretend life is more exciting than it really is cause you to act like a total asshole to people around you. That's a poor tradeoff.
By the same token, if Evolutionary Theory by itself fully described the origins of life, a.k.a Abiogenesis, then someone disproving Abiogenesis would destroy evolutionary theory.
No, not really. Just as we could discover examples where evolution didn't explain the fossil record, and that wouldn't disprove evolution (e.g., if we discovered that a set of species were the result of alien GM millions of years ago - so what?). Similarly, if evolutionary theory described abiogenesis , but it turned out that life on this planet was seeded by a meteorite - so what?
It's very common in other fields for theories to be used at first to describe a very broad set of phenomena, but as time goes on some overreach is discovered and several things just need a different theory, but that doesn't "disprove" the theory where it still applies.
Abiogenesis is a superset of Evolutionary theory (sort of), you need Evolutionary Theory, PLUS other conjectures to explain it.
OK, sure, but now we're arguing the semantics of "purports to explain". Again, that's true with many theories: what they "explain" in some particular is mostly from that theory, with a few details specific to the case at hand. You see that especially in Chemistry, where you have a lot of models that "work pretty well, most of the time", they usually give the right answer within their domain, but sometimes need a small correction from QM.
At least with the "RNA world" hypothesis, you have a gradual evolution of how various parts replicate building up to an RNA strand that encodes everything needed to replicate itself and to produce energy, all in one place. You can certainly use evolutionary statistical models to describe that process, from a bunch of "parts" scattered in the soup through to an actual cell.
And the small fact no one has built a nuclear rocket.
The Russians did, or at least the motor. It used the moderator as the thrust mass, IIRC, so once it was out of fuel the reactor would shut down. Not sure how well it would work - dense power is great, but once you're out of Earth orbit only ISP (i.e., exhaust velocity) really matters, and you wouldn't want to use this close to Earth.
Inter-stellar distances aren't just a "challenge". They are insurmountable.
Perhaps so, perhaps not. Without a theory that reconciles relativity and QM properly, there's still a lot of mystery left in physics. We'll probably know the answer by the time it takes us to get good at exploring our own system - no need to commit either way this century.
We've explored so very little of our own system. As robotics tech improves, especially autonomous robotics, the commercial possibilities within our own system unfold. Keeping humans healthy in space for extended periods is another problem that is perhaps unsolvable (at least, with reasonable mass limits), but again no need to commit either way this century - the potential for robotics seems vast. If we could only make fuel in orbit - which is mostly a robotics challenge, and hardly an impossible one - everything changes for exploring our system. Everything is fuel-limited right now; remove that limit and there's profit to be had, and basically unbounded resources become available for use here on Earth.
AYou can be 100% confident in Evolutionary Theory, and still believe that Abiogenesis is complete hogwash.
You keep saying that as if you think it contradicts something I said above. Abiogenesis is using the principles of evolution to explain the formation of early life. Much as evolution is used to explain much in the historical record of species, even though that's not central to the theory either.
All that's central to the theory of evolution is "the statistical distribution of alleles in a population changes over time". You can use that to explain cladistics with a theory of common origin: evolution purports to explain why features are shared by extant species and fossils in specific ways, and there's a lot of evidence to back that up. You can use that to explain abiogenisis: evolution purports to explain, with pretty much the same statistical methods, ways that the organic building blocks could become RNA, and from there to cells, but there's not so much evidence to back that up.
No, you're thinking of Abiogenesis - a hypothesis built upon evolutionary theory, and widely accepted as "probable, but as yet sorely lacking in detail" among the scientific community, but it is in no way integral to evolution.... Abiogenesis is the result of extrapolating Evolutionary theory backward from the earliest living organisms,
Right, so evolution purports to explain the origin of life. That's what I said. The origin of life can be explained through the theory of evolution without inventing additional entities. I didn't think that was so confusing.
Untrue: evolution certainly purports to explain the creation of life. The evidence there is quite lacking, unlike the evidence for "how it changes", but still it's a consistent explanation for life arising that doesn't require the invention of additional entities.
This is a particular problem with small, non-commercial planes. Modern airframes are very safe, and the cats majority of crashes are "controlled flight into terrain". Something goes wrong with the plane, something that's not an immediate risk, plenty of time to sort it out, but the pilot gets so distracted he forgets to fly the plane.
