Actually I'm pretty sure evolution makes many, many, many mistakes. Its like the ultimate trial and error method. Saying evolution doesn't make mistakes seems akin to saying it has a plan.
You're right -- what I meant (and what I should have said) was that evolution doesn't keep many mistakes. So if homosexuality was really an entirely "bad" thing from a natural-selection perspective, homosexual organism would get filtered out of the gene pool in short order and homosexuality wouldn't commonly exist.
God damn that felt good. And yes, I was making fun of those tree huggers.
Yeah, as long as we can convince ourselves that they are crazy, we can pretend we aren't in the process of destroying the very environment that keeps us alive. Then we don't have to deal with the problems we caused! Yay!
Seriously, let's hope that you (and other people like you) can get their heads out of their asses before it's too late.
Could this kind of flocking (hehe) to see a documentary about penguins be indicative of a trend towards a silent audience demand for wholesome, informative movies rather than violent and crass fare?
It may just be a silent audience demand for something (anything!) different from the tedious rehashing of the same old formulas, over and over again. Seeing cars chase each other around and explode is neat the first few dozen times, but after a while it just gets old and boring. (Seeing penguins chase each other around and explode, on the other hand... cool!!!)
Homosexuality is not "natural" to the extent that it is, at best, unproductive in the view of a species which intends to perpetuate itself
Even this is debatable. It's entirely possible that a modest rate of homosexuality actually helps a (highly socialized) species survive, in that it decreases the the possibility of overpopulation, decreases the amount of (potentially disruptive) competition for females, and frees up some extra individuals from the burdens of child rearing so that they can devote their efforts to other things that are useful to the species as a whole (e.g. defending the group from invaders/predators).
My feeling is that evolution doesn't make too many "mistakes", and so if homosexuality is something that appears in many species, then it's likely there is a good (albeit non-obvious) reason for it.
Take a look at Wyoming or Utah once and tell me it's "fully populated".
I don't think you're using the right criteria. It's not a question of whether there are resources left or not, it's a question of living within our means. The Earth can produce X amount of renewable resources every year. If we consume more than X amount per year, the Earth will eventually run out and then we'll be screwed. In fact, it's actually worse than that, because the more resources we consume, the less ability the environment has to recover, and so X becomes smaller each year)
Re:Space travel - no kidding
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10 Technologies MIA
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· Score: 2, Insightful
While the Earth still has a positive growth rate, that rate has been in decline ever since a certain piece of trash called "The Population Bomb" hit the shelves.
Hmm, I guess people read it and realized they'd better stop having so many kids?;^)
I find it rather interesting that people who still complain about Earth being "overpopulated" fail to mention the declining growth rate.
That's a bit of a non-sequiter, isn't it? If the Earth is overpopulated, even a zero growth rate wouldn't change that fact. You'd need a negative growth rate in order to shrink the population back to less than the maximum sustainable size. (As to what that size actually is, I won't try to guess, but I do note that fish populations are declining drastically and that many species are becoming extinct in a short period of time. To me, that suggests that we are already past that point)
To make it work, we need a breakthru in materials to manufacture the cable
Seems to me the 'breakthru' came with the discovery of carbon nanotubes. Getting the manufacturing process to the state where it is practical for this application is indeed a challenge, but I don't think it requires any miracles.
and we need a breakthru in propulsion/energy transfer to power the climbers.
As I understand it, the required technology to do that is more or less already developed. You need a power source (done), a photo cell for the receiver (done), a powerful laser (done), and an automatic tracking/focusing system (done).
The materials and propulsion can be deployed without the long cable, they will make the concept of a spaceplane practical.
Unless I am missing something (always a possibility), the problem with a space plane is the same problem that rockets have: it has to carry its own fuel into orbit. That means you burn up most of your fuel boosting up more fuel. The main advantage of a space elevator is that you dont have to send up fuel; you only pay the energy cost necessary to boost the payload.
