> It is conceivable that one day it may become very useful, at which time it may be too late to experiment with space exploration.
On the other hand it is conceivable that one day we are really going to need intelligent self-sufficient robots, and we'll be cursing ourselves for having spent so much money on manned space travel instead. Since I don't see either situation come up in the near future (after all, we've been fine without robots and space travel for millenia), we might as well explore with probes and robots. If you'd have given Columbus the option of sending one or more (cheap) probes rather than risking his (expensive) ship and the lives of his crew trying to find a new route, he would have been a fool not to at least seriously consider the first option.
I totally agree with you on the "let's boldly go forward thing". Once we find a proper way to put people in suspended animation manned space travel will become a very interesting option.
> Real life means USING stuff. If NASA discovers a new crystal on Mars, something that man has never seen before, neither Joe Sixpack nor Aviator Alex is going to give a damn that science has learned something new. Both want to know how they can USE IT! Does it make a super cutting tool? Does it make the greatest lens ever imagined? Maybe it's a superconductor at room temperature, and it can be used in electronics? The best insulating material man has ever seen? If so, then someone is going to pay for transportation to go GET some of the stuff, so he can sell it to people!!
Most likely, if we find a new crystal on another planet it will be none of those things. Researching such a crystal (or any other rock we find) may or may not yield new insights that may or may not lead to new and interesting things being invented.
> There is nothing wrong with science, but science isn't a goal, in and of itself. Science is a means to an end - the end being, to improve human life.
Maybe, but it would be nice if more people understood that science is more complex than
1) Research. 2) ??? 3) PROFIT!
There has been much research where the researchers didn't have a specific application in mind that nevertheless led to awesome stuff (eventually). Science for science's sake may not improve human life directly, but it would be foolish to deny that it has indirectly benefitted us greatly.
> Sitting around on the earth, and speculating about if and when a moon sized comet might strike the earth certainly doesn't improve human life, or the chances of humanity's survival.
If all this speculation leads to the invention of ways to detect and destroy or change the course of such comets, then it most certainly did lead to an improvement of human life (I for one feel much more comfortable when I'm not being hit by huge comets) AND the chances of humanity's survival.
I think limiting science to only research things where a clear 'human-life-improving' (who gets to decide what that means?) goal is present is rather shortsighted and that by ignoring areas where such a goal is not yet obvious we would be doing ourselves a great disservice.
> The idea was that the Saturn V third stage would be launched fueled, would be used to send 3 astronauts towards Venus (thus emptying it of fuel)
Maybe this is a really stupid question, but if they were going to run out of fuel on the way there, how were they going to return?
Second question: What would have been the point of a manned mission to venus? It's not like you would want to land there so why not send a probe (which would also eliminate the problem of returning to earth)?
> The whole point of space travel is to permanently get humans to other places in the Solar System, Galaxy and Universe other than Earth.
It is? Why would any human want to permanently go to another planet/moon/whatever? It's not like there are many places in our current solarsystem that most humans would consider a nice place to live. I'll agree that having people on another planet is cool (in much the same way that being able to juggle flaming chainsaws is cool), I fail to see what makes it useful to us, especially the 'permanently' part. For me the whole space exploration thing is more about gaining knowledge about the universe and its history, and human space travel is just another way to do that, but sending robots (and researching more advanced robots) is way more cost-effective for now. So why not stick to that for the time being and forget about sending creatures that are so obviously unsuited for life on other planets into space?
Why would we want that? None of us is going to be around by then, and we probably wouldn't recognize our descendents, if we don't go extinct long before that time.
Or maybe a species that we can't afford to exterminate. Bees or spiders maybe? Or perhaps a species of bacteria important to our digestion? When there are two species X and Y, and X could in theory slay Y, but cannot live without Y, while Y can live without X but cannot slay X, which one is 'smarter'?
Why is this article or Idle? Since the article is relevant to anybody who has at some point in their life urinated behind a tree, a more serious category such as YRO, IT, or News seems appropriate.
I for one find it ridiculous that a single cell would enjoy the same rights as a real person with a personality, experiences, and so forth. The moment a single cell can be a legal human is the moment I'll embrace the concept of 'lesser' humans that can be slain for the convenience of 'superior' humans (where one human would be superior than another one when the cellcount of the former is at least 9 orders of magnitude larger than the cellcount of the latter.
No wait, screw that. Why again does being a 'human being' make something special? Maybe that's worth examining.
> Further, it is possible for genetically isolated populations to have gained extreme sensitivity or extreme brightness through the usual biological mechanisms, or if such traits were selected for through cultural or religious practices
In the same way that it is possible for genetically isolated populations to have gained extreme (1000x normal human) strength, extreme (1000x normal human) hearing, or extreme (1000x normal human) speed? I think you suffer from extreme (1000x normal human) unfounded belief in genetic diversity.
