No, he was exactly right. He said, "not air pressure". It's not air pressure.
It's the hydrostatic pressure of the liquid being siphoned, which as you understand, is a result of gravity. A siphon would work just as well in a vacuum (both ends at vacuum, of course).
Siphons don't work in vacuum, and they don't work if the distance between the two containers is greater than 10 meters (one atm of pressure at sea level). You can transfer liquid between two containers in a vacuum, but its a completely different principle, not nearly as efficient (molecular cohesion) and places additional requirements on the materials of the tube.
The problem is, how did the market become "uncompetitive" in the first place?
Oh yeah, Government interference. First by creating and enforcing local monopolies rather than simply selling right of way space to anyone that wanted it, and second by scooping up several billion in taxpayer money and just GIVING it to the big telcos to create and infrastructure.
Nice attempt at revisionist history. Ma Bell became a regulated monopoly after they were sued under antitrust law in 1913. They were sued because AT&T started buying up all the competition in 1907. They became "uncompetitive" all by themselves by functionally eliminating competition and purchasing as much right-of-way as possible to prevent new competitors from entering the market.
Ultraviolet light is ionizing radiation, and those others are burns.
No it's not. At least not in the common usage. Extremely high frequency UV is indeed ionizing, but what is typically considered UV light is not. In order to be ionizing, the field or particle must be capable of stripping electrons from atoms. Standard "UV light" does not have enough energy for this.
Claiming that AVI is obsolete is like claiming that the plain old telephone line is obsolete. Sure, there's been heaps of advancements made, and you could probably get by without it, but its still in wide use and is still almost as useful as its replacements.
That depends to a great deal on your community. In my area, neither I nor my friends have had POTS for years, and we get by just fine.
Server farms may be using things like *BSD, but these machines are usually built by hand without automagic package managers.
God no.Server farms (really anything where scalability is a major factor) make good package management all the more important. Now, it might be something home-rolled or a conglomeration of existing package management tools, but something to manage/version software components in a consistent fashion will need to be in place.
No. EPR does not allow FTL communication. FTL communication means causality violation: A causes B but B happens before A.
There is no causality violation if you travel FTL to some point in the expanding universe that is beyond our light cone, as long as expansion never reverses. In other words, FTL is "causality safe" between two reference frames that can never come in contact with each other.
Additionally, within a local reference frame, causality violation presumes the existence of free will. Dr. Robert L Foward posited that the instant one transmits information FTL (i.e. time travel), restrictions begin to be placed on free will such that causality can not be violated, and thus preventing paradoxes.
You might be able to go back in time, but you can't go back and kill your own grandfather.
Forward saw this as essentially the inverse of forward causality, i.e. if I'm going to break my leg tomorrow skiing, I don't really have any choice in the matter.
So what I want to know is, what was it about human beings that caused us to develop the capacity to drive cars, build computers and walk on the moon?
Maybe we were created to be creative. Maybe that's part of being "made in God's image". I mean, even if you take away tools and anything with practical survival benefits - what drives humans to express themselves through words and art and music and dance? Sure, even I could come up with theories that reduce all of that to "survival of the fittest", but I don't see the need.
A possible explanation for the base drive: Expression allows humans to feel more connected to each other, either directly or indirectly. It's a socialization function. Improved socialization leads to increased survivability.
Every form of creativity is derived from this base drive.
I've been using *nix machines for decades, and still use Linux on my desktop and server machines. But since since I inherited a Mac laptop (actually, two now) I have become something of a fanboy for Mac. It is very pleasant to have a (nearly) consistent, intelligently designed interface to a system where everything "just works" with a minimum of effort.
Yes, Linux supports much more hardware, but I can understand why "Joe Sixpack" (or even maybe "the Plumber") would find OS X easier to deal with.
Indeed, I'm in the same camp. It's comfortable feeling to have a clean, workable and immediately usable interface (although certainly not perfect) on top of a unix paradigm that we (old *nix heads) are already comfortable with.
Only human arrogance would lead one to believe that the [subject of the simulation] are humans.