This isn't a material problem with US airliners, mostly because there are two pilots, so one can pay full attention to flying the plane while the other works on whatever went wrong. However, it remains a problem in some other cultures, e.g. Japan where the co-pilot is so conditioned not to challenge the decision of the pilot on anything, no matter how seemingly wrong.
Whether it can work with cars depends on what we're talking about. If the car autopilot fails instantly, that's obviously bad. If instead it detects that it's somewhat degraded, but is still safe in most conditions thanks to redundant sensors or whatever, and beacons the driver to take back control, thn cuts out only when the driver acknowledges, that seems fine to me. The driver won't be distracted by trying to fix the issue. It just depends what "failure" looks like (and also how rare it is - perfection isn't the goal).
We do know what we're looking for: aliens who want to contact us, and have tuned their signal to be easily detectable by us. We're not going to see anything else, after all.
Remember, our civil institutions are becoming increasingly secondary to the corporate ones
I just think we're already going that way as fast as we practically can (you can't boil the frog too fast, or he'll notice), and thus change is likely for the better.
Anyway, I think it's more likely that we'll see Bernie vs Carson, unless Trump is actually capable of learning and changing his ways (in which case, I might actually like him, but I doubt it). Can you imagine? A presidential election involving national debate on the issues? I'd like to see it.
We already live in a totalitarian state with omnipresent surveillance, searches without cause, seizures without trial, and a government whose budget consists chiefly of taking money from the politically disfavored and giving it to the politically favored. Sure, most places have it worse, no argument there. But "worse" is mostly in the direction we're already heading! A different direction is likely to be better. It almost has to be better than the leading establishment newspaper calling out the troublesome Jews on which to blame our problems (at least they eventually found a sense of embarrassment about that - a sign there's still time to change course).
You want to build datacenters in the middle of nowhere, with no neighbors, as inconspicuously as possible, with a fake address (really). That much money in one place keeps a very low profile, and ideally out of walking distance from any population center. It's just basic physical security.
Oh, I never said he had a coherent set of anything. He has anger, and an apparent inability to filter his mouth, and I approve of the chaos he'd cause in DC. Like I said, random change is almost certainly an improvement.
Maybe this is all just a cunning web of lies by Trump: could be possible, but honestly I'm not sure he's bright enough to keep it straight. Whatever passes through his head seems to come straight out his mouth unfiltered.
He's anti-establishment on amnesty, giving Iran the O-Bomb, taxing billionaires, and that's just the big-ticket items. He's paid-to-play in the past, but he's openly antagonistic to the whole current corrupt pay-for-play system. Hell, I'd bet he'd even reduce government spending by eliminating an agency or two that annoyed him. The GOPe is having a fit over him.
Really, I think his mouth will get him out of the primary, but I've been wrong about that for months, so maybe people are ready for anyone who's angry at the establishment.
There is a traditional division of labor in the US intelligence community. The NSA gathers the information, the CIA acts on it and fucks it up, and the FBI arrests innocent citizens.
I think he (like Trump, and Carson) has the best chance in the past 40 years. Non-establishment candidates have been weeded out as "unelectable" for as long as I've been alive. Now we have a self-described socialist on the left, and two guys with no political history on the right, leading the polls. It's a hopeful sign. And all three of these guys are more honest about their positions than we've seen in some time. (Trump's a bit random and inconsistent, but no one thinks otherwise, and he clearly says whatever's on his mind at the moment.)
At this point, if we somehow still end up with a Clinton v Bush race, we'll know the fix is in.
Meh, it's good by the standards of science journalism, but that's a pretty low bar.
As it happens the natgeo edition with the greatest climate focus back in 2007 never mentioned wildlife once
Right, so my point was: that's rare, while talking about shrinking habitats and extinction risk is almost-every-issue common. I'd be surprised if there was a noticeable change in that content, as all that would do is reduce sales. I wouldn't be surprised, however, if we start seeing more of what drew in subscribers back in the day: attractive topless women (Murdock's other specialty).
Ah, we see how people dive in to defend the establishment by likening an anti-establishment candidate to the Nazis.
Trump and Sanders have the most important thing in common: they'll actually change something if elected. And at this point, even random change is very likely to be for the better Both of them are leading in the primary polls as well, which is a great sign that voters finally want real change, not just for their team to win the big game.
