As for TFA, to quote Ian Malcolm "Life finds a way". Just look at how there is life on this planet in some of the most hellish places, like thermal vents on the bottom of the ocean. I remember reading an article talking to the guys that went down so deep in the Marianas trench and one of the things they were talking about was how you had flat fish even down that deep. To say that our planet is so far unique for supporting our monkey asses is fine and dandy but anybody who thinks that means there couldn't be life on those because we wouldn't survive is just being arrogant. This is why i support exploring the oceans of Europa with a probe, from what we saw the oceans under the ice are warm and flowing, if there is any place in our own solar system that would have life my money would be on Europa.
A saying by an actor/fictional character has little value.
The prerequisites for life, or anything equivalent, are high - we don't look for life inside (active) volcanoes or the sun, because there are certain environmental extremes that simply make life impossible. Why didn't life find a way in those places? It couldn't.
Just because you have a million lottery tickets doesn't mean you are guaranteed a win - it all depends on the odds - and we have not determined the odds for life.
No, more the nasty stuff that they can get done for, abuse of monopoly, pressuring suppliers and vendors, outright corruption into government oversight etc. I think it's good that they broke up standard oil, we're better off. They should have broken up MS, but MS got to them and they were found guilty, but allowed to continue and pay the "fines" in their own stuff, strengthening their position!
You need to define what it means to be guilty of "abuse of monopoly", because that can be very subjective.
You list "pressuring suppliers and vendors" as an ill that needs to be fixed, but this ties into the need to to define "abuse". Businesses have and should continue to have the freedom to control their pricing, just like I have the freedom to sell an item at cost to a friend but sell it for profit to a stranger.
Outright corruption - This is a crime, but does not need any new rules for enforcement.
1. For that time period, oil prices continually fell due to Standard Oil's innovation in oil refining and transportation. Lower prices indicate lack of monopoly pricing, meaning no harm was done to consumers.
2. When Supreme Court made its ruling, Standard Oil had 150 competitors. Note that "monopoly" means "single seller", and is typically used to describe a situation where there are no competitors.
If anything, Standard Oil is an excellent example of badly applied gov't regulation. What was the actual benefit to consumers? What was the cost to consumers? Government used taxpayer money to fund a lawsuit that harmed Standard Oil; but Standard Oil wasn't doing anything that harmed consumers. That's abuse of government power, which is a type of corruption that increases the cost of business (translating to higher prices).
I would agree that we need a ref - but the government is not a perfect ref, and often times will behave as a player.
Because of that, I'm less willing to delegate authority to the government - when they're as likely to make things worse as to fix things, there's 0 net gain to involve them.
I know these forces exist, but they do not apply in most real markets, for the reasons I stated.
Errr, no, if those forces do not apply, there would be obscene profits, which would be reported in the corporation's reports to its shareholders. You can't hide that sort of profit from the public. Since those "real markets" don't have "obscene" profits, your claim is wrong.
That the price doesn't change much doesn't mean that the economic forces of competition aren't there.
Agreed, but they are stifled, think there's real competition in fuel?
Which part of the fuel market? Gas stations? Most definitely - prices change regularly, and are based on the convenience of the location and the quality of gas offered.
Energy companies further upstream? Still yes - look at their profit, not in raw numbers, but in % return on investment. They're pretty similar to other markets, and are in the single digits IIRC.
Monopoly is the end result of effective market competition in most free markets without regulation. The feedback loops exist, but you assume no collusion and ignore barriers to entry, market distortion and outright corruption. Look at MS, their money and legal power/influence exerts a force like gravity that distorts everything around them. The normal rules don't apply once you are really big, you're too big to fail.
I haven't assumed what you think I assumed. I discussed collusion - there are incentives to cheat those agreements in the pursuit of personal profit, so the effect of collusion is limited by that feedback loop.
On the other hand, barriers to entry, market distortion and corruption are all types of government "regulation" - which is NOT free market. Monopolies are primarily the result of government regulation, not free market competition.
Look at the number of gas stations and grocery stores that serve your area - is that because a government regulation forced the existence of competition? No, it's because it's personally profitable for the players to compete, and so they do.
