Re:Summary of the abovementioned web site:
on
Mapping the Mind
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I suppose I should have clarified, I went to his main site. The page linked to is not particularly bad, taken in isolation from the rest of the site. Go read the rest of the site and tell me you still don't think he's a crank.
Ah. I hadn't seen that. Yeah, he does sound a bit like a nut. He raises some potentially good points, but yeah, DEFINITELY take what he says with a grain of salt.
Re:Summary of the abovementioned web site:
on
Mapping the Mind
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
"Every cognitive scientist but me is an moron. Someday, they will all recognize my greatness! In the meantime, the have censored my ideas from their journals because I prove what idiots they all are, so I have to publish everything I write on the web."
Dude, if you're going to put quotes in somebody's mouth, you should try not to slant them so hard with your own bias against the position of the "speaker". I read the same page you did and the guy never claimed to be a better cognitive scientist. In fact, it seems pretty clear that you don't have to be cognitive scientist to take issue with some of the book's claims.
Seriously, this site hits all of the "angry crackpot" buttons.
How so? Are you saying that the points he makes (specifically regarding reproducibility and overinterpretation) are untrue? Why? Simply because you disagree with them? Calling someone a crackpot is just doing a dismissive handwave.
The author, one Yehouda Harpaz, has a chemistry degree, did "some research in protein engineering, published several papers, but lost interest. Part of this is because of the stupid way scientific articles are published currently."
So you're saying that only a cognitive scientist can cite conflicting data and internal incongruity? Point taken that he's clearly not an expert on the matter, but he's pointing out logical inconsistencies within the book itself.
As a game master I found Twighlight 2000 kind of frustrating. Everyone had very deadly weapons like machine guns, grenades, mortars and tanks, but, as a GM, I found I couldn't really use them to their full effect.... if you roll the dice and say "you three just got hit by seamingly random mortar fire and you're dead," the players are going to lynch you.
Yeah, T2K was a piss-poor game precisely because it was too realistic. Not only was sudden random death a constant possibility, but a sort of "entropy" was in effect all the time. Your character was at his best right when you first made him, and from there on it was a downward slide where you accumulate wounds, use up ammo, and your equipment breaks down, until finally you're barefoot, unarmed, and dead. Nobody "goes up a level" in T2K. It's a great RPG for one-shot quick adventures, but the characters take too long to make for that to be worthwhile. "Let's make a truly realistic post WW3 RPG" sounds like a great idea, but it's just no fun....
Eventually, this could lead to mappings that will give humans knowledge and possibly control over not only complex movements but less-than desirable mental functions such as aggression and overeating
Why is it that these "mental functions" are seen as some sort of involuntary nervous tic instead of the behavioral actions they really are? Jerkiness and gluttony will be treated with lasers! No need to develop a societally acceptable personality-- we'll just zap your brain every time you think about eating or slugging someone!
How do stupid people get such jobs? I mean, the guy sells NASA stuff, then keeps signing papers that say he still has them. Didn't he wonder if someday NASA might want their stuff back, and when they found out it was gone, who they would look to first?
People do all sorts of stupid crap like that. Probably because 95% of the time, you can get away with fooling the government. There are certain things, though, that you just can't cover up. Like those interns at NASA-Houston who stole a safe containing moon rocks which they then tried to sell on eBay. When it comes to unusual items, particularly stuff from the space program, they keep a pretty good accounting of it all and they almost certainly will catch you eventually. Stealing and trying to sell moon rocks is, of course, DOUBLY stupid because virtually all terrestrial moon rocks are property of the US government and never for sale...
'Evil' seems like a silly label to apply to an abstract construct such as the government anyway.
When people call the government "evil", they mean its actions are frequently detrimental. Pointing out that non-sentient organizations lack the coherent will necessary to actually be "evil" is splitting semantic hairs and turning it into a debate on language rather than the subject at hand. It's colloquial usage of language. It's very common. Get used to it.
Please. Even the founding fathers knew the government was evil. That's why they wrote the constitution as a strict limit on the government's powers.
