Re:Planetary settlements probably never happen
on
Lawyers In Space...
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· Score: 1
If we have the technology to ship enough material for a completely self-sufficient settlement, then we probably already have enough government in space to stop illegal settlements.
Re:Planetary settlements probably never happen
on
Lawyers In Space...
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· Score: 1
You mean, the preservationists will assert their ownership of Mars, which implies the right to say how it can and cannot be used?
No, the governments of Earth will declare Mars as a commonly-owned national park, or something like that. You'll be interested to know that this is exactly the status of Antarctica. About 24 countries signed the Antaractica Treaty giving up territorial and mineral claims (for 50 years, presumably that will continue to be extended).
Is the value of Mars as a giant nature reserve high enough to justify never going there to look at it?
I'm sure people will go there to study it, just not to permanently settle there.
Yeah, how 'bout those crazy folk who live in the desert? Or those freaks who live in the arctic?
Neither the desert, nor the arctic, is completely dead. But yes, certain people will want to live in a dead place (as I've already said). But not a lot of people.
Re:Planetary settlements probably never happen
on
Lawyers In Space...
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· Score: 1
Would there even need to be a law allowing settlements? If Joe Bazzillionaire decides to retire to Mars, is it really going to be worth the tax bill to fly out there and bring him back?
No settlement would be able to survive without help from Earth.
Planetary settlements probably never happen
on
Lawyers In Space...
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· Score: 3, Insightful
I suspect that we will never have mass settlements on Mars (or anywhere else). Why? Because it's a unique environment. The preservationists undoubtedly will want to keep it pure so it can be studies without earthly contamination. That will certainly happen in the short term; the longer term? I can't say for sure, but I suspect that everytime someone will try to pass a bill allowing settlements, they will find a reason that more study is needed.
It's not iron-clad in my mind, but it's my gut feeling.
Besides, except for a few wackos, I really doubt that many people will want to live there. Mars is a big freakin' rock! Sure, some sci-fi geeks/think/ they want to go, but generally people need some green.
The future of space settlements is in manufactured settlements with earth-like environments (and spin-gravity), not planetary settlements.
All right, forget about the receipt to the voter, but the primary issue is verifiability. I can check the paper vote that popped out of the machine before it goes into the box to make sure it's correct.
The software development process is COMPLETELY irrelevent to ANYTHING. That's right, irrelevent.
There is only one issue, and that's hardcopy records. No voting machine should be all electronic. It should spit out a receipt that tells you exactly how you voted. One copy to the voter, one copy goes into a sealed box.
In short, if any cheating occurs, we know immediately. Who cares how the software is developed? The only question is whether it can be verified after the fact.
How about nano-robots that live in our cells and make us completely immune to disease, aging, and practically all injury by constantly repairing the cell tissue? What's impossible about that?
I didn't say that was impossible. But that's hardly "transcending" whatever it means to be human. That's just making us live longer, which will obviously happen. Heck, it's already been happening for the last 1000 years.
You seem to be backing away from your initial argument. I've already said that humans will improve themselves, but not past the point of still being human.
If you're going to limit what "transcend" means to mere immortality, then we're not in disagreement.
Wow - you actually assume that humans will NEVER EVER improve upon their own evolved design? That we'll NEVER unlock the mystery of the brain and TRANSCEND to better post-human forms?
Yes, we will unlock the mystery of the brain. No, we will probably not "transcend" to better post-human forms.
So why are you such the bio-chauvinist? Religious reasons? Or are you just not psychologically willing to accept the possibility of something other than the age-old bio-human life?
No, simple logic. Most parents are not going to modify their children into inhuman freaks that can't mate with normal humans. Make them smarter? Yes. Make them better looking? Yes. Even embed computers into their brains to give them the best of both worlds? Yes. But not make them into freaks.
Oh, I'm sure some might try and create some new "master" race. But it's not that easy, and it's extremely likely that it would be outlawed before they got very far.
You've been watching too much star trek. There's more to life than downloading our brain into a computer. Part of what makes us human is the meat... the hormones, the reactions, all the complex inputs.