Agreed. Although, perhaps, the "point" of the simulation/experiment is to evolve intelligence to a given (as yet unknown) level.
Consider that there are between 200 and 400 billion stars in the Milky Way, 27 galaxies (IIRC) in our local group alone and (probably) over 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe. That's a lot of opportunity for all kinds of interesting things to happen over 13+ billion years.
Still, as others have pointed out, it ultimately fails the falsibility test. One can always argue that the simulation has been set up to be undetectable and/or modified to that end.
Human beings are quite obsessed with "purpose." We know that the universe and physical laws appear to be deterministic, but this doesn't help much with advancing the "why" answer. Personally, I am a strong believer in the weak anthropomorphic principle: the universe is deterministic because it must be in order to exist. It's perfectly plausible within that framework that there is no specific reason or purpose behind its existence, no matter how uncomfortable that might make homo sapiens feel.
they took and still take whatever paths they take. We call them ellipses, but if someone comes up with a better description than ellipsis, then it will be described as such. Whatever planets do, is what they do. How we describe it changes over time.
Exactly. Nomenclature is separate from the abstract it labels or represents. Nomenclature is man-made, the abstract isn't.
The same principle applies to math. a^2+b^2=c^2 represents the abstract known to us as the Pythagorean Theorem. The concept and the formula itself remains the same no matter what base is used, how the formula is represented or what it happens to be called.
What is this bunch of garbage? We've proved the universe is expanding.
The expanding universe theory isn't proven in the absolute sense. The primary evidence for an expanding universe (there may be other evidence as well) is that distant cosmological objects appear to be retreating faster than not-quite-as-distant objects, based on spectrographic redshift.
Were some, as yet unknown, physical property of the universe responsible for this redshift (and other related evidence) then the expanding universe theory could be disproved. There is, of course, no known evidence of any such strange property, thus it seems most logical that the universe is indeed expanding. It's proven in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, which is as close as science can come to "proving" anything non-abstract.
NASA death toll = 10 (3 Gemini astronauts, plus one space shuttle full)
26 total NASA astronaut fatalities, 22 of which were directly or indirectly related to spaceflight.
Before the shuttle era, there were zero fatalities that occurred during operational missions.
Roger Chaffee, Virgil Grissom and Ed White died during a routine on-the-ground test of Apollo 1. Presumably these are the "3 Gemini astronauts" you mentioned, although Chaffee had never flown a Gemini mission.
The remaining spaceflight-related fatalities, excluding the 14 lost on the two STS incidents, occurred as a result of accidents while astronauts were piloting or aboard training aircraft, the first in 1964 (Theodore Freeman).
I've read[1] that if we accelerate consistently at 1G we'll reach 0.77 C in 1 year. However, as we continue to accelerate closer to C, we get more and more relativistic and things get screwy... screwy to the point that I'll estimate it would take about 6 years (that's 6 rocket years, not earth observer years) to get there, with 1G accel and 1G deccel. So, human travel would be extremely feasible.
An interesting trip it would be. At 0.77c, the visible spectrum (directly in front of the craft) would be blue-shifted to about 144-252nm. This is well above commonly labeled violet-red/400-700nm "visible light", and nearly encompasses the band thought of as "soft uv." "Hot infrared" (30 terahz or so) would appear as the violet top of the visible spectrum.
Of course, a corresponding red-shift would be apparent when observing "aft" along the axis of motion, but lower frequencies are just not as exciting as higher (nor as dangerous). I imagine it would create some interesting earth-communications engineering problems though.
Absolutely incorrect. There is a reason that 'c' is called the "speed of light in vacuo". That reason is because a vacuum is the place where EM radiation travels that fast. In different media there is no requirement that the speed be this great. Indeed if you buy coax cable you will find that the rated signal speed is ~60-70% of 'c' although you can get special air-core cables with speeds of 80-90% 'c'. Clearly on a coax cable the signal is being transmitted by the EM field. Indeed there is a form of radiation, called Cherenkov, that is emitted by particles travelling faster than the speed of light in the local medium.