No matter what anybody likes to think, the US stopped being a free country or a champion of liberty and democracy 14 years ago. And you'll never get it back.
Long before then, I'm afraid. Sadly, all the Patriot act did was say "all the rights you already lose if we call you a drug dealer? Now you also lose all those rights if we call you a terrorist". And lawmakers from both parties had it ready to go, just in case there was a disaster they could take advantage of. Plus the NSA was monitoring all of us regardless, they didn't need a specific excuse.
We're certainly being surveiled as much as the average Chinese citizen, though we used to have the advantage that we still had free speech - you could criticize the government as long as you didn't actually plot to overthrow it. Now that's starting to fade as well, not directly yet, but through groups of citizens harassing anyone who departs from the groupthink. So far that's just on social media, so although it's gotten people fired, it doesn't quite look like Germany in the 30s yet.
This sort of thing is quite worrying, however. I didn't think we were far enough along that a major newspaper would be highlighting where the Jews are causing trouble, so color me shocked. We must find some way to change course, to not fall into the same trap, but we seem too obsessed with "making sure the wrong lizard doesn't win" to vote for anything but more of the same. Still, voting matters, especially in the primaries, and there is still time.
It might surprise you, but NatGeo is not The Journal of Climate Change. It's not their focus. Pretty much every NatGeo story ever about wildlife has ended by talking about what man is doing to kill all these cute animals, and I seriously doubt that will change (climate change is just the reason currently fashionable, but that's hardly the important bit).
Perhaps it's worth pointing out that when Murdoch bought the Wall Street Journal, he dragged it far back towards the center from the extreme right-wing rag it had become at the time. He's good at assessing what political slant for a given property will sell the most, and so I really doubt he'll change the left-wing slant of NatGeo very much.
Slashdot Mirror
You're just stupid to think it might be a bomb in the first place. It's a risk only in movie plots, not in real life. Don't let your need to pretend life is more exciting than it really is cause you to act like a total asshole to people around you. That's a poor tradeoff.
By the same token, if Evolutionary Theory by itself fully described the origins of life, a.k.a Abiogenesis, then someone disproving Abiogenesis would destroy evolutionary theory.
No, not really. Just as we could discover examples where evolution didn't explain the fossil record, and that wouldn't disprove evolution (e.g., if we discovered that a set of species were the result of alien GM millions of years ago - so what?). Similarly, if evolutionary theory described abiogenesis , but it turned out that life on this planet was seeded by a meteorite - so what?
It's very common in other fields for theories to be used at first to describe a very broad set of phenomena, but as time goes on some overreach is discovered and several things just need a different theory, but that doesn't "disprove" the theory where it still applies.
Abiogenesis is a superset of Evolutionary theory (sort of), you need Evolutionary Theory, PLUS other conjectures to explain it.
OK, sure, but now we're arguing the semantics of "purports to explain". Again, that's true with many theories: what they "explain" in some particular is mostly from that theory, with a few details specific to the case at hand. You see that especially in Chemistry, where you have a lot of models that "work pretty well, most of the time", they usually give the right answer within their domain, but sometimes need a small correction from QM.
At least with the "RNA world" hypothesis, you have a gradual evolution of how various parts replicate building up to an RNA strand that encodes everything needed to replicate itself and to produce energy, all in one place. You can certainly use evolutionary statistical models to describe that process, from a bunch of "parts" scattered in the soup through to an actual cell.
And the small fact no one has built a nuclear rocket.
The Russians did, or at least the motor. It used the moderator as the thrust mass, IIRC, so once it was out of fuel the reactor would shut down. Not sure how well it would work - dense power is great, but once you're out of Earth orbit only ISP (i.e., exhaust velocity) really matters, and you wouldn't want to use this close to Earth.
Inter-stellar distances aren't just a "challenge". They are insurmountable.
Perhaps so, perhaps not. Without a theory that reconciles relativity and QM properly, there's still a lot of mystery left in physics. We'll probably know the answer by the time it takes us to get good at exploring our own system - no need to commit either way this century.