Space elevator is nothing more than the 21st century version of snake oil
Well, you may be right -- I'm no expert, just someone who read a book on the subject and thought it sounded very promising. But my point wasn't that a space elevator will necessarily happen -- it was that without it (or something equally revolutionary), manned space exploration won't happen on any significant scale. Rockets simply aren't a practical way to get people into space. The analogy to the old west applies: sure, Lewis and Clark were able to explore a bit on horseback, but the significant developments didn't occur until after the building of the railroads.
As for the shuttle, yes, it's in orbit, and has a few folks on board. Most of them aren't old enough to remember the last time there was real manned exploration happening in space, cuz the shuttle program isn't exploring anything new, except the realms of unpowered flight at hypersonic speeds during re-entry
True, but not relevant to the point the article was trying to make. As long as we are sending people into space (even boring old low-earth-orbit) we are maintaining our skills regarding what is necessary to keep people alive in space. Not that I'm happy with the situation, but it isn't as bad as the article wants to make it seem.
the last people to explore the final frontier are past retirement age--and so are the engineers who put them there. In other words, next time we go into space, we're going to have to retrain people from scratch. There may be no firsthand knowledge of what it's like to be in space or to build a space vehicle
Not to be a curmudgeon, but there is a Space Shuttle in orbit as I type this text. I'm pretty sure its occupants know "what it's like to be in space".
OTOH, I think manned space travel is going to remain an expensive novelty until we can massively improve our dollars-per-kilogram-to-orbit. And that will require either some revolutionary breakthrough in rocket science (doubtful), or a space elevator or some other alternative means of getting mass to orbit. Until one of those things happens, unmanned probes and more basic research on the "get mass out of Earth's gravity well" problem are the smart way to go.
They wanted fear and terror. Well, they've got it, on a scale they never imagined.
It's an interesting strategy.... we'll terrorize ourselves so that Al Quaeda doesn't have to. (and why not? It makes about as much sense as the "we're fighting terrorists in Iraq so we don't have to fight them here" line that gets tossed around)
Whether you voted for the guy or not, he's our commander in chief for another 4 years so there is no alternative but to stand by him and wait until the next election to vote democrat. That's how our country works. If you don't like it, blame The Constitution
Actually, the Constitution says exactly the opposite: the first amendment guarantees our right to criticize the government. Congress shall make no law [...] abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Whether you like the patriot act or not, the president has a duty to do something and I'd rather have a president that is overreacting than one who is doing nothing so as to avoid labels like fascist
Actually, no -- the president's duty is not to "do something", but to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." If you think fascism can't happen here, you may be right -- but only if the American people are willing to defend the Constitution even when it isn't convenient to do so. If people don't take their freedoms seriously, they will likely lose them.
If the kind of world they wished to see actually existed, computers, DVDs and the internet etc just couldn't exist. Think 11th century
Sure, but you gotta play the hand you're dealt, you know? If computers, DVDs, and the Internet prove useful in your jihad to turn the clock back 10 centuries, why not use them? (Being able to use them to watch free pr0n is just icing on the cake, of course;^))
Bush's re-election was due to the Republican Party's mastery of smear campaigning, hysteria-raising, and pandering to the religious right's thirst for power. The Democratic Party's uninspired campaigning didn't help.
Bush has been nothing but forthright and candid during these troubled times
Seems like most of the comments are complaints about lousy implementations. Perhaps a better way to do this sort of thing would be to hardwire the clickers into the room itself (into the armrests/desks) and use wires under the floor instead of wireless. That would solve the "wireless communication is unreliable" problem, the "students have to spend $50 on gadgets for every class" problem, and the "clever guy brought three clickers into class for his absentee friends" problem.
It might add a "bored students spend lecture period trying to break their desk-clicker" problem... but that could be addressed by making the input hardware near-indestructible (or by publicly drawing and quartering the first vandal of the year, as an example to the others)
hey obviously do reproduce, otherwise there wouldnt be more than one.