Ok my trolling aside, super-nightvision would be a great advantage and very likely to spread. Cats (according to wikipedia...) apparantly have a minimum light detection threshhold seven times lower than that of humans, that is, to observe the light we emit you'd have to have a threshold over 140 times lower than that of a cat. Cats and many other animals have special adaptations in their eyes to improve nightvision. For a few mutations in a small isolated human population to so completely and utterly *OWN* many animals nightvision by 2 orders of magnitude would be pretty damn unlikely. With that in mind I think I can safely conclude that you are almost certainly wrong to suggest some humans might be able to see the light from the article.
What does that even mean? 'Depressed activity in the frontal cortex of the brain'. Boohoo. What can we conclude from that? How long does this thing last, how does it affect a person?
Maybe it simply means someone has become good at the game and no longer needs to think about every single action while playing, like many sports (we'll probably never know since it's hard to scan the brain of someone playing tennis or juggling...). Maybe it means your brain has magically become more efficient and requires less activity to deliver the same quality. Maybe it even means we get dumber, less capable of self-reflection and planning, but only while playing the game.
The little fact about the brain is completely useless without more information. If 'they' had more information that would suggest these effects are permanent and damaging, they would have included this information, since it supports their point. Since they didn't, we can conclude that there is no reason to believe the changes in the brain are permanent or harmful in any way, but it sure sounds like something creepy and nasty to those who don't think it through.
> No. Unless I am missing something from TFA, it is like any other "secure" encryption scheme: merely very, very difficult to break. Given a fast enough computer -- or a large enough cluster of computers working together -- it can be cracked.
I think full disclosure is a good motivation for companies to fix their stuff. Notify them you found a problem, what the problem is, and that you will make the exploit public after a certain (reasonable) period of time, whether they fix it or not.
> Java/Mono apps are prevented from approaching the speed(*) of a fully compiled app, like one written in C/C++ for example, because the latter has no interpretation being performed.
Not really. Their speed may never equal that of a similar program written in C/C++, but it's getting pretty close. Besides, a JIT compiler could compile the complete program when you start it, thereby removing the interpretation completely, introducing only a slight delay before the program can start running (which should be no problem at all for any program that is supposed to run for more than half a minute).
Insightful? Assuming you can perfectly remember 1 byte per second, you'd be memorizing for over 100 million years. The human brain is great and all that, but no way are you going to store that much data while being able to reproduce it later.
I was going to make a 'Having chromosomes can really bring you Down!' joke but feel the need to point out that humans have 2 * 23 = 46 chromosomes. Having 52 chromosomes means you're a platypus.
I think this one is quite farfetched since the resulting babies would be impossible to distinguish from 'normal' babies, assuming the technique used does not introduce any abnormalities in the DNA that do not occur naturally. The babies would pass the 'duck test' (if it look like a duck...) and be accepted as normal humans.
I for one wouldn't think of myself as 'more human' than someone created by this tech just because the meiosis that created the sperm that produced me took place between my father's legs as opposed to in a lab (indeed, the latter sounds much less disgusting).
Actually, cloning has a definition, and it does not match this sperm thing EVEN if a female were to make her own sperm and impregnate herself.
Unless you accept that we can redefine every word of the english language at will without informing the rest of the world (which does make this whole discussion rather pointless, you could simply define every second word in my post as 'banana' and claim I'm not making any sense), Mikkeles is correct in saying that kalirion is incorrect in concluding that this is unethical because it is cloning; even if we accept the premise 'cloning is unethical', this procedure is NOT cloning (by definition) and therefore his argument does not make sense.
Why? I don't see all males committing mass suicide any time soon, nor any other threat to our continued existence, unless you consider the situation where women overthrow us and kill us all a likely scenario (it isn't). So please do explain why this is a 'very big deal'.
Whose DNA? My dogs DNA is different from mine, yet so is yours. Yet we are (presumably, on the internet, nobody knows you're a dog!) the same species, while my dog is not. Unless you have some DNA sample that we can all agree about is THE standard of human DNA, and every DNA that deviates X% or more (for some value of X that we can all agree about) is no longer considered human, I think the "If it looks like a human, swims like a human and quacks like a human, then it probably is a human." test is probably the best way to determine who is a part of our species and who is not.
Slashdot Mirror
> It is conceivable that one day it may become very useful, at which time it may be too late to experiment with space exploration.