Nice. Modded -1 Overrated for stating fact: (emphasis mine below)
"Society in every state is a blessing, but
government even in its best state is but a necessary evil in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamities is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer!" Thomas Paine, Common Sense; 1776
You should try paying in Susan B. Anthony dollars someplace. Even though coins are struck with "One dollar" right on the face, some people insist that they are quarters. Very annoying.
I protest having to show up in person at the DMV to renew my license by paying in some combination of SBA dollars, Sacajawea dollars, and/or 2 dollar bills. To their credit, no one has yet accused me of uttering false coin, but it is quite amusing to watch them struggle with trying to find a place to put them in the cash drawer.
The Pentagon isn't a 'Federal building', it is a military building.
This is an inane distinction, given that the military is funded by federal taxes.
It's not an inane distinction, actually. When I said "Federal Building" in my original post, the meaning was obvious. Every major city has a big building of building complex colloquially called "the federal building". This is where all the alphabet soup agencies house their local employees. The Murrah Federal Building blown up by McVeigh was one such building. If there's inanity going on here, it's with those who sweepingly generalize with the literal interpretation of the words "federal building" rather than the obvious, specific meaning I presented it with.
Well, the Pentagon was hit on 9/11 wasn't it? That's a federal building, duh.
No, a "Federal Building" is a distinct thing. It's usually a building or complex of buildings in a city that cetrally houses the various miscellaneous federal agencies that have too small a local presence to warrant their own separate office. I appreciate that you're just playing a semantic game by pretending that I meant "federal" strictly as an adjective applied to any old building, so I leave it to you to rebut the point using the definition of "federal building" I clearly implied.
I don't think he give Desert Storm vets a bad name (in my mind, anyway).
To be fair, I didn't get shit about it from everyone. But for quite a while the first thing a lot of people would say when I mentioned I was a DS vet was shit like "you know how to make bombs?" or "if I see you in a Ryder truck, I'm runnin' away! hahaha!"
He did give himself and the mid-90s right-wing militia movement a bad name though.
True. I did, however, get tired of being asked if I was in a militia as well.
Not that I advocate such things, but if you kill enough of them, sooner or later they won't have the forces to oppress you with.
Hitting a federal building in Oklahoma killed mostly people who really weren't "them", though. It was a symbolic bombing, and not a very well chosen one at that.
You know, kind of like what happened in Vietnam, where the VC's basic premise was "kill enough of them and they'll stop coming here to fight us"? And we lost 58,000 as a result, with about an order-of-magnitude more injured.
Not really comparable. We were outsiders in Vietnam. The feds are from here! They have no place to which they can be driven away.
The government doesn't care about some guy on a message board spouting off about patriotism.
People *have* been investigated on Kuro5hin for what they've written there before. And on LiveJournal.
Threats against the President and Vice President, even hypothetical ones, are specifically notorious for bringing the attention of humorless Secret Service agents. Vague statements saying you admire Jackass McVeigh for his patriotism (and most mundane paranoid nutjob rants) aren't worth an agent's time and are almost universaslly ignored.
Don't be an idiot. Of course the government cares what you write - every government in the world cares what its citizens write. How else can a government stay in power unless it squelches those who would try to restrict its power (and in particular, those who would disable or overthrow it)?
Seriously, the government has neither the time nor the resources to keep tabs on every weiner who posts a message saying they think the federal gov't sucks, or that McVeigh had a point. I was a signal intel analyst in the Army. The number one job in any intelligence gathering endeavor is knowing who and what not to bother listening to. They're not listening to you! They don't care (until you say you want to kill the President or VP, that is). Really, the obvious proof is that the people who actually are a threat and are worthy of watching don't post to/. anonymously thinking that will hide their identity!
The difference between America and other nations is that America, by Thomas Jefferson's own view, was *intended* to have an entire governmental change about every 20 years. Of course, that hasn't happened in actuality.
Continuous revolution. Damn straight. Too bad we lost sight of that.