Monopoly status is primarily protected by government regulations - for instance, MS's "monopoly" on MS software is protected by copyright and enforced by the government. Note however, that while MS is and was a dominant player in the consumer OS market, they were never a monopoly (single seller) - there were always alternatives, MS just priced themselves at a level that people were willing to live with. A monopoly can only be abused so far before people start looking for alternative goods. This too is a feedback loop you're neglecting.
It's a nice theory, but I've yet to see it outside electronics. Competition (price) doesn't seem to really exist in established markets, they just take the larger profit and all the others soon follow suit to reap the extra profits. A newcomer/new owner may upset the applecart by competing on price, but the others will use their market position and contacts to stop this. Oligopolies are everywhere and are pretty much as bad for the consumer as monopolies.
Why don't you go buy stocks in those companies with amazing % profit on investment, then? Get your cut of all that money.
I'm not saying that every market good will have the cheapest possible price; I'm merely observing the reality that there are opposing forces in a free market that create a very good negative feedback loop that acts against "excessive profits". ("excessive" profits attract competition)
Established markets may not have constantly decreasing prices, but that's because they've reached an equilibrium where the the "normal profit" is close to 0. (economic term which includes the opportunity costs) That the price doesn't change much doesn't mean that the economic forces of competition aren't there.
Oligopolies have an incentive to cheat, so that limits the "rent" of any of those types of markets. It takes government intervention to create a monopoly or break the market feedback loops that naturally exist.
Except goods don't get cheaper. The owner gets bigger profits, there is no incentive to lower prices.
No incentive in the absence of market competition. Robotic automation does nothing to remove market incentives.
Take the robots in this article - noodle slicing robots. No company has a monopoly on the technology, and the companies that use the robots to increase their noodle profits are NOT the companies that make them. Any restaurant can buy the robots to take advantage of the cheaper noodle slicing - those restaurants compete with each other and that competition does reduce prices.
So yes, there is an incentive to lower prices, you just failed to recognize it.
Once all the menial jobs are replaced by robots, what do people that are only suited to menial jobs do? Not everyone can be a robot technician, and there will be fewer robot technicians than robots.
Menial jobs are not "replaced by robots".
At a certain price of labor, it is cheaper to build and use a robot for that task. That does not mean that labor is obsolete, or that robots have taken "all the jobs". (Especially when you consider how specialized robots can be; compare a Roomba to a person + vaccuum)
The important part here is that the relationships are dynamic, not fixed - if there is less demand for menial labor (due to increased productivity), goods get cheaper even as the market price for labor drops - which makes it economically profitable to use human labor in new areas, increasing demand for labor again.
If the end result you're thinking of were possible, it would be better for humanity to destroy robot automation technology and remove all the productivity gains it could provide - and that's a clearly wrong answer.
Thank You. Regardless of religion or political stance people will always murder, rape, terrorize other people. We are a violent race who haven't evolved enough.
What about evolution makes you think peacefulness is the best survival trait?
It's not about whether or not they know. It's about qualifying claims based on the uncertainty of the evidence/models used. A study that says, "we estimate the earth's age to be X using this decay method and these assumptions" has qualified its claims. (And I think most scientists practice this properly)
A layperson or journalist who then cites that study as "proof that earth's age is X" has gone beyond the evidence and asserted something that was not proven, because you're going beyond what the study actually learned.
If you defend the latter practice, you are promoting a type of dogmatic faith, not science.
Since I am not a expert in that field, I can't affirm this with certainty, and since you are the one with doubt, you should be the one learning on the subject, you obviously lake the necessary knowledge to understand what you criticize.
Why do you feel the need to criticize my stance so harshly when you're not qualified to judge my understanding or expertise?
Most are experimentally verified, even if you stat the contrary.
You can't verify a "billion year" age estimation method in a tiny tiny fraction of that time. (we've developed and practiced the techniques for about 60 years)
If we had 500 million years (50% of billion) of data and observed that the assumptions have held true for all that time, it'd be reasonable (though not absolute proof) to use that to justify the assumptions. We barely have 60 years (0.000006% of billion) of data - and there are some factors we don't fully understand yet - such as solar activity affecting radioactive decay rates.
This particular observation only saw tiny tiny effects on decay rate - but how do you know enough to say that this has always been true for billions of years? You don't.