No. You're talking about observed speed in a medium, not about 'c' (the absolute speed of light). The observed speed in medium being less than c is a result of charge interaction between matter and the EM wave (or polaritons from the QM perspective). "Light" (photons in QM) travel at c. Period.
How do they dispose of the diapers afterwards? Do they send them out the airlock?
Do they use Diapers now? Thank god. Diapers are an absolute joy compared to the Apollo and "test" shuttle eras. Catheters were provided; pre-inserted into the brave space pioneer's eurethra by the pre-flight medical team, with a micro/zero-gravity friendly external coupling for interfacing with the necessary waste containment/disposal systems. Fun for the whole family.
Watching the last election cycle, I learned exactly why we have a president who focuses on oil: because that's what the American people care about most deeply. Despite tens of thousands dying in Iraq, most of the news coverage and most of the carping I heard personally was about the energy crunch. Look at this graph. Now tell me why NASA is not at the top of the President's agenda.
No, he focuses on oil and the related strife and struggle because its a relatively solid tactic to divert as much attention as possible from the continuing unsolvable economic issue that is the US national debt. While technically there is no realistic solution to this problem that will not result in major upheaval across the globe, it can continue to be sustained for some period of time as long as (1) too much attention isn't payed to it (see the '29 market collapse for a smaller scale version of what happens when the public reacts abruptly to an economic crisis), and (2) the GNP combined with some business-friendly militaristic muscle is enough to keep the top-tier of the global economic community happy or at least quiet. Reducing deficit spending to zero (or even creating surplus) via outlay cuts or inlay increases will not fix the problem; not for a very very long time. So long that there is no reasonable economic lending belief that such is a reasonable proposition, instead the desired lending path is to keep the machine running and keep all the balls in motion all the time. National bankruptcy, at this level, would mean untold suffering and devastation for many many people around the world.
Hate Bush or Love him (or neither), he and his gang are trying to do what they feel is the best approach to ensure maximum possible distraction. The next administration will do the same, perhaps via different tactics, but the end-goal will be the same. They have to. There is no other option that 99.9% of the people on the planet who have families won't find horrific (including presidents, vice-presidents and prime ministers). Its just a matter of either fooling enough people or juggling the balls so that nobody catches sight until the next administration takes up the reins.
It does if you argue (like most naturalists) that logic is a physical reaction in the brain. You see, the materialist/naturalist camp can't actually state that there are abstract, invariant, universal laws of logic, because that would require a departure from naturalism. When you dig further and find that the consistent materialist would claim that our entire existence and thought processes are controlled by physical laws--it becomes even more damning.
You could have evolved differently than I. How do I know that the "laws of logic" at work in your brain are the same "laws of logic" at work in my brain? Who would be able to decide the winner of a debate given the premise that they could both be operating with different laws of logic in their heads?
The only "laws of logic" that exist are mathematics or derived there-from, and it is indeed abstract, invariant and universal. It doesn't matter how you or I "evolved", or even what planet we are from. A mathematical proof can be shown to be completely consistent and universally true, once the "proover" has attained enough knowledge to understand the proof. If I were to "disagree" with your proof, you could either (a) demonstrate that I was incorrect and I would lose, or (b) be unable to demonstrate this and thus not have a solid foundation for the pure objectivist argument.
Any other line of debate or reasoning does not involve invariant logic and thus may or may not be flawed and no perfect winner can be decided. In such cases we resort to consensual agreement on certain basic aspects of perception which cannot be strictly proven.
Wouldn't it have been easier to just say "Yes, our thought processes are controlled by physical laws"?
Yes, it would have been easier. It also would be completely disregarding the point, which is not that thought processes are or are not controlled by physical law, but rather that presuming such to be true does not automatically preclude the objectivist argument.
Ahh, but to the materialist, the physical laws in the end control your thought process do they not? BTW, this is an internal critique of the materialist worldview.
This is nothing more than the Free Will Argument in sheep's clothing. Does man control his own destiny, or is fate pre-determined? At the end of the day, it doesn't matter. Sophisticated biological entities exist without clear and well-defined demarcation between systems and sub-systems, in a spiral of scaling complexity that extends to the subatomic. In totality, it is not possible to both quantitatively and qualitatively measure the exact nature of such systems and the environment that influences them, thus no perfect prediction of individual human thought is possible, even if it is pre-determined by physical law.