(I am not the grandparent AC poster.)
Maybe, maybe not. Only the government knows for sure! (heh)
Sytem Includes:
3ghz Intel Pentium 4
512mb RAM
80gb 7200 RPM HD
CD-RW
19 inch Ultrasharp digital LCD
Total Price: $658, free shipping included. Add in an extra $200 for a PCI-Express video card and, at $858, it's comparatively inexpensive. It's not an excellent machine, I understand that; and, while I'm willing to pay a premium for a better machine, I don't expect the premium to be more than 10-20 percent more.
OK, so there's the Intel based system. Now all we need is a link to the AMD system in question so we can tell if it's comparable.
not to a hardline libertarian. To those people, if the free market can't do it, it's not worth doing.
I hate that kind of self-proclaimed libertarians. They're the nuts that think every cooperative venture in their ideal world must be some sort of corporation driven by market forces. Real libertarians realize that people can just get together and (say) form a volunteer fire department rather than everyone having to subscribe to a for-profit fire-fighting service if they want their burning house doused.
McVeigh WAS a hero/patriot in the old school sense.
Yes, because Jefferson, Franklin, Hamilton, et al set off carts full of blasting powder in front of crowded Offices of the Crown, randomly killing people, and this is how the US won the war of independence.
Not that killing children in daycare is a good thing. But why were people in a federal building hiding behind children anyway? They know wackos attack federal people from time to time
WTF are you talking about? Name one attack on a Federal building prior to (or after!) McVeigh. They weren't "hiding behind children" because they had no idea there was anyone to hide from.
Bet some government wonk was dumb enough to beleive that nobody would ever think of attacking them with children as a flesh shield.
Bet it never occured to anyone that some dumbass would think it worthwhile to set off a bomb in front of a building full of boring, miscellaneous government drones smack dab in the middle of Dullsville. Really, what kind of tard do you have to be to pick such a stupid target? If he wanted a symbolic hit against the FBI or BATF, he should have picked a FBI or BATF field office, instead of a building with mostly Social Security and postal service workers.
McVeigh did some fucked up shit, but I still cannot help but feel some respect for having the balls to do what he did.
I have trouble respecting mental midgets with delusions of grandeur simply because they fancy themselves super-patriots. A man walking down the street randomly cutting of people's heads while shouting "no taxation without representation" is no patriot in my book either. I might agree with the premise McVeigh started from, but I'd have to give him a big fat zero for his chosen conclusion. Fuck McVeigh. Fuck him twice. He was a typical macho failed-to-get-into-Ranger-school-so-he-left-the-Ar my dumbfuck that gave other Desert Storm vets like me a bad name for a long time.
If more Americans had the nuts to take their government to task for oppressive things they have done to this great country, things wouldn't be as shitty and corp-controlled as they are.
Yes, but blowing one another up is not going to get the feds off our back. I guarantee that no amount of purely symbolic random bombing is going result in anything more than further oppression.
But here I am posting anonymously because I am afraid of what the government might do to me for speaking outside of the "official truth".
Talk about delusions of grandeur. The government doesn't care about some guy on a message board spouting off about patriotism. Really, you sound like an actual tin-foil hatter who thinks the government is trying to read his thoughts. The flaw in that line of reasoning is the presumption that the feds even give a fuck about a a nobody like you (or me, for that matter). They don't care about people like us! Get over yourself!
He looks around and notices he can purchase a nifty Dell with a 19 inch flat screen and a nice graphics card for $700. Then he notices that a comparable machine from a vendor that sells Athlon 64's is typically double the price!
I suspect that the two machines are not actually comparable. But without specifics, I can't say. Care to provide details? I didn't see any decent system for $700 on dell's site, personally. And for gaming, you really don't want LCD anyway.
Simply mandating that cities turn off every other street light after 2300 hours would save tens of thousands of barrels per day.