No. This is not necessary to do it that way. We have tons of evidences and experimental data to backup those claims, but you obviously refuse to admit that...
For some reason, you think that science is about dogmatically holding beliefs on certain issues.
It's not. Science is about accuracy and repeatability. Because of that, it's better to honestly say, "I don't know based on the limited evidence we have", rather than, "I believe X because all the experts say it's true".
"I don't know, but here's the best guess" is honest. "This best guess is the Truth, and you're anti-science if you don't agree with it" is dishonest - especially when you observe that the mainstream of science has shifted by huge amounts over the past century. Einstein was a quack, rockets couldn't possibly work in a vacuum (what would they push against?), the cat can't be both dead and alive...
... I think you don't understand there is not on one way used to calculate the age, but multiple ways which all converge to the same value. And with advance in science, this value is more and more accurate.
"multiple ways" has value if each approach is independent of the others. Unfortunately, that's not necessarily true. Ex: Fossils are used to calibrate rock layers which are used to calibrate fossil dating. That type of coupling makes their agreement unsurprising.
There's also a fallacy in believing that better science must guarantee better accuracy. Do you understand the Heisenburg Uncertainty principle? There are limitations to measurements and knowledge.
Likewise, there are limitations to what we can derive about the past based on a few samples in a tiny corner of the universe. That's like trying to determine the properties of earth by examining your bedroom floor. Clearly the entire world must be covered with beige carpet. All observerations agree! Then you step outside your house and notice the limitations of your observations and assumptions.
They can't possibly be SO wrong that we measure billions of years and it's only a few thousand.
And you know this how? 60 years of measurements is a tiny fraction of 1% of a million years. It's a ridiculously tiny fraction of a billion years.
Would you make a yearlong prediction of weather & climate based on a 1 second glimpse outside your window? That wild ass guess would still be based on proportionally more data than a 60 year sample in a billion year window.
Either a higher being made things to appear to be older, or they ARE older.
We don't have a baseline to know what "older" should look like.
When it comes to supernatural creation, we don't know what starting conditions should look like, either. I stuck to the scientific uncertainties, but there are logical uncertainties to consider as well.
The process itself is accurate, but a specific half-life can't give you age precision under that half-life.
Do you even understand what it means to "calibrate"? Do you understand what it means that they have to consider things such as sample contamination and so on?
An accurate measurement of the ratio of C12 to C14 atoms does not mean you have an accurate measurement of the age of the item, because you do not know the starting ratio, and you have not validated the assumption that decay rates stays constant over long periods of time.
which help us to measure the age of the universe.
You are not measuring the age of the universe, you are using a set of assumptions to extrapolate an age estimate from a measurement. The accuracy of your measurement is meaningless to the end estimate if you cannot measure the uncertainty introduced by the assumptions.
The good value is almost surely in that range.
Why did you use "almost surely"? Why not "definitely"? What uncertainty are you accounting for with that phrasing?
It's not because we use the word "estimation", the values are wrong or unknown.
Because those values are estimated based on models and not experimentally verified, there is a level of uncertainty left that is not removed by the introduction of new models and new estimates. An assertion that there is low uncertainty is not evidence that there is low uncertainty.
An experiment that verifies the accuracy of long term age estimates requires multiples of the time period in question. When it comes to millions to billions of years, we do not and have the millions and billions of years of data to validate the estimates. In short, they're unprovable claims until we've performed some million/billion year experiments. Inconveniently, those results are outside of our lifetimes.
Understand the limitations of your tools, techniques, models, and assumptions.
1. Radiocarbon dating. From the article: "Radiocarbon dating is a technique... to estimate the age of organic materials... up to about 58,000 to 62,000 years."
"For approximate analysis it is assumed that the cosmic ray flux is constant over long periods of time; thus carbon-14 is produced at a constant rate"
Human history is somewhere in the 10K year range. How do you verify the accuracy of an age estimate that goes before humans even wrote down history, let alone had a dating technique? How do you verify the accuracy of your compensations and calibrations? In 10,000 years, will the same techniques applied to artifacts from our present give accurate dates?
2. Redshift. Redshift is a technique that tells you about "current" relative velocity between Earth and other stellar objects. You can estimate an age from that based on assumptions. This does not verify an age.