We've explored so very little of our own system. As robotics tech improves, especially autonomous robotics, the commercial possibilities within our own system unfold. Keeping humans healthy in space for extended periods is another problem that is perhaps unsolvable (at least, with reasonable mass limits), but again no need to commit either way this century - the potential for robotics seems vast. If we could only make fuel in orbit - which is mostly a robotics challenge, and hardly an impossible one - everything changes for exploring our system. Everything is fuel-limited right now; remove that limit and there's profit to be had, and basically unbounded resources become available for use here on Earth.
AYou can be 100% confident in Evolutionary Theory, and still believe that Abiogenesis is complete hogwash.
You keep saying that as if you think it contradicts something I said above. Abiogenesis is using the principles of evolution to explain the formation of early life. Much as evolution is used to explain much in the historical record of species, even though that's not central to the theory either.
All that's central to the theory of evolution is "the statistical distribution of alleles in a population changes over time". You can use that to explain cladistics with a theory of common origin: evolution purports to explain why features are shared by extant species and fossils in specific ways, and there's a lot of evidence to back that up. You can use that to explain abiogenisis: evolution purports to explain, with pretty much the same statistical methods, ways that the organic building blocks could become RNA, and from there to cells, but there's not so much evidence to back that up.
No, you're thinking of Abiogenesis - a hypothesis built upon evolutionary theory, and widely accepted as "probable, but as yet sorely lacking in detail" among the scientific community, but it is in no way integral to evolution. ... Abiogenesis is the result of extrapolating Evolutionary theory backward from the earliest living organisms,
Right, so evolution purports to explain the origin of life. That's what I said. The origin of life can be explained through the theory of evolution without inventing additional entities. I didn't think that was so confusing.
Untrue: evolution certainly purports to explain the creation of life. The evidence there is quite lacking, unlike the evidence for "how it changes", but still it's a consistent explanation for life arising that doesn't require the invention of additional entities.
s/cats/vast/
That was an odd auto-correct.
This is a particular problem with small, non-commercial planes. Modern airframes are very safe, and the cats majority of crashes are "controlled flight into terrain". Something goes wrong with the plane, something that's not an immediate risk, plenty of time to sort it out, but the pilot gets so distracted he forgets to fly the plane.
This isn't a material problem with US airliners, mostly because there are two pilots, so one can pay full attention to flying the plane while the other works on whatever went wrong. However, it remains a problem in some other cultures, e.g. Japan where the co-pilot is so conditioned not to challenge the decision of the pilot on anything, no matter how seemingly wrong.
Whether it can work with cars depends on what we're talking about. If the car autopilot fails instantly, that's obviously bad. If instead it detects that it's somewhat degraded, but is still safe in most conditions thanks to redundant sensors or whatever, and beacons the driver to take back control, thn cuts out only when the driver acknowledges, that seems fine to me. The driver won't be distracted by trying to fix the issue. It just depends what "failure" looks like (and also how rare it is - perfection isn't the goal).
We do know what we're looking for: aliens who want to contact us, and have tuned their signal to be easily detectable by us. We're not going to see anything else, after all.
Remember, our civil institutions are becoming increasingly secondary to the corporate ones
I just think we're already going that way as fast as we practically can (you can't boil the frog too fast, or he'll notice), and thus change is likely for the better.
Anyway, I think it's more likely that we'll see Bernie vs Carson, unless Trump is actually capable of learning and changing his ways (in which case, I might actually like him, but I doubt it). Can you imagine? A presidential election involving national debate on the issues? I'd like to see it.
We already live in a totalitarian state with omnipresent surveillance, searches without cause, seizures without trial, and a government whose budget consists chiefly of taking money from the politically disfavored and giving it to the politically favored. Sure, most places have it worse, no argument there. But "worse" is mostly in the direction we're already heading! A different direction is likely to be better. It almost has to be better than the leading establishment newspaper calling out the troublesome Jews on which to blame our problems (at least they eventually found a sense of embarrassment about that - a sign there's still time to change course).
You want to build datacenters in the middle of nowhere, with no neighbors, as inconspicuously as possible, with a fake address (really). That much money in one place keeps a very low profile, and ideally out of walking distance from any population center. It's just basic physical security.
Oh, I never said he had a coherent set of anything. He has anger, and an apparent inability to filter his mouth, and I approve of the chaos he'd cause in DC. Like I said, random change is almost certainly an improvement.
Ah, same Ratzo as always.