But that would cost the cities millions of dollars in man-hours to wire the street lights so this is possible. Cheaper in the long run, manybe, but no city is going to do it until someone else ponies up to pay for it. Municipal government is the crybabiest bunch of crybabies there ever was. They flush money down the stool for stupid crap, and then say "there's not enough money for police and fire departments anymore; we need higher taxes". Bullcrap! They should be paying for that shit FIRST! Buncha' jerks...
As the poster you were replying to said nothing whatsoever about fatalities, and if he had it would have been off-topic to the discussion as a whole, what has this got to do with anything at all? Just curious.
Heh. not a damn thing. I read something that wasn't there. Confused myself by reading at +4. Please diregard my rebuttal, as it is irrelevant to gasoline consumption. Sorry!
4. Drive slower.
That will save much more. In fact, it's been proven with the speed limit set at 55mph in the U.S. in 1974.
Correlation, not proof. There are alternate studies that have shown it's just as likely that disc brakes and lighter cars caused the drop in fatalities. During that time period, for the group of cars that drove most of the highway miles, a remarkable percentage of those cars are replaced with newer ones starting at five years old. Disc brakes were mandated starting in 1969, which would cause a huge surge in the number of cars on the road with disc brakes starting in...1974. Additionally, with gas prices high, those newer disc brake cars weren't giant Buick Roadmasters or Dodge Chargers anymore, they were smaller, lighter, more fuel-efficient vehicles. Now, if it really was the stupid 55 speed limit that reduced accidents, it'd stand to reason that raising it again (like they did not long ago) should have caused the accident rate to dramatically rise again comensurate with it's precipitous fall in 74. It hasn't. Which theory fits the facts better?
If the Voyagers are in a position to duplicate the anomalous observations of the Pioneer probes' velocities, then yeah, it's worth keeping the feeding tube plugged in for a few more years.
Thing is, the Voyager probes have made so many attitude-contol maneuvers that any anomalous decelleration is essentially indiscernable (Turyshev, JPL). They're essentially useless for investigating that particular mystery. Short of watching it in case it gets eaten by a giant space goat, the Voyager probes are not a worthwhile subject of study. Their batteries are nearly dead, their sensors have nothing to look at, and they're nearly beyond communication range. They're done, man, let 'em go.
The data would hit those uncomprehending neurons that should be the visual cortex, by harmlessly passed on and enter all the other systems of the brain that have developed normally.
Brains don't work that way. They're not a collection of distinct units communicating via discernable serial interfaces. There is no distinct "output" for the visual cortex that could be simulated. The visual cortex isn't a one input/one output thing, it's a complex system that acts as both a processor and a router. If it's non-functional, you can't see.
For all we know, maybe it DOES change. Who's to say? If it did it would have MASSIVE implications for astronomy.
And maybe the bottom of the deepest part of the sea is a plain of SOLID GOLD! If that were so, it would have MASSIVE implications for oceanography.
Look, the edge of the solar system is (as the OP noted) and arbitrary distinction. It is the point beyond which essentially nothing exists for a long, long way. We can see that from here! That's how we made the distinction in the first place. There is nothing the Voyager probes were equipped to measure that's worth measuring out there. There are no shocking revelations to be found until you get to another stellar body.
Moon dust? Bah! Try Black Rock Desert Dust. Finally an environment I was BUILT to survive in. Having gone to the desert at the end of August for the last 4 years, I know DUST.
One week a year for four years? Bah! You have only met dust briefly. I spent 20+ weeks choking on Saudi Arabian "sand" (it's dust, actually) back in 90-91 with the 101st Airborne, and I bet there are guys in the 101st now who make me look like a dilletante.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah. I hadn't seen that. Yeah, he does sound a bit like a nut. He raises some potentially good points, but yeah, DEFINITELY take what he says with a grain of salt.
Dude, if you're going to put quotes in somebody's mouth, you should try not to slant them so hard with your own bias against the position of the "speaker". I read the same page you did and the guy never claimed to be a better cognitive scientist. In fact, it seems pretty clear that you don't have to be cognitive scientist to take issue with some of the book's claims.
Seriously, this site hits all of the "angry crackpot" buttons.