On the other hand it is conceivable that one day we are really going to need intelligent self-sufficient robots, and we'll be cursing ourselves for having spent so much money on manned space travel instead. Since I don't see either situation come up in the near future (after all, we've been fine without robots and space travel for millenia), we might as well explore with probes and robots. If you'd have given Columbus the option of sending one or more (cheap) probes rather than risking his (expensive) ship and the lives of his crew trying to find a new route, he would have been a fool not to at least seriously consider the first option.
I totally agree with you on the "let's boldly go forward thing". Once we find a proper way to put people in suspended animation manned space travel will become a very interesting option.
> Real life means USING stuff. If NASA discovers a new crystal on Mars, something that man has never seen before, neither Joe Sixpack nor Aviator Alex is going to give a damn that science has learned something new. Both want to know how they can USE IT! Does it make a super cutting tool? Does it make the greatest lens ever imagined? Maybe it's a superconductor at room temperature, and it can be used in electronics? The best insulating material man has ever seen? If so, then someone is going to pay for transportation to go GET some of the stuff, so he can sell it to people!!
Most likely, if we find a new crystal on another planet it will be none of those things. Researching such a crystal (or any other rock we find) may or may not yield new insights that may or may not lead to new and interesting things being invented.
> There is nothing wrong with science, but science isn't a goal, in and of itself. Science is a means to an end - the end being, to improve human life.
Maybe, but it would be nice if more people understood that science is more complex than
1) Research.
2) ???
3) PROFIT!
There has been much research where the researchers didn't have a specific application in mind that nevertheless led to awesome stuff (eventually). Science for science's sake may not improve human life directly, but it would be foolish to deny that it has indirectly benefitted us greatly.
> Sitting around on the earth, and speculating about if and when a moon sized comet might strike the earth certainly doesn't improve human life, or the chances of humanity's survival.
If all this speculation leads to the invention of ways to detect and destroy or change the course of such comets, then it most certainly did lead to an improvement of human life (I for one feel much more comfortable when I'm not being hit by huge comets) AND the chances of humanity's survival.
I think limiting science to only research things where a clear 'human-life-improving' (who gets to decide what that means?) goal is present is rather shortsighted and that by ignoring areas where such a goal is not yet obvious we would be doing ourselves a great disservice.
> The idea was that the Saturn V third stage would be launched fueled, would be used to send 3 astronauts towards Venus (thus emptying it of fuel)
Maybe this is a really stupid question, but if they were going to run out of fuel on the way there, how were they going to return?
Second question: What would have been the point of a manned mission to venus? It's not like you would want to land there so why not send a probe (which would also eliminate the problem of returning to earth)?
> The whole point of space travel is to permanently get humans to other places in the Solar System, Galaxy and Universe other than Earth.
It is? Why would any human want to permanently go to another planet/moon/whatever? It's not like there are many places in our current solarsystem that most humans would consider a nice place to live. I'll agree that having people on another planet is cool (in much the same way that being able to juggle flaming chainsaws is cool), I fail to see what makes it useful to us, especially the 'permanently' part. For me the whole space exploration thing is more about gaining knowledge about the universe and its history, and human space travel is just another way to do that, but sending robots (and researching more advanced robots) is way more cost-effective for now. So why not stick to that for the time being and forget about sending creatures that are so obviously unsuited for life on other planets into space?
This is especially true when you are being chased by an incubus.
> Searching for blind replication at the best rate possible just feels empty.
I'm sure there is a joke in there somewhere about your mom claiming the opposite.
Why would we want that? None of us is going to be around by then, and we probably wouldn't recognize our descendents, if we don't go extinct long before that time.
MRSA is, of course.
Or maybe a species that we can't afford to exterminate. Bees or spiders maybe? Or perhaps a species of bacteria important to our digestion? When there are two species X and Y, and X could in theory slay Y, but cannot live without Y, while Y can live without X but cannot slay X, which one is 'smarter'?
Please stop repeating http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1320677&cid=28884515 yourself.
Why is this article or Idle? Since the article is relevant to anybody who has at some point in their life urinated behind a tree, a more serious category such as YRO, IT, or News seems appropriate.
He probably meant 19-31 instead of 19-13.
I for one find it ridiculous that a single cell would enjoy the same rights as a real person with a personality, experiences, and so forth. The moment a single cell can be a legal human is the moment I'll embrace the concept of 'lesser' humans that can be slain for the convenience of 'superior' humans (where one human would be superior than another one when the cellcount of the former is at least 9 orders of magnitude larger than the cellcount of the latter.
No wait, screw that. Why again does being a 'human being' make something special? Maybe that's worth examining.