3. Age of the Universe. From the article: "The best estimate of the age of the universe..." Estimates are not verifications. Also take note of their uncertainty - 13.8 +- 0.37 billion years, or 3%. How will you verify that that uncertainty is accurate? How would you ever know?
So creationism/intelligent design is OK, and a higher being managing/guiding the universe is OK; it just doesn't make sense for it to have happened 6000 years ago.
Assuming that our estimates of millions and billions of years based on modern samples is an accurate way to estimate the age of the universe.
How do we even experimentally verify those methods? Prepare some samples and ask future scientists to check the results every 10,000 years to confirm conformance to our models?
... how about we discuss the storied and terrible history of Standard Oil, which became the first modern monopoly in the world through predatory business practices, rampant exploitation of natural resources, workers, price manipulation, etc. It was the catalyst for the passage of the Sherman Antitrust Act and its later dismantlement by the government at significant cost to taxpayers. Most of our domestic oil producers can still trace their roots back to this monolithic entity that at one point controlled over 90% of domestic production and 80% of sales.
Interesting you point to Standard Oil as an example of evil monopolies. Recently read an article challenging that common view. Excerpt:
" But what is not speculative is how he [Rockefeller, of Standard Oil] expanded his market share. He did so by cutting prices and almost quadrupling sales. University of Chicago economics professor Lester Telser, in his 1987 book, A Theory of Efficient Cooperation and Competition,4 points out that between 1880 and 1890, the output of petroleum products rose 393 percent, while the price fell 61 percent. Telser writes: "The oil trust did not charge high prices because it had 90 percent of the market. It got 90 percent of the refined oil market by charging low prices." Some monopoly! "
... Standard Oil, if it existed today, would probably own close to a third of the country, and have an operating revenue of over a trillion USD. That trillion a year revenue would be coming out of our pockets.
Uh, who else will pay for our individual oil consumption but ourselves? If that trillion a dollar revenue buys 2 trillion dollars of value for the buyers (to use for transportation, heating, oil byproducts), that trillion dollar figure would be a good thing!
In short, your logic is bullshit: Every major infrastructure industry in this country depended on the government to get up and running, or to expand to a societal level of influence. Every. Last. One.
Your examples fail to prove your conclusion. Please point to the Oil Development and Subsidy Act, or the Law to Subsidize Coal Research and Development, or the Law to Tax Horse and Buggies for Less Smelly Alternatives, if you wish to insist that current green energy subsidies are exactly like what was done in the past.
So... considering that's we hear about this with EVERY major catastrophe, would this be the sort of national infrastructure concern that we would want to mandate that the cell companies install extra capacity? You know, in case of emergencies. Are we at the point that we can consider cellular connection, or generically wireless connection, to be a basic utility and not a cutting edge hip new ordeal that only the rich can afford?
How technically feasible is that?
Scaling up landlines is (somewhat) straightforward - you install the copper wire, you add corresponding capability to upstream processing. Scaling up cell coverage/capability is not because cells are mobile. You might have an international event that causes a few streets to have 1000x the cell phone density as normal. How much are you paying for the extra cell phone capacity?
Whether you feel cell phone technologies are a utility is irrelevant - the scaling issues are the limiting factor.
Sure, but they should be free to do that. If you ever thought MS was interested in what customers wanted you were incredibly naive.
No one's suggesting they aren't free to do that. Vocal players (eg a part of their market audience) are just telling them what they are willing to spend money on.
They can ignore free feedback it at their own peril.
The willingness of a particular country to use Wind + Solar doesn't indicate that it's a good idea. Some countries have adopted really bad ideas before. It's also silly to say that wind + solar covers everything; solar is off at night, and there's no guarantee that nights are windy.
A better measure is cost per kWH, since the entire point of energy production is to provide human beings with energy. Energy that costs less is something that does the same job with less resources.
Wind power cost estimates tend to be underestimates as they ignore the cost of backup power.
This study that includes those costs finds that "There is no economic case for wind-power."
Nuclear Energy is part of a complete energy plan. Hydroelectric, Wind, Solar, Fossil Fuels, etc. are needed to.