How so? Are you saying that the points he makes (specifically regarding reproducibility and overinterpretation) are untrue? Why? Simply because you disagree with them? Calling someone a crackpot is just doing a dismissive handwave.
The author, one Yehouda Harpaz, has a chemistry degree, did "some research in protein engineering, published several papers, but lost interest. Part of this is because of the stupid way scientific articles are published currently."
So you're saying that only a cognitive scientist can cite conflicting data and internal incongruity? Point taken that he's clearly not an expert on the matter, but he's pointing out logical inconsistencies within the book itself.
Yeah, T2K was a piss-poor game precisely because it was too realistic. Not only was sudden random death a constant possibility, but a sort of "entropy" was in effect all the time. Your character was at his best right when you first made him, and from there on it was a downward slide where you accumulate wounds, use up ammo, and your equipment breaks down, until finally you're barefoot, unarmed, and dead. Nobody "goes up a level" in T2K. It's a great RPG for one-shot quick adventures, but the characters take too long to make for that to be worthwhile. "Let's make a truly realistic post WW3 RPG" sounds like a great idea, but it's just no fun....
Why is it that these "mental functions" are seen as some sort of involuntary nervous tic instead of the behavioral actions they really are? Jerkiness and gluttony will be treated with lasers! No need to develop a societally acceptable personality-- we'll just zap your brain every time you think about eating or slugging someone!
People do all sorts of stupid crap like that. Probably because 95% of the time, you can get away with fooling the government. There are certain things, though, that you just can't cover up. Like those interns at NASA-Houston who stole a safe containing moon rocks which they then tried to sell on eBay. When it comes to unusual items, particularly stuff from the space program, they keep a pretty good accounting of it all and they almost certainly will catch you eventually. Stealing and trying to sell moon rocks is, of course, DOUBLY stupid because virtually all terrestrial moon rocks are property of the US government and never for sale...
No one said it was useless. They said it's potentially dangerous. Geez, didn't you RTFA you linked to?
When people call the government "evil", they mean its actions are frequently detrimental. Pointing out that non-sentient organizations lack the coherent will necessary to actually be "evil" is splitting semantic hairs and turning it into a debate on language rather than the subject at hand. It's colloquial usage of language. It's very common. Get used to it.
Nice. Modded -1 Overrated for stating fact: (emphasis mine below)
Please. Even the founding fathers knew the government was evil. That's why they wrote the constitution as a strict limit on the government's powers.
I protest having to show up in person at the DMV to renew my license by paying in some combination of SBA dollars, Sacajawea dollars, and/or 2 dollar bills. To their credit, no one has yet accused me of uttering false coin, but it is quite amusing to watch them struggle with trying to find a place to put them in the cash drawer.
This is an inane distinction, given that the military is funded by federal taxes.
It's not an inane distinction, actually. When I said "Federal Building" in my original post, the meaning was obvious. Every major city has a big building of building complex colloquially called "the federal building". This is where all the alphabet soup agencies house their local employees. The Murrah Federal Building blown up by McVeigh was one such building. If there's inanity going on here, it's with those who sweepingly generalize with the literal interpretation of the words "federal building" rather than the obvious, specific meaning I presented it with.
No, a "Federal Building" is a distinct thing. It's usually a building or complex of buildings in a city that cetrally houses the various miscellaneous federal agencies that have too small a local presence to warrant their own separate office. I appreciate that you're just playing a semantic game by pretending that I meant "federal" strictly as an adjective applied to any old building, so I leave it to you to rebut the point using the definition of "federal building" I clearly implied.
I don't think he give Desert Storm vets a bad name (in my mind, anyway).
To be fair, I didn't get shit about it from everyone. But for quite a while the first thing a lot of people would say when I mentioned I was a DS vet was shit like "you know how to make bombs?" or "if I see you in a Ryder truck, I'm runnin' away! hahaha!"
He did give himself and the mid-90s right-wing militia movement a bad name though.
True. I did, however, get tired of being asked if I was in a militia as well.