If Adam and Eve had no knowledge of good and evil before they ate of the tree, they had no idea it was evil to disobey
God told them not to eat of the tree (Gen 2:16-17). They disobeyed. Your straw men is impressive, but a straw man nonetheless.
That's not a straw-man argument. "Straw-man" is a debate tactic where one deliberately responds to an opponent with a logical fallacy derived from intentionally altering, misrepresenting or side-stepping the opponent's argument, either literally or via context. It is intended not to convince the opponent or others that the debater has won on the merits of his/her argument, but rather that the opponent's argument was something other than what was actually put forth. It's called a "straw-man" because, metaphorically, the responding debater has erected a flimsy substitute for the true debate point, purely for the purpose of being able to easily knock it down and thus appear victorious to the inattentive onlooker.
It's like reading the same storyline every time you log in. It becomes a competition with a group of other people for items. The only thing enjoyable is spending time with the friends you make. End game is very shallow.
You couldn't be more wrong. WoW end-game is incredibly rich. In fact, in many ways its almost a separate game. The problem is, its not accessible to the casual player. End-game consists of a series of raid instances, with a max raid size of 20 or 40 people. Progression through these instances is somewhat linear in difficulty, although this is not universally true, and the newer instances tend to be far more interesting than those that were available at or shortly after release. However, they do all require a large group of people, it wouldn't be possible for any one person to solo the fights. EQ did some of this as well, of course, but EQ end-game raiding tended to be filled with hours of tedium "clearing" obstacle content. Wow has a magnitude of order less tedium between bosses.
The richness comes from the fact that such content is designed to be increasingly difficult when played without the equipment that tends to drop once the fight has been successfully accomplished. At first, the difficult is quite simple. In general, the only way to challange intelligent human players is to either (a) present them with human opponents, (b) make the automation considerably superior to human player character in terms of vitals like damage, health and mana, or (c) increase the sophistication of the automation so that it can react more like a creative human opponent (ala Unreal bots).
Option A is not economically feasible outside of player-vs-player content. Due to the complexities of the game (support classes, special abilities, etc), option C is probably a bit far-fetched at this point. That leaves B, and this is.. initially.. what WoW end-game instances are. Each boss has more hitpoints, does more damage, etc.
As end-game progresses, Blizzard added an interesting twist to this: Encounters start to involve aspects which make them impossible to complete using the general formula that most players have become accustomed to from levels 1-60 (which typically involves having monsters attack a resilient player, while others kill the monster or heal the one being attacked). The more difficult end-game content requires (at least at first -- better gear later usually reduces difficulty) a large group of appropriately geared players who are exceedingly familiar with the AI mechanics, as well as excelling with their own toon's abilities. Many fights have multiple viable strategies that others have used, but finding the right one for a particular guild/raid-composition, practicing and perfecting it can be quite a challenge. There is typically very little room for individual error. Sometimes, even a single player, out of forty, having a problem performing a needed function (often a non-intuitive one) can be enough to snowball into a wipe (the term for everyone in the raid dying, and the specific fight resetting). The complexity and originality of these encounters is astounding; it may even be the single true innovation in the game (rather than just distilling the fruits of prior MMOs). It's interesting that so much design work has gone into this aspect of Warcraft even though, out of six plus million subscribers, only a small percentage will ever get to experience very much of it.
From level 1 to 60, Warcraft is a very, very easy MMO. This is a big part of its mass appeal. Beyond the basic five-man level 60 content, unfortunately available only to the non-solo player, it becomes much more difficult. currently, the pinnacle of such content (Naxx) is trivial for none (and experienced by few), if only for the fact that there does not yet exist gear powerful enough to significantly reduce the difficuly.
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I don't expect the FTC chairman to be tech savvy, but there isn't anyone at the FTC that can tell him what is and isn't technically feasible?