Wind, Solar, are not needed at all. They're "solutions" looking for a problem. They don't scale well to current needs, and if the "solution" involves reducing our needs, that can be done just as well and more reliably with existing power generation methods.
An application like battery charging for electric cars you mean?
"Sorry Hon, I'm going to be walking home today because it was cloudy and my electric car didn't charge. See you in two hours."
Somewhat depends on what processes they're using; they may well be prepared to shutdown for a few days a year if the price of the power contract was more favourable that way, particularly if they were given some notice.
"Work is canceled on account of a cloudy day. No, we're not paying you for work you didn't do. Pray for a sunny day tomorrow."
Your "depends" is fluff. List some real world businesses that are willing to run that way. If the factory is profitable, then they want it to be running with maximal uptime and efficiency. Random power outages work against that.
Power rates could compensate a little bit for random power outages, but there's a labor and opportunity cost that needs to be covered as well - so there would have to be some extreme cost savings to solar in order for it to be a net gain.
Problem: solar isn't cheaper than the alternatives - so no, it doesn't make sense (and probably never will).
Lanza killed a lot of young children. It's the sort of thing the news media eats up because 1) it involves children which immediately gets the attention of every parent int he country and 2) Lanza had serious emotional issues (and psychological ones too).
And once the deed is done, you'll have the "world" spending days talking about you, trying to "understand" your motives, and why didn't the "world" treat you better, etc.
It's acting out a fantasy; and it's interesting how often foiled wannabe mass murderers choose to shoot themselves after being wounded by armed responders.
Nuclear power cannot provide reliable dispatchable power generation. Peak is about 50% greater than base around here, so every watt of nuclear has to be backed up with 0.5 watts of some other power source. Here in Ontario it used to be coal, but we're in the midst of an extremely expensive and politically loaded switch to NG.
Solar is not reliable dispatchable power generation, either.
You can turn it off, but you don't have full control of when it's on. Higher energy usage does generally correspond to daytime, but sunlight can be quite variable depending local weather.
Then there's land area. The amount of solar cells you would need to reach 50% of your base would make for some interesting solar "forests" that you hope don't get hail or heavy wind or other bad weather.
That's before we even start dealing with the environmentalists who will try to protect some endangered desert tortoise or ground squirrel.
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As for TFA, to quote Ian Malcolm "Life finds a way". Just look at how there is life on this planet in some of the most hellish places, like thermal vents on the bottom of the ocean. I remember reading an article talking to the guys that went down so deep in the Marianas trench and one of the things they were talking about was how you had flat fish even down that deep. To say that our planet is so far unique for supporting our monkey asses is fine and dandy but anybody who thinks that means there couldn't be life on those because we wouldn't survive is just being arrogant. This is why i support exploring the oceans of Europa with a probe, from what we saw the oceans under the ice are warm and flowing, if there is any place in our own solar system that would have life my money would be on Europa.
A saying by an actor/fictional character has little value.
The prerequisites for life, or anything equivalent, are high - we don't look for life inside (active) volcanoes or the sun, because there are certain environmental extremes that simply make life impossible. Why didn't life find a way in those places? It couldn't.
Just because you have a million lottery tickets doesn't mean you are guaranteed a win - it all depends on the odds - and we have not determined the odds for life.
No, more the nasty stuff that they can get done for, abuse of monopoly, pressuring suppliers and vendors, outright corruption into government oversight etc. I think it's good that they broke up standard oil, we're better off. They should have broken up MS, but MS got to them and they were found guilty, but allowed to continue and pay the "fines" in their own stuff, strengthening their position!
You need to define what it means to be guilty of "abuse of monopoly", because that can be very subjective.
You list "pressuring suppliers and vendors" as an ill that needs to be fixed, but this ties into the need to to define "abuse". Businesses have and should continue to have the freedom to control their pricing, just like I have the freedom to sell an item at cost to a friend but sell it for profit to a stranger.
Outright corruption - This is a crime, but does not need any new rules for enforcement.
Re: Standard Oil - Why was it a good thing? http://mises.org/daily/5274
Key points from the article:
2. When Supreme Court made its ruling, Standard Oil had 150 competitors. Note that "monopoly" means "single seller", and is typically used to describe a situation where there are no competitors.