Not that I advocate such things, but if you kill enough of them, sooner or later they won't have the forces to oppress you with.
Hitting a federal building in Oklahoma killed mostly people who really weren't "them", though. It was a symbolic bombing, and not a very well chosen one at that.
You know, kind of like what happened in Vietnam, where the VC's basic premise was "kill enough of them and they'll stop coming here to fight us"? And we lost 58,000 as a result, with about an order-of-magnitude more injured.
Not really comparable. We were outsiders in Vietnam. The feds are from here! They have no place to which they can be driven away.
The government doesn't care about some guy on a message board spouting off about patriotism.
People *have* been investigated on Kuro5hin for what they've written there before. And on LiveJournal.
Threats against the President and Vice President, even hypothetical ones, are specifically notorious for bringing the attention of humorless Secret Service agents. Vague statements saying you admire Jackass McVeigh for his patriotism (and most mundane paranoid nutjob rants) aren't worth an agent's time and are almost universaslly ignored.
Don't be an idiot. Of course the government cares what you write - every government in the world cares what its citizens write. How else can a government stay in power unless it squelches those who would try to restrict its power (and in particular, those who would disable or overthrow it)?
Seriously, the government has neither the time nor the resources to keep tabs on every weiner who posts a message saying they think the federal gov't sucks, or that McVeigh had a point. I was a signal intel analyst in the Army. The number one job in any intelligence gathering endeavor is knowing who and what not to bother listening to. They're not listening to you! They don't care (until you say you want to kill the President or VP, that is). Really, the obvious proof is that the people who actually are a threat and are worthy of watching don't post to /. anonymously thinking that will hide their identity!
The difference between America and other nations is that America, by Thomas Jefferson's own view, was *intended* to have an entire governmental change about every 20 years. Of course, that hasn't happened in actuality.
Continuous revolution. Damn straight. Too bad we lost sight of that.
(I am not the grandparent AC poster.)
Maybe, maybe not. Only the government knows for sure! (heh)
Patiently awaiting my karma windfall.
OK, so there's the Intel based system. Now all we need is a link to the AMD system in question so we can tell if it's comparable.
I hate that kind of self-proclaimed libertarians. They're the nuts that think every cooperative venture in their ideal world must be some sort of corporation driven by market forces. Real libertarians realize that people can just get together and (say) form a volunteer fire department rather than everyone having to subscribe to a for-profit fire-fighting service if they want their burning house doused.
Yes, because Jefferson, Franklin, Hamilton, et al set off carts full of blasting powder in front of crowded Offices of the Crown, randomly killing people, and this is how the US won the war of independence.
Not that killing children in daycare is a good thing. But why were people in a federal building hiding behind children anyway? They know wackos attack federal people from time to time
WTF are you talking about? Name one attack on a Federal building prior to (or after!) McVeigh. They weren't "hiding behind children" because they had no idea there was anyone to hide from.
Bet some government wonk was dumb enough to beleive that nobody would ever think of attacking them with children as a flesh shield.
Bet it never occured to anyone that some dumbass would think it worthwhile to set off a bomb in front of a building full of boring, miscellaneous government drones smack dab in the middle of Dullsville. Really, what kind of tard do you have to be to pick such a stupid target? If he wanted a symbolic hit against the FBI or BATF, he should have picked a FBI or BATF field office, instead of a building with mostly Social Security and postal service workers.
McVeigh did some fucked up shit, but I still cannot help but feel some respect for having the balls to do what he did.
I have trouble respecting mental midgets with delusions of grandeur simply because they fancy themselves super-patriots. A man walking down the street randomly cutting of people's heads while shouting "no taxation without representation" is no patriot in my book either. I might agree with the premise McVeigh started from, but I'd have to give him a big fat zero for his chosen conclusion. Fuck McVeigh. Fuck him twice. He was a typical macho failed-to-get-into-Ranger-school-so-he-left-the-Ar my dumbfuck that gave other Desert Storm vets like me a bad name for a long time.