Siphons don't work in vacuum, and they don't work if the distance between the two containers is greater than 10 meters (one atm of pressure at sea level). You can transfer liquid between two containers in a vacuum, but its a completely different principle, not nearly as efficient (molecular cohesion) and places additional requirements on the materials of the tube.
Nice attempt at revisionist history. Ma Bell became a regulated monopoly after they were sued under antitrust law in 1913. They were sued because AT&T started buying up all the competition in 1907. They became "uncompetitive" all by themselves by functionally eliminating competition and purchasing as much right-of-way as possible to prevent new competitors from entering the market.
You're right and wrong. Siphons work because the pressure at the end of the tube is greater than the surrounding pressure in the receiving container.
You're wrong because it's definitely caused by pressure.
You're right because gravity causes pressure.
No it's not. At least not in the common usage. Extremely high frequency UV is indeed ionizing, but what is typically considered UV light is not. In order to be ionizing, the field or particle must be capable of stripping electrons from atoms. Standard "UV light" does not have enough energy for this.
Things are more expensive, generally, in Japan because demand is high (and supply is limited, in some cases). It has nothing to do with quality.
That depends to a great deal on your community. In my area, neither I nor my friends have had POTS for years, and we get by just fine.
Obviously, other communities will differ.
God no. Server farms (really anything where scalability is a major factor) make good package management all the more important. Now, it might be something home-rolled or a conglomeration of existing package management tools, but something to manage/version software components in a consistent fashion will need to be in place.
Wow, I'm amazed that nobody else in this discussion mentioned O3D.
There is no causality violation if you travel FTL to some point in the expanding universe that is beyond our light cone, as long as expansion never reverses. In other words, FTL is "causality safe" between two reference frames that can never come in contact with each other.
Additionally, within a local reference frame, causality violation presumes the existence of free will. Dr. Robert L Foward posited that the instant one transmits information FTL (i.e. time travel), restrictions begin to be placed on free will such that causality can not be violated, and thus preventing paradoxes.
You might be able to go back in time, but you can't go back and kill your own grandfather.
Forward saw this as essentially the inverse of forward causality, i.e. if I'm going to break my leg tomorrow skiing, I don't really have any choice in the matter.
So what I want to know is, what was it about human beings that caused us to develop the capacity to drive cars, build computers and walk on the moon?
Maybe we were created to be creative. Maybe that's part of being "made in God's image". I mean, even if you take away tools and anything with practical survival benefits - what drives humans to express themselves through words and art and music and dance? Sure, even I could come up with theories that reduce all of that to "survival of the fittest", but I don't see the need.
A possible explanation for the base drive: Expression allows humans to feel more connected to each other, either directly or indirectly. It's a socialization function. Improved socialization leads to increased survivability.
Every form of creativity is derived from this base drive.
I've been using *nix machines for decades, and still use Linux on my desktop and server machines. But since since I inherited a Mac laptop (actually, two now) I have become something of a fanboy for Mac. It is very pleasant to have a (nearly) consistent, intelligently designed interface to a system where everything "just works" with a minimum of effort.
Yes, Linux supports much more hardware, but I can understand why "Joe Sixpack" (or even maybe "the Plumber") would find OS X easier to deal with.
Indeed, I'm in the same camp. It's comfortable feeling to have a clean, workable and immediately usable interface (although certainly not perfect) on top of a unix paradigm that we (old *nix heads) are already comfortable with.
It's "bated breath" (as in abated). Baited breath is just ... disgusting.
Consider that there are between 200 and 400 billion stars in the Milky Way, 27 galaxies (IIRC) in our local group alone and (probably) over 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe. That's a lot of opportunity for all kinds of interesting things to happen over 13+ billion years.
Still, as others have pointed out, it ultimately fails the falsibility test. One can always argue that the simulation has been set up to be undetectable and/or modified to that end.
Human beings are quite obsessed with "purpose." We know that the universe and physical laws appear to be deterministic, but this doesn't help much with advancing the "why" answer. Personally, I am a strong believer in the weak anthropomorphic principle: the universe is deterministic because it must be in order to exist. It's perfectly plausible within that framework that there is no specific reason or purpose behind its existence, no matter how uncomfortable that might make homo sapiens feel.