Sorry, that's incorrect. They are produced, but they do not and cannot reproduce. That is, they cannot make copies of themselves. Without the ability to make a copy of yourself (and thereby pass along your characteristics to your offspring, along with the occasional mutation), evolution can't happen, and so your AIs would have to look for another explanation, i.e. that they were built by humans.
(If they found evidence of robots that could reproduce, that would be different... in that case evolution may well have been happening -- but that wasn't true of the examples you gave)
i just think it intersting that in all of this i am setting forth, that it is the AI who have faith in a creator who are the ones that see the whole picture. while those who only look at the 'fossil' record are missing the real cause.
But the AI who "have faith" do not really see the the whole picture -- they are only guessing at the whole picture based on their gut instincts. In your scenario they happen to be correct (because you contrived the scenario so that they would be), but it is only a lucky guess and they can't back it up without evidence. The other AIs (who are looking at the evidence and not just relying on blind faith) would eventually figure out the correct conclusion also, but in the meantime they are wise enough to take honest stock of what evidence exists and what conclusions can be drawn from it, rather than taking the easy way out and jumping to a conclusion that isn't justified by the facts as they know them.
in any event, it all boils down to either: god just is and created us. or the universe just is. i personally think both are valid. however, only the latter can have the scientific method applied to it.
Sure, but whether or not god exists, the physical evidence is pretty clear that humans evolved -- you can pretty much trace back our evolution through the fossil record, from Cro-Magnons to chimpanzees on down to protozoa. There is no rule that says God couldn't create a universe where evolution happens, and use evolution as his method for creating humans. In fact, the idea that God would create all these fossils that point to evolution and then switch to some other "magical" mechanism at the last minute is kind of strange.... what would be the point of doing that?
They don't have to be a joke, but they do point to the explanation of evolution. If you want to posit the existence of some creator, fine, but without corroborating evidence it's just a pointless assertion.
(For example, His signature carved in 100-foot high letters in buried ice in Antarctica would be good evidence.:^) "Gut feelings" about how the universe "should" work are not, since human intuition is often notoriously wrong)
if we can someday create AI (debateable) what then prevents the existence of a being (or race/species) that could have created us?
Nothing prevents it -- but then, nothing prevents the possibility that we were all flown in by storks and don't remember it. But if you look at the evidence, it all points to humanity being forged by natural selection, the same as all the other species on Earth. I have to presume that all those fossils weren't just buried as a practical joke.
There is one way to deliver software fast, cheap, and fully functional -- don't write it from scratch. Instead, start with an existing mature project as your basis and customize it. (Assuming such a project is available, of course... but freshmeat and sourceforge have a lot of stuff in them, so it may well be)
The obvious solution to the problem is to add more shielding to the spacecraft, so that less radiation can penetrate into the crew areas.
As the article notes, the main problem with doing that is that rockets can only carry a very limited amount of mass into orbit.
As one of Slashdot's resident space elevator geeks, I feel compelled to point out that with a space elevator this wouldn't be a problem... we could economically upload as much mass as we needed to GEO. Want a Mars ship the size of a football stadium? No problem!
I don't think manned space exploration is ever going to be commonplace if we have to rely on the limited capabilities of rockets to get material into orbit.
What do you think that 200-mile cable is going to be made out of? Steel!? If it isn't ceramic, it'll definitely be a polymer and an engineering design that will be spooky as hell until we've used it a lot.
Presumably it'll be made out of carbon nanotubes wrapped by a substrate of some sort. The important thing is that it (literally) isn't rocket science -- it's materials science. And even if the cable were to fail, it wouldn't mean instance death for the crew (or anyone).
And won't things be exciting the day that we learn that steady UV bombardment and ionic disturbances have caused the space elevator to age prematurely...