Bottom line, there's nothing really to "transcend", whatever that means. Transcend what? Happiness? Emotion?
The answer to ALL of these objections of the class, "Well, maybe race X did Y" is...
It only takes one.
It's also an assumption that intelligent life will continue to evolve into something "else" beyond meat. There is very little justification for this view. It's much more likely that we will reach a state of knowledge equilibrium, where new things are discovered very, very rarely. At a certain point, we'll probably just exist, generation after generation, certainly genetically modified, but probably not beyond what makes us human. Smarter, prettier, more athletic, but still human.
Someone has to be first, but again, that argues against intelligent life being common. What makes us so unique that we would be first? We're talking about multiple BILLIONS of years. We've only been intelligent for a few hundred thousand to (maybe) a million years. That's nothing in galactic terms. If intelligent life were common, it would be extremely improbable that we would be first.
Besides that fact that they are pulling numbers out of their ass, there is already a high probability that there is no other intelligent life in the galaxy.
Proof? Easy. Look up The Fermi Paradox. One of the corollaries that convince me is the fact that, even at sublight speeds, it only takes 1-10 million years to fill up a galaxy, since a race would tend to fill up in a geometric progression. Given how old the galaxy is, it should have happened by now. It only takes one race in billions of years to have wanderlust for earth-like planets, and boom! No more intelligent life rising up.
That it hasn't seem to have happened means we are alone.
OK, I see the problem. I'm on my laptop, and with the screen angle and the fact that the text is very dim, along with some bright morning light in the room, I couldn't see it. When I tipped my screen, I finally saw it.
Gah. I hate dim text. But I do have to take back my criticism, heh.
That site was f-ing IRRITATING. Exactly how did you think I want you to take over my screen and not give me a way to KILL THE F-ING THING.
I finally had to go into Task Manager and manually kill it that way.
I was displaying it over RDP and decided to look at it later instead. But NOOOOOO... I have to watch the damn loading. Then it finally loads (while I'm trying to close it), but STILL NO KILL SWITCH.
I mean, good lord. This is first day, user interface 101. I expected better from Carmack and crew.
(ignoring all the stuff that obviously wasn't what I meant)
Of course, if I shoot at you with a real gun, then even if I miss I am guilty of *attempted* hitting-you-with-a-bullet, which would be a crime even in a libertarian society.
That's what YOU say, not what the other Libertarian said. In a pure Libertarian society, shooting a gun one inch from someone's head should not be illegal, because they are not harmed in any way. His point was that you just make the punishment for hitting someone so draconian that no one wants to take the risk.
Or how about another one that many Libertarians believe: private fire departments. Why should I have to pay for YOUR fire protection? Well, duh, because fires SPREAD. It makes sense to stop fires before they spread, even if someone doesn't pay for it.
The typical Libertarian response is, "Well, then the other homeowners have the right to sue the person who didn't have fire department protection." Which is absurd, of course. A whole section of a city is supposed to get compensation from one individual?
You may think these examples are outside the Libertarian mainstream, but they are underscore the flaws in Libertarian thinking. A lot of the more subtle Libertarian thinking suffer from the same flaws.
Heck, a lot of Libertarians think that private invdividuals should be able to have nuclear weapons. Yes, I've seen people advocate that. Maybe you don't. But then you're not a "pure" Libertarian.
Congratulations for the concise summary of the fatal flaw of Libertarian philosophy.:)
It's all reactionary. It never occurs to the Libertarian that by creating a market for child porn (i.e., the free trading of it), you create demand for more.
Reminds me of a debate with a Libertarian I had one time who said that shooting guns at people should be completely legal. What's illegal is actually hitting them.::rolls eyes::
When has science EVER been a high paying profession? What is new here?
Honestly, I don't think people typically become scientists because they're chasing the dollars. They chase two things: 1) knowledge, and 2) fame, as it's always been.