Exactly. Nomenclature is separate from the abstract it labels or represents. Nomenclature is man-made, the abstract isn't.
The same principle applies to math. a^2+b^2=c^2 represents the abstract known to us as the Pythagorean Theorem. The concept and the formula itself remains the same no matter what base is used, how the formula is represented or what it happens to be called.
Were some, as yet unknown, physical property of the universe responsible for this redshift (and other related evidence) then the expanding universe theory could be disproved. There is, of course, no known evidence of any such strange property, thus it seems most logical that the universe is indeed expanding. It's proven in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, which is as close as science can come to "proving" anything non-abstract.
Before the shuttle era, there were zero fatalities that occurred during operational missions.
Roger Chaffee, Virgil Grissom and Ed White died during a routine on-the-ground test of Apollo 1. Presumably these are the "3 Gemini astronauts" you mentioned, although Chaffee had never flown a Gemini mission.
The remaining spaceflight-related fatalities, excluding the 14 lost on the two STS incidents, occurred as a result of accidents while astronauts were piloting or aboard training aircraft, the first in 1964 (Theodore Freeman).
An interesting trip it would be. At 0.77c, the visible spectrum (directly in front of the craft) would be blue-shifted to about 144-252nm. This is well above commonly labeled violet-red/400-700nm "visible light", and nearly encompasses the band thought of as "soft uv." "Hot infrared" (30 terahz or so) would appear as the violet top of the visible spectrum.
Of course, a corresponding red-shift would be apparent when observing "aft" along the axis of motion, but lower frequencies are just not as exciting as higher (nor as dangerous). I imagine it would create some interesting earth-communications engineering problems though.
No. You're talking about observed speed in a medium, not about 'c' (the absolute speed of light). The observed speed in medium being less than c is a result of charge interaction between matter and the EM wave (or polaritons from the QM perspective). "Light" (photons in QM) travel at c. Period.
Do they use Diapers now? Thank god. Diapers are an absolute joy compared to the Apollo and "test" shuttle eras. Catheters were provided; pre-inserted into the brave space pioneer's eurethra by the pre-flight medical team, with a micro/zero-gravity friendly external coupling for interfacing with the necessary waste containment/disposal systems. Fun for the whole family.
Let's not even talk about solid waste.
No, he focuses on oil and the related strife and struggle because its a relatively solid tactic to divert as much attention as possible from the continuing unsolvable economic issue that is the US national debt. While technically there is no realistic solution to this problem that will not result in major upheaval across the globe, it can continue to be sustained for some period of time as long as (1) too much attention isn't payed to it (see the '29 market collapse for a smaller scale version of what happens when the public reacts abruptly to an economic crisis), and (2) the GNP combined with some business-friendly militaristic muscle is enough to keep the top-tier of the global economic community happy or at least quiet. Reducing deficit spending to zero (or even creating surplus) via outlay cuts or inlay increases will not fix the problem; not for a very very long time. So long that there is no reasonable economic lending belief that such is a reasonable proposition, instead the desired lending path is to keep the machine running and keep all the balls in motion all the time. National bankruptcy, at this level, would mean untold suffering and devastation for many many people around the world. Hate Bush or Love him (or neither), he and his gang are trying to do what they feel is the best approach to ensure maximum possible distraction. The next administration will do the same, perhaps via different tactics, but the end-goal will be the same. They have to. There is no other option that 99.9% of the people on the planet who have families won't find horrific (including presidents, vice-presidents and prime ministers). Its just a matter of either fooling enough people or juggling the balls so that nobody catches sight until the next administration takes up the reins.
The only "laws of logic" that exist are mathematics or derived there-from, and it is indeed abstract, invariant and universal. It doesn't matter how you or I "evolved", or even what planet we are from. A mathematical proof can be shown to be completely consistent and universally true, once the "proover" has attained enough knowledge to understand the proof. If I were to "disagree" with your proof, you could either (a) demonstrate that I was incorrect and I would lose, or (b) be unable to demonstrate this and thus not have a solid foundation for the pure objectivist argument.