Not really. In the worst case scenario, the ribbon breaks, the crew vehicle parachutes down into the ocean and the crew is rescued, pieces of ribbon float down like confetti, nobody gets hurt, nobody dies. Compare that to the history of the shuttle program, where many failure scenarios lead to the disintegration of the crew vehicle and the loss of all hands.
Man, listening to slashdotters talk about space exploration rates a step above reading about it in Wierd Science or a supermarket Tabloid. I keep waiting for someone to suggest we have bigfoot toss things into orbit off the freakin' pyramids.
The difference between a space elevator and bigfoot is that a space elevator is plausible. Not quite possible yet, granted, but if we're going to be replacing the Space Shuttle with something new from scratch anyway, it's definitely something to consider.
I hope the shuttle comes home safe and then gets parked in a museum. The problem here is that the heat shields are exposed to stress during both launch and entry.
Amen! I say we replace it with a nice space elevator, so that you don't need much in the way of heat shields at all -- you can go up and come down at a nice safe sub-sonic speed, and there's no mucking about with funky ceramics or exotic aerodynamics (or dangerous explosives, for that matter).
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You're right -- what I meant (and what I should have said) was that evolution doesn't keep many mistakes. So if homosexuality was really an entirely "bad" thing from a natural-selection perspective, homosexual organism would get filtered out of the gene pool in short order and homosexuality wouldn't commonly exist.
Yeah, as long as we can convince ourselves that they are crazy, we can pretend we aren't in the process of destroying the very environment that keeps us alive. Then we don't have to deal with the problems we caused! Yay!
Seriously, let's hope that you (and other people like you) can get their heads out of their asses before it's too late.
It may just be a silent audience demand for something (anything!) different from the tedious rehashing of the same old formulas, over and over again. Seeing cars chase each other around and explode is neat the first few dozen times, but after a while it just gets old and boring. (Seeing penguins chase each other around and explode, on the other hand... cool!!!)
Even this is debatable. It's entirely possible that a modest rate of homosexuality actually helps a (highly socialized) species survive, in that it decreases the the possibility of overpopulation, decreases the amount of (potentially disruptive) competition for females, and frees up some extra individuals from the burdens of child rearing so that they can devote their efforts to other things that are useful to the species as a whole (e.g. defending the group from invaders/predators).
My feeling is that evolution doesn't make too many "mistakes", and so if homosexuality is something that appears in many species, then it's likely there is a good (albeit non-obvious) reason for it.
I don't think you're using the right criteria. It's not a question of whether there are resources left or not, it's a question of living within our means. The Earth can produce X amount of renewable resources every year. If we consume more than X amount per year, the Earth will eventually run out and then we'll be screwed. In fact, it's actually worse than that, because the more resources we consume, the less ability the environment has to recover, and so X becomes smaller each year)
Hmm, I guess people read it and realized they'd better stop having so many kids?
I find it rather interesting that people who still complain about Earth being "overpopulated" fail to mention the declining growth rate.
That's a bit of a non-sequiter, isn't it? If the Earth is overpopulated, even a zero growth rate wouldn't change that fact. You'd need a negative growth rate in order to shrink the population back to less than the maximum sustainable size. (As to what that size actually is, I won't try to guess, but I do note that fish populations are declining drastically and that many species are becoming extinct in a short period of time. To me, that suggests that we are already past that point)
Seems to me the 'breakthru' came with the discovery of carbon nanotubes. Getting the manufacturing process to the state where it is practical for this application is indeed a challenge, but I don't think it requires any miracles.
and we need a breakthru in propulsion/energy transfer to power the climbers.
As I understand it, the required technology to do that is more or less already developed. You need a power source (done), a photo cell for the receiver (done), a powerful laser (done), and an automatic tracking/focusing system (done).
The materials and propulsion can be deployed without the long cable, they will make the concept of a spaceplane practical.