I don't mean to be snarky, but "very" popular? Does Freenet itself qualify as "popular", much less "very popular"? Does/anyone/ semi-normal (i.e., not a techno-geek, or a rights-geek) use Freenet, and if they do, has anything significant ever been published on it?
Freenet seems to me to be one of those ivory tower projects that has little relation to the real world. Proof? No search engine, and very little chance of ever having one. How the hell can it ever be useful?
[/rm101 resists making a dig about their choice to implement in Java]
You have an incredibly beautiful sunrise out your window. Every. Single. Morning.
How often do you get up to see it?
Seeing Earth out your window would be cool... for a month. After that, it's like anything else. Been there, seen that.
This is coming from someone who lives on a hill and has an incredible view of California out my living room window -- Los Angeles to the North, all the way down the coast to San Diego to the South (on a clear day, of course) and beautiful mountains to the East. Yeah, it's pretty cool for a while, but...
I agree with the other poster who said there's more to life than having to do do some extreme thrill to know you're alive. Maybe it would be a better plan to figure out ways to feel alive in less lethal ways, so that you'll feel alive for a longer time? Seems like a better plan to me.
Reveal codes is a horrible kludge that is only necessary if you don't understand styles. The fact that you need reveal codes should be the signal that the Word Processor program is broken.
(this is coming from someone who used to LOVE reveal codes until I saw the light)
GAAAAAH. Sometimes, Michael, you are the biggest idiot.
Did you ever stop to think that sometimes just doing "anything" is not the best way to go? Can we please give the government a little credit for not jumping in and just "doing something" to score political points?
Creating a do-not-spam list just creates a beautifully maintained list of people to spam.
In all immodesty, I'm one of those who is a lot smarter than most people in certain ways. But who the hell cares? There is more to life than being able to analyze and synthesize facts. I was a lot happier once I got over myself and figured out that there was something to learn from everyone, yes, even the point-haired idiot who wouldn't know his ass from a hole in the ground, but is brilliant in social situations. Or is brilliant at fly-fishing. Or is a great father.
In short, everyone has strengths. It's typical of the geek to think his strengths are more important than everyone else's strengths. The biggest thing a geek can realize is that their specific set of talents is pretty damn useless for happiness.
The wheel sure ain't better than anything nature's got.
Um, legs are superior in almost every possible way to wheels, particularly in terrain versatility. Wheels have a few advantages, notably efficiency on smooth surfaces, but if you were designing animals and humans all over again, you sure as hell wouldn't use wheels.
All we can say is "We don't think this will happen"-- but that is no guarantee.
Straw man. Nobody ever talks about technology in absolutes. The question comes down to the odds, and how much physics you have to violate to make it happen. The gray goo concept requires engineering around so many obsticles of basic physics that it makes it unbelievably unlikely.
There are an infinite number of things that we can sit and chicken-little about (hell, how about someone figuring out how to create an artificial black hole?), but on the scale of things to worry about, gray goo is way, way, way low on the list.
Slashdot Mirror
If we have the technology to ship enough material for a completely self-sufficient settlement, then we probably already have enough government in space to stop illegal settlements.
You mean, the preservationists will assert their ownership of Mars, which implies the right to say how it can and cannot be used?
No, the governments of Earth will declare Mars as a commonly-owned national park, or something like that. You'll be interested to know that this is exactly the status of Antarctica. About 24 countries signed the Antaractica Treaty giving up territorial and mineral claims (for 50 years, presumably that will continue to be extended).
Is the value of Mars as a giant nature reserve high enough to justify never going there to look at it?
I'm sure people will go there to study it, just not to permanently settle there.
Yeah, how 'bout those crazy folk who live in the desert? Or those freaks who live in the arctic?
Neither the desert, nor the arctic, is completely dead. But yes, certain people will want to live in a dead place (as I've already said). But not a lot of people.
No settlement would be able to survive without help from Earth.
It's not iron-clad in my mind, but it's my gut feeling.
Besides, except for a few wackos, I really doubt that many people will want to live there. Mars is a big freakin' rock! Sure, some sci-fi geeks /think/ they want to go, but generally people need some green.