If anything, Standard Oil is an excellent example of badly applied gov't regulation. What was the actual benefit to consumers? What was the cost to consumers? Government used taxpayer money to fund a lawsuit that harmed Standard Oil; but Standard Oil wasn't doing anything that harmed consumers. That's abuse of government power, which is a type of corruption that increases the cost of business (translating to higher prices).
Maybe an independent NGO with enough clout to enforce rulings? Have to watch the watchers though...
Ruling on what though?
"You have too much market share, give me money"?
Outside of criminal activities (that cause direct harm; ex: careless toxic waste dispoal), everything else is and should be fair game.
I would agree that we need a ref - but the government is not a perfect ref, and often times will behave as a player.
Because of that, I'm less willing to delegate authority to the government - when they're as likely to make things worse as to fix things, there's 0 net gain to involve them.
I know these forces exist, but they do not apply in most real markets, for the reasons I stated.
Errr, no, if those forces do not apply, there would be obscene profits, which would be reported in the corporation's reports to its shareholders. You can't hide that sort of profit from the public. Since those "real markets" don't have "obscene" profits, your claim is wrong.
That the price doesn't change much doesn't mean that the economic forces of competition aren't there.
Agreed, but they are stifled, think there's real competition in fuel?
Which part of the fuel market? Gas stations? Most definitely - prices change regularly, and are based on the convenience of the location and the quality of gas offered.
Energy companies further upstream? Still yes - look at their profit, not in raw numbers, but in % return on investment. They're pretty similar to other markets, and are in the single digits IIRC.
Monopoly is the end result of effective market competition in most free markets without regulation. The feedback loops exist, but you assume no collusion and ignore barriers to entry, market distortion and outright corruption. Look at MS, their money and legal power/influence exerts a force like gravity that distorts everything around them. The normal rules don't apply once you are really big, you're too big to fail.
I haven't assumed what you think I assumed. I discussed collusion - there are incentives to cheat those agreements in the pursuit of personal profit, so the effect of collusion is limited by that feedback loop.
On the other hand, barriers to entry, market distortion and corruption are all types of government "regulation" - which is NOT free market. Monopolies are primarily the result of government regulation, not free market competition.
Look at the number of gas stations and grocery stores that serve your area - is that because a government regulation forced the existence of competition? No, it's because it's personally profitable for the players to compete, and so they do.
Monopoly status is primarily protected by government regulations - for instance, MS's "monopoly" on MS software is protected by copyright and enforced by the government. Note however, that while MS is and was a dominant player in the consumer OS market, they were never a monopoly (single seller) - there were always alternatives, MS just priced themselves at a level that people were willing to live with. A monopoly can only be abused so far before people start looking for alternative goods. This too is a feedback loop you're neglecting.
It's a nice theory, but I've yet to see it outside electronics. Competition (price) doesn't seem to really exist in established markets, they just take the larger profit and all the others soon follow suit to reap the extra profits. A newcomer/new owner may upset the applecart by competing on price, but the others will use their market position and contacts to stop this. Oligopolies are everywhere and are pretty much as bad for the consumer as monopolies.
Why don't you go buy stocks in those companies with amazing % profit on investment, then? Get your cut of all that money.
I'm not saying that every market good will have the cheapest possible price; I'm merely observing the reality that there are opposing forces in a free market that create a very good negative feedback loop that acts against "excessive profits". ("excessive" profits attract competition)
Established markets may not have constantly decreasing prices, but that's because they've reached an equilibrium where the the "normal profit" is close to 0. (economic term which includes the opportunity costs) That the price doesn't change much doesn't mean that the economic forces of competition aren't there.
Oligopolies have an incentive to cheat, so that limits the "rent" of any of those types of markets. It takes government intervention to create a monopoly or break the market feedback loops that naturally exist.
Except goods don't get cheaper. The owner gets bigger profits, there is no incentive to lower prices.
No incentive in the absence of market competition. Robotic automation does nothing to remove market incentives.
Take the robots in this article - noodle slicing robots. No company has a monopoly on the technology, and the companies that use the robots to increase their noodle profits are NOT the companies that make them. Any restaurant can buy the robots to take advantage of the cheaper noodle slicing - those restaurants compete with each other and that competition does reduce prices.
So yes, there is an incentive to lower prices, you just