Unless I am missing something (always a possibility), the problem with a space plane is the same problem that rockets have: it has to carry its own fuel into orbit. That means you burn up most of your fuel boosting up more fuel. The main advantage of a space elevator is that you dont have to send up fuel; you only pay the energy cost necessary to boost the payload.
Space elevator is nothing more than the 21st century version of snake oil
Well, you may be right -- I'm no expert, just someone who read a book on the subject and thought it sounded very promising. But my point wasn't that a space elevator will necessarily happen -- it was that without it (or something equally revolutionary), manned space exploration won't happen on any significant scale. Rockets simply aren't a practical way to get people into space. The analogy to the old west applies: sure, Lewis and Clark were able to explore a bit on horseback, but the significant developments didn't occur until after the building of the railroads.
As for the shuttle, yes, it's in orbit, and has a few folks on board. Most of them aren't old enough to remember the last time there was real manned exploration happening in space, cuz the shuttle program isn't exploring anything new, except the realms of unpowered flight at hypersonic speeds during re-entry
True, but not relevant to the point the article was trying to make. As long as we are sending people into space (even boring old low-earth-orbit) we are maintaining our skills regarding what is necessary to keep people alive in space. Not that I'm happy with the situation, but it isn't as bad as the article wants to make it seem.
Not to be a curmudgeon, but there is a Space Shuttle in orbit as I type this text. I'm pretty sure its occupants know "what it's like to be in space".
OTOH, I think manned space travel is going to remain an expensive novelty until we can massively improve our dollars-per-kilogram-to-orbit. And that will require either some revolutionary breakthrough in rocket science (doubtful), or a space elevator or some other alternative means of getting mass to orbit. Until one of those things happens, unmanned probes and more basic research on the "get mass out of Earth's gravity well" problem are the smart way to go.
It's an interesting strategy.... we'll terrorize ourselves so that Al Quaeda doesn't have to. (and why not? It makes about as much sense as the "we're fighting terrorists in Iraq so we don't have to fight them here" line that gets tossed around)
Actually, the Constitution says exactly the opposite: the first amendment guarantees our right to criticize the government. Congress shall make no law [...] abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Whether you like the patriot act or not, the president has a duty to do something and I'd rather have a president that is overreacting than one who is doing nothing so as to avoid labels like fascist
Actually, no -- the president's duty is not to "do something", but to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." If you think fascism can't happen here, you may be right -- but only if the American people are willing to defend the Constitution even when it isn't convenient to do so. If people don't take their freedoms seriously, they will likely lose them.
Sure, but you gotta play the hand you're dealt, you know? If computers, DVDs, and the Internet prove useful in your jihad to turn the clock back 10 centuries, why not use them? (Being able to use them to watch free pr0n is just icing on the cake, of course
Actually, a majority of Americans think Bush is dishonest, and 58% of them think he's mishandling Iraq.
Bush's re-election was due to the Republican Party's mastery of smear campaigning, hysteria-raising, and pandering to the religious right's thirst for power. The Democratic Party's uninspired campaigning didn't help.
Bush has been nothing but forthright and candid during these troubled times
Bwahahahaha! Seen any Iraqi WMDs lately?
It might add a "bored students spend lecture period trying to break their desk-clicker" problem... but that could be addressed by making the input hardware near-indestructible (or by publicly drawing and quartering the first vandal of the year, as an example to the others)
So if I make a demonstration virus with a .BAT file, can I get Microsoft to leave the MS-DOS shell out too?
Sorry, that's incorrect. They are produced, but they do not and cannot reproduce. That is, they cannot make copies of themselves. Without the ability to make a copy of yourself (and thereby pass along your characteristics to your offspring, along with the occasional mutation), evolution can't happen, and so your AIs would have to look for another explanation, i.e. that they were built by humans.
(If they found evidence of robots that could reproduce, that would be different... in that case evolution may well have been happening -- but that wasn't true of the examples you gave)
i just think it intersting that in all of this i am setting forth, that it is the AI who have faith in a creator who are the ones that see the whole picture. while those who only look at the 'fossil' record are missing the real cause.