The future of space settlements is in manufactured settlements with earth-like environments (and spin-gravity), not planetary settlements.
All right, forget about the receipt to the voter, but the primary issue is verifiability. I can check the paper vote that popped out of the machine before it goes into the box to make sure it's correct.
There is only one issue, and that's hardcopy records. No voting machine should be all electronic. It should spit out a receipt that tells you exactly how you voted. One copy to the voter, one copy goes into a sealed box.
In short, if any cheating occurs, we know immediately. Who cares how the software is developed? The only question is whether it can be verified after the fact.
How about nano-robots that live in our cells and make us completely immune to disease, aging, and practically all injury by constantly repairing the cell tissue? What's impossible about that?
I didn't say that was impossible. But that's hardly "transcending" whatever it means to be human. That's just making us live longer, which will obviously happen. Heck, it's already been happening for the last 1000 years.
You seem to be backing away from your initial argument. I've already said that humans will improve themselves, but not past the point of still being human.
If you're going to limit what "transcend" means to mere immortality, then we're not in disagreement.
Yes, we will unlock the mystery of the brain. No, we will probably not "transcend" to better post-human forms.
So why are you such the bio-chauvinist? Religious reasons? Or are you just not psychologically willing to accept the possibility of something other than the age-old bio-human life?
No, simple logic. Most parents are not going to modify their children into inhuman freaks that can't mate with normal humans. Make them smarter? Yes. Make them better looking? Yes. Even embed computers into their brains to give them the best of both worlds? Yes. But not make them into freaks.
Oh, I'm sure some might try and create some new "master" race. But it's not that easy, and it's extremely likely that it would be outlawed before they got very far.
You've been watching too much star trek. There's more to life than downloading our brain into a computer. Part of what makes us human is the meat... the hormones, the reactions, all the complex inputs.
Bottom line, there's nothing really to "transcend", whatever that means. Transcend what? Happiness? Emotion?
It only takes one.
It's also an assumption that intelligent life will continue to evolve into something "else" beyond meat. There is very little justification for this view. It's much more likely that we will reach a state of knowledge equilibrium, where new things are discovered very, very rarely. At a certain point, we'll probably just exist, generation after generation, certainly genetically modified, but probably not beyond what makes us human. Smarter, prettier, more athletic, but still human.
Someone has to be first, but again, that argues against intelligent life being common. What makes us so unique that we would be first? We're talking about multiple BILLIONS of years. We've only been intelligent for a few hundred thousand to (maybe) a million years. That's nothing in galactic terms. If intelligent life were common, it would be extremely improbable that we would be first.
Remember, it only takes one race that wants to spread itself, and we have billions of years to work with, and needing only 1-10 million years.
If intelligent life were common, the odds are very low that it wouldn't have happened once.
Proof? Easy. Look up The Fermi Paradox. One of the corollaries that convince me is the fact that, even at sublight speeds, it only takes 1-10 million years to fill up a galaxy, since a race would tend to fill up in a geometric progression. Given how old the galaxy is, it should have happened by now. It only takes one race in billions of years to have wanderlust for earth-like planets, and boom! No more intelligent life rising up.
That it hasn't seem to have happened means we are alone.
OK, I see the problem. I'm on my laptop, and with the screen angle and the fact that the text is very dim, along with some bright morning light in the room, I couldn't see it. When I tipped my screen, I finally saw it. Gah. I hate dim text. But I do have to take back my criticism, heh.
I finally had to go into Task Manager and manually kill it that way.
I was displaying it over RDP and decided to look at it later instead. But NOOOOOO... I have to watch the damn loading. Then it finally loads (while I'm trying to close it), but STILL NO KILL SWITCH.
I mean, good lord. This is first day, user interface 101. I expected better from Carmack and crew.
Of course, if I shoot at you with a real gun, then even if I miss I am guilty of *attempted* hitting-you-with-a-bullet, which would be a crime even in a libertarian society.