Any other line of debate or reasoning does not involve invariant logic and thus may or may not be flawed and no perfect winner can be decided. In such cases we resort to consensual agreement on certain basic aspects of perception which cannot be strictly proven.
Yes, it would have been easier. It also would be completely disregarding the point, which is not that thought processes are or are not controlled by physical law, but rather that presuming such to be true does not automatically preclude the objectivist argument.
This is nothing more than the Free Will Argument in sheep's clothing. Does man control his own destiny, or is fate pre-determined? At the end of the day, it doesn't matter. Sophisticated biological entities exist without clear and well-defined demarcation between systems and sub-systems, in a spiral of scaling complexity that extends to the subatomic. In totality, it is not possible to both quantitatively and qualitatively measure the exact nature of such systems and the environment that influences them, thus no perfect prediction of individual human thought is possible, even if it is pre-determined by physical law.
That's not a straw-man argument. "Straw-man" is a debate tactic where one deliberately responds to an opponent with a logical fallacy derived from intentionally altering, misrepresenting or side-stepping the opponent's argument, either literally or via context. It is intended not to convince the opponent or others that the debater has won on the merits of his/her argument, but rather that the opponent's argument was something other than what was actually put forth. It's called a "straw-man" because, metaphorically, the responding debater has erected a flimsy substitute for the true debate point, purely for the purpose of being able to easily knock it down and thus appear victorious to the inattentive onlooker.
You couldn't be more wrong. WoW end-game is incredibly rich. In fact, in many ways its almost a separate game. The problem is, its not accessible to the casual player. End-game consists of a series of raid instances, with a max raid size of 20 or 40 people. Progression through these instances is somewhat linear in difficulty, although this is not universally true, and the newer instances tend to be far more interesting than those that were available at or shortly after release. However, they do all require a large group of people, it wouldn't be possible for any one person to solo the fights. EQ did some of this as well, of course, but EQ end-game raiding tended to be filled with hours of tedium "clearing" obstacle content. Wow has a magnitude of order less tedium between bosses.
The richness comes from the fact that such content is designed to be increasingly difficult when played without the equipment that tends to drop once the fight has been successfully accomplished. At first, the difficult is quite simple. In general, the only way to challange intelligent human players is to either (a) present them with human opponents, (b) make the automation considerably superior to human player character in terms of vitals like damage, health and mana, or (c) increase the sophistication of the automation so that it can react more like a creative human opponent (ala Unreal bots).
Option A is not economically feasible outside of player-vs-player content. Due to the complexities of the game (support classes, special abilities, etc), option C is probably a bit far-fetched at this point. That leaves B, and this is
As end-game progresses, Blizzard added an interesting twist to this: Encounters start to involve aspects which make them impossible to complete using the general formula that most players have become accustomed to from levels 1-60 (which typically involves having monsters attack a resilient player, while others kill the monster or heal the one being attacked). The more difficult end-game content requires (at least at first -- better gear later usually reduces difficulty) a large group of appropriately geared players who are exceedingly familiar with the AI mechanics, as well as excelling with their own toon's abilities. Many fights have multiple viable strategies that others have used, but finding the right one for a particular guild/raid-composition, practicing and perfecting it can be quite a challenge. There is typically very little room for individual error. Sometimes, even a single player, out of forty, having a problem performing a needed function (often a non-intuitive one) can be enough to snowball into a wipe (the term for everyone in the raid dying, and the specific fight resetting). The complexity and originality of these encounters is astounding; it may even be the single true innovation in the game (rather than just distilling the fruits of prior MMOs). It's interesting that so much design work has gone into this aspect of Warcraft even though, out of six plus million subscribers, only a small percentage will ever get to experience very much of it.
From level 1 to 60, Warcraft is a very, very easy MMO. This is a big part of its mass appeal. Beyond the basic five-man level 60 content, unfortunately available only to the non-solo player, it becomes much more difficult. currently, the pinnacle of such content (Naxx) is trivial for none (and experienced by few), if only for the fact that there does not yet exist gear powerful enough to significantly reduce the difficuly.