But the AI who "have faith" do not really see the the whole picture -- they are only guessing at the whole picture based on their gut instincts. In your scenario they happen to be correct (because you contrived the scenario so that they would be), but it is only a lucky guess and they can't back it up without evidence. The other AIs (who are looking at the evidence and not just relying on blind faith) would eventually figure out the correct conclusion also, but in the meantime they are wise enough to take honest stock of what evidence exists and what conclusions can be drawn from it, rather than taking the easy way out and jumping to a conclusion that isn't justified by the facts as they know them.
in any event, it all boils down to either: god just is and created us. or the universe just is. i personally think both are valid. however, only the latter can have the scientific method applied to it.
Sure, but whether or not god exists, the physical evidence is pretty clear that humans evolved -- you can pretty much trace back our evolution through the fossil record, from Cro-Magnons to chimpanzees on down to protozoa. There is no rule that says God couldn't create a universe where evolution happens, and use evolution as his method for creating humans. In fact, the idea that God would create all these fossils that point to evolution and then switch to some other "magical" mechanism at the last minute is kind of strange.... what would be the point of doing that?
No, because today's computers and the sony dog have no way to reproduce. Without reproduction, evolution is impossible.
Surreptitiously organized crime may be involved also, but they keep such a low profile that it's hard to tell.
(For example, His signature carved in 100-foot high letters in buried ice in Antarctica would be good evidence.
Nothing prevents it -- but then, nothing prevents the possibility that we were all flown in by storks and don't remember it. But if you look at the evidence, it all points to humanity being forged by natural selection, the same as all the other species on Earth. I have to presume that all those fossils weren't just buried as a practical joke.
Step 2 isn't so bad... it's Step 3 I have trouble with.
There is one way to deliver software fast, cheap, and fully functional -- don't write it from scratch. Instead, start with an existing mature project as your basis and customize it. (Assuming such a project is available, of course... but freshmeat and sourceforge have a lot of stuff in them, so it may well be)
As the article notes, the main problem with doing that is that rockets can only carry a very limited amount of mass into orbit.
As one of Slashdot's resident space elevator geeks, I feel compelled to point out that with a space elevator this wouldn't be a problem... we could economically upload as much mass as we needed to GEO. Want a Mars ship the size of a football stadium? No problem!
I don't think manned space exploration is ever going to be commonplace if we have to rely on the limited capabilities of rockets to get material into orbit.
Please tell me that's not Apple's new marketing tagline!
Presumably it'll be made out of carbon nanotubes wrapped by a substrate of some sort. The important thing is that it (literally) isn't rocket science -- it's materials science. And even if the cable were to fail, it wouldn't mean instance death for the crew (or anyone).
And won't things be exciting the day that we learn that steady UV bombardment and ionic disturbances have caused the space elevator to age prematurely...
Not really. In the worst case scenario, the ribbon breaks, the crew vehicle parachutes down into the ocean and the crew is rescued, pieces of ribbon float down like confetti, nobody gets hurt, nobody dies. Compare that to the history of the shuttle program, where many failure scenarios lead to the disintegration of the crew vehicle and the loss of all hands.
Man, listening to slashdotters talk about space exploration rates a step above reading about it in Wierd Science or a supermarket Tabloid. I keep waiting for someone to suggest we have bigfoot toss things into orbit off the freakin' pyramids.
The difference between a space elevator and bigfoot is that a space elevator is plausible. Not quite possible yet, granted, but if we're going to be replacing the Space Shuttle with something new from scratch anyway, it's definitely something to consider.
Amen! I say we replace it with a nice space elevator, so that you don't need much in the way of heat shields at all -- you can go up and come down at a nice safe sub-sonic speed, and there's no mucking about with funky ceramics or exotic aerodynamics (or dangerous explosives, for that matter).