That's what YOU say, not what the other Libertarian said. In a pure Libertarian society, shooting a gun one inch from someone's head should not be illegal, because they are not harmed in any way. His point was that you just make the punishment for hitting someone so draconian that no one wants to take the risk.
Or how about another one that many Libertarians believe: private fire departments. Why should I have to pay for YOUR fire protection? Well, duh, because fires SPREAD. It makes sense to stop fires before they spread, even if someone doesn't pay for it.
The typical Libertarian response is, "Well, then the other homeowners have the right to sue the person who didn't have fire department protection." Which is absurd, of course. A whole section of a city is supposed to get compensation from one individual?
You may think these examples are outside the Libertarian mainstream, but they are underscore the flaws in Libertarian thinking. A lot of the more subtle Libertarian thinking suffer from the same flaws.
Heck, a lot of Libertarians think that private invdividuals should be able to have nuclear weapons. Yes, I've seen people advocate that. Maybe you don't. But then you're not a "pure" Libertarian.
It's all reactionary. It never occurs to the Libertarian that by creating a market for child porn (i.e., the free trading of it), you create demand for more.
Reminds me of a debate with a Libertarian I had one time who said that shooting guns at people should be completely legal. What's illegal is actually hitting them. ::rolls eyes::
Honestly, I don't think people typically become scientists because they're chasing the dollars. They chase two things: 1) knowledge, and 2) fame, as it's always been.
Freenet seems to me to be one of those ivory tower projects that has little relation to the real world. Proof? No search engine, and very little chance of ever having one. How the hell can it ever be useful? [/rm101 resists making a dig about their choice to implement in Java]
The "rest of the world" has no clue about the nature of software. That quote is absolutely correct.
How often do you get up to see it?
Seeing Earth out your window would be cool... for a month. After that, it's like anything else. Been there, seen that.
This is coming from someone who lives on a hill and has an incredible view of California out my living room window -- Los Angeles to the North, all the way down the coast to San Diego to the South (on a clear day, of course) and beautiful mountains to the East. Yeah, it's pretty cool for a while, but...
I agree with the other poster who said there's more to life than having to do do some extreme thrill to know you're alive. Maybe it would be a better plan to figure out ways to feel alive in less lethal ways, so that you'll feel alive for a longer time? Seems like a better plan to me.
Reveal codes is a horrible kludge that is only necessary if you don't understand styles. The fact that you need reveal codes should be the signal that the Word Processor program is broken.
(this is coming from someone who used to LOVE reveal codes until I saw the light)
GAAAAAH. Sometimes, Michael, you are the biggest idiot.
Did you ever stop to think that sometimes just doing "anything" is not the best way to go? Can we please give the government a little credit for not jumping in and just "doing something" to score political points?
Creating a do-not-spam list just creates a beautifully maintained list of people to spam.
In all immodesty, I'm one of those who is a lot smarter than most people in certain ways. But who the hell cares? There is more to life than being able to analyze and synthesize facts. I was a lot happier once I got over myself and figured out that there was something to learn from everyone, yes, even the point-haired idiot who wouldn't know his ass from a hole in the ground, but is brilliant in social situations. Or is brilliant at fly-fishing. Or is a great father.
In short, everyone has strengths. It's typical of the geek to think his strengths are more important than everyone else's strengths. The biggest thing a geek can realize is that their specific set of talents is pretty damn useless for happiness.
Um, legs are superior in almost every possible way to wheels, particularly in terrain versatility. Wheels have a few advantages, notably efficiency on smooth surfaces, but if you were designing animals and humans all over again, you sure as hell wouldn't use wheels.
Straw man. Nobody ever talks about technology in absolutes. The question comes down to the odds, and how much physics you have to violate to make it happen. The gray goo concept requires engineering around so many obsticles of basic physics that it makes it unbelievably unlikely.
There are an infinite number of things that we can sit and chicken-little about (hell, how about someone figuring out how to create an artificial black hole?), but on the scale of things to worry about, gray goo is way, way, way low on the list.