> Further, it is possible for genetically isolated populations to have gained extreme sensitivity or extreme brightness through the usual biological mechanisms, or if such traits were selected for through cultural or religious practices
In the same way that it is possible for genetically isolated populations to have gained extreme (1000x normal human) strength, extreme (1000x normal human) hearing, or extreme (1000x normal human) speed? I think you suffer from extreme (1000x normal human) unfounded belief in genetic diversity.
Ok my trolling aside, super-nightvision would be a great advantage and very likely to spread. Cats (according to wikipedia...) apparantly have a minimum light detection threshhold seven times lower than that of humans, that is, to observe the light we emit you'd have to have a threshold over 140 times lower than that of a cat. Cats and many other animals have special adaptations in their eyes to improve nightvision. For a few mutations in a small isolated human population to so completely and utterly *OWN* many animals nightvision by 2 orders of magnitude would be pretty damn unlikely. With that in mind I think I can safely conclude that you are almost certainly wrong to suggest some humans might be able to see the light from the article.
What does that even mean? 'Depressed activity in the frontal cortex of the brain'. Boohoo. What can we conclude from that? How long does this thing last, how does it affect a person?
Maybe it simply means someone has become good at the game and no longer needs to think about every single action while playing, like many sports (we'll probably never know since it's hard to scan the brain of someone playing tennis or juggling...). Maybe it means your brain has magically become more efficient and requires less activity to deliver the same quality. Maybe it even means we get dumber, less capable of self-reflection and planning, but only while playing the game.
The little fact about the brain is completely useless without more information. If 'they' had more information that would suggest these effects are permanent and damaging, they would have included this information, since it supports their point. Since they didn't, we can conclude that there is no reason to believe the changes in the brain are permanent or harmful in any way, but it sure sounds like something creepy and nasty to those who don't think it through.
> No. Unless I am missing something from TFA, it is like any other "secure" encryption scheme: merely very, very difficult to break. Given a fast enough computer -- or a large enough cluster of computers working together -- it can be cracked.
I am a one-time pad you insensitive clod!
I think full disclosure is a good motivation for companies to fix their stuff. Notify them you found a problem, what the problem is, and that you will make the exploit public after a certain (reasonable) period of time, whether they fix it or not.
> Java/Mono apps are prevented from approaching the speed(*) of a fully compiled app, like one written in C/C++ for example, because the latter has no interpretation being performed.
Not really. Their speed may never equal that of a similar program written in C/C++, but it's getting pretty close. Besides, a JIT compiler could compile the complete program when you start it, thereby removing the interpretation completely, introducing only a slight delay before the program can start running (which should be no problem at all for any program that is supposed to run for more than half a minute).
Insightful? Assuming you can perfectly remember 1 byte per second, you'd be memorizing for over 100 million years. The human brain is great and all that, but no way are you going to store that much data while being able to reproduce it later.
I was going to make a 'Having chromosomes can really bring you Down!' joke but feel the need to point out that humans have 2 * 23 = 46 chromosomes. Having 52 chromosomes means you're a platypus.
I think this one is quite farfetched since the resulting babies would be impossible to distinguish from 'normal' babies, assuming the technique used does not introduce any abnormalities in the DNA that do not occur naturally. The babies would pass the 'duck test' (if it look like a duck...) and be accepted as normal humans.
I for one wouldn't think of myself as 'more human' than someone created by this tech just because the meiosis that created the sperm that produced me took place between my father's legs as opposed to in a lab (indeed, the latter sounds much less disgusting).
Actually, cloning has a definition, and it does not match this sperm thing EVEN if a female were to make her own sperm and impregnate herself.
Unless you accept that we can redefine every word of the english language at will without informing the rest of the world (which does make this whole discussion rather pointless, you could simply define every second word in my post as 'banana' and claim I'm not making any sense), Mikkeles is correct in saying that kalirion is incorrect in concluding that this is unethical because it is cloning; even if we accept the premise 'cloning is unethical', this procedure is NOT cloning (by definition) and therefore his argument does not make sense.
Evolution has no direction or goal, so it's very much neutral on the issue (or any other issue, for that matter).
Why? I don't see all males committing mass suicide any time soon, nor any other threat to our continued existence, unless you consider the situation where women overthrow us and kill us all a likely scenario (it isn't). So please do explain why this is a 'very big deal'.
> to toil in their sugar caves
Is that what they call it these days...
> If it has the DNA, its human.
Whose DNA? My dogs DNA is different from mine, yet so is yours. Yet we are (presumably, on the internet, nobody knows you're a dog!) the same species, while my dog is not. Unless you have some DNA sample that we can all agree about is THE standard of human DNA, and every DNA that deviates X% or more (for some value of X that we can all agree about) is no longer considered human, I think the "If it looks like a human, swims like a human and quacks like a human, then it probably is a human." test is probably the best way to determine who is a part of our species and who is not.