If more Americans had the nuts to take their government to task for oppressive things they have done to this great country, things wouldn't be as shitty and corp-controlled as they are.
Yes, but blowing one another up is not going to get the feds off our back. I guarantee that no amount of purely symbolic random bombing is going result in anything more than further oppression.
But here I am posting anonymously because I am afraid of what the government might do to me for speaking outside of the "official truth".
Talk about delusions of grandeur. The government doesn't care about some guy on a message board spouting off about patriotism. Really, you sound like an actual tin-foil hatter who thinks the government is trying to read his thoughts. The flaw in that line of reasoning is the presumption that the feds even give a fuck about a a nobody like you (or me, for that matter). They don't care about people like us! Get over yourself!
I suspect that the two machines are not actually comparable. But without specifics, I can't say. Care to provide details? I didn't see any decent system for $700 on dell's site, personally. And for gaming, you really don't want LCD anyway.
But that would cost the cities millions of dollars in man-hours to wire the street lights so this is possible. Cheaper in the long run, manybe, but no city is going to do it until someone else ponies up to pay for it. Municipal government is the crybabiest bunch of crybabies there ever was. They flush money down the stool for stupid crap, and then say "there's not enough money for police and fire departments anymore; we need higher taxes". Bullcrap! They should be paying for that shit FIRST! Buncha' jerks...
Heh. not a damn thing. I read something that wasn't there. Confused myself by reading at +4. Please diregard my rebuttal, as it is irrelevant to gasoline consumption. Sorry!
Correlation, not proof. There are alternate studies that have shown it's just as likely that disc brakes and lighter cars caused the drop in fatalities. During that time period, for the group of cars that drove most of the highway miles, a remarkable percentage of those cars are replaced with newer ones starting at five years old. Disc brakes were mandated starting in 1969, which would cause a huge surge in the number of cars on the road with disc brakes starting in...1974. Additionally, with gas prices high, those newer disc brake cars weren't giant Buick Roadmasters or Dodge Chargers anymore, they were smaller, lighter, more fuel-efficient vehicles. Now, if it really was the stupid 55 speed limit that reduced accidents, it'd stand to reason that raising it again (like they did not long ago) should have caused the accident rate to dramatically rise again comensurate with it's precipitous fall in 74. It hasn't. Which theory fits the facts better?
Conetidrake?
Nah there are plenty worse:
Comandrake (they manage gardeners, right?)
Manconnect (gay dating service?)
Condrake (AKA conservative linux)
Mandiva (Drag queen lounge singer?)
Mancondrakectiva (some sort of respiratory infection?)
Not to say they couldn'y have done better than they did...
Thing is, the Voyager probes have made so many attitude-contol maneuvers that any anomalous decelleration is essentially indiscernable (Turyshev, JPL). They're essentially useless for investigating that particular mystery. Short of watching it in case it gets eaten by a giant space goat, the Voyager probes are not a worthwhile subject of study. Their batteries are nearly dead, their sensors have nothing to look at, and they're nearly beyond communication range. They're done, man, let 'em go.
Brains don't work that way. They're not a collection of distinct units communicating via discernable serial interfaces. There is no distinct "output" for the visual cortex that could be simulated. The visual cortex isn't a one input/one output thing, it's a complex system that acts as both a processor and a router. If it's non-functional, you can't see.
And maybe the bottom of the deepest part of the sea is a plain of SOLID GOLD! If that were so, it would have MASSIVE implications for oceanography.
Look, the edge of the solar system is (as the OP noted) and arbitrary distinction. It is the point beyond which essentially nothing exists for a long, long way. We can see that from here! That's how we made the distinction in the first place. There is nothing the Voyager probes were equipped to measure that's worth measuring out there. There are no shocking revelations to be found until you get to another stellar body.
One week a year for four years? Bah! You have only met dust briefly. I spent 20+ weeks choking on Saudi Arabian "sand" (it's dust, actually) back in 90-91 with the 101st Airborne, and I bet there are guys in the 101st now who make me look like a dilletante.