Maybe this is all just a cunning web of lies by Trump: could be possible, but honestly I'm not sure he's bright enough to keep it straight. Whatever passes through his head seems to come straight out his mouth unfiltered.
He's anti-establishment on amnesty, giving Iran the O-Bomb, taxing billionaires, and that's just the big-ticket items. He's paid-to-play in the past, but he's openly antagonistic to the whole current corrupt pay-for-play system. Hell, I'd bet he'd even reduce government spending by eliminating an agency or two that annoyed him. The GOPe is having a fit over him.
Really, I think his mouth will get him out of the primary, but I've been wrong about that for months, so maybe people are ready for anyone who's angry at the establishment.
There is a traditional division of labor in the US intelligence community. The NSA gathers the information, the CIA acts on it and fucks it up, and the FBI arrests innocent citizens.
AC with the best post in the thread!
I think he (like Trump, and Carson) has the best chance in the past 40 years. Non-establishment candidates have been weeded out as "unelectable" for as long as I've been alive. Now we have a self-described socialist on the left, and two guys with no political history on the right, leading the polls. It's a hopeful sign. And all three of these guys are more honest about their positions than we've seen in some time. (Trump's a bit random and inconsistent, but no one thinks otherwise, and he clearly says whatever's on his mind at the moment.)
At this point, if we somehow still end up with a Clinton v Bush race, we'll know the fix is in.
he science in natgeo has always been rock solid.
Meh, it's good by the standards of science journalism, but that's a pretty low bar.
As it happens the natgeo edition with the greatest climate focus back in 2007 never mentioned wildlife once
Right, so my point was: that's rare, while talking about shrinking habitats and extinction risk is almost-every-issue common. I'd be surprised if there was a noticeable change in that content, as all that would do is reduce sales. I wouldn't be surprised, however, if we start seeing more of what drew in subscribers back in the day: attractive topless women (Murdock's other specialty).
Ah, we see how people dive in to defend the establishment by likening an anti-establishment candidate to the Nazis.
Trump and Sanders have the most important thing in common: they'll actually change something if elected. And at this point, even random change is very likely to be for the better Both of them are leading in the primary polls as well, which is a great sign that voters finally want real change, not just for their team to win the big game.
No matter what anybody likes to think, the US stopped being a free country or a champion of liberty and democracy 14 years ago. And you'll never get it back.
Long before then, I'm afraid. Sadly, all the Patriot act did was say "all the rights you already lose if we call you a drug dealer? Now you also lose all those rights if we call you a terrorist". And lawmakers from both parties had it ready to go, just in case there was a disaster they could take advantage of. Plus the NSA was monitoring all of us regardless, they didn't need a specific excuse.
We're certainly being surveiled as much as the average Chinese citizen, though we used to have the advantage that we still had free speech - you could criticize the government as long as you didn't actually plot to overthrow it. Now that's starting to fade as well, not directly yet, but through groups of citizens harassing anyone who departs from the groupthink. So far that's just on social media, so although it's gotten people fired, it doesn't quite look like Germany in the 30s yet.
This sort of thing is quite worrying, however. I didn't think we were far enough along that a major newspaper would be highlighting where the Jews are causing trouble, so color me shocked. We must find some way to change course, to not fall into the same trap, but we seem too obsessed with "making sure the wrong lizard doesn't win" to vote for anything but more of the same. Still, voting matters, especially in the primaries, and there is still time.
It might surprise you, but NatGeo is not The Journal of Climate Change. It's not their focus. Pretty much every NatGeo story ever about wildlife has ended by talking about what man is doing to kill all these cute animals, and I seriously doubt that will change (climate change is just the reason currently fashionable, but that's hardly the important bit).
Perhaps it's worth pointing out that when Murdoch bought the Wall Street Journal, he dragged it far back towards the center from the extreme right-wing rag it had become at the time. He's good at assessing what political slant for a given property will sell the most, and so I really doubt he'll change the left-wing slant of NatGeo very much.
Hey now, Cheney was responsible for the best public shooting in America - he shot a lawyer in the face with a shotgun. Props where they're due!
Bennett Haselton is the onion of /.
I didn't expect an insightful post in a Bennett thread, but here one is. Nicely put.
"Research", that's funny. This is politics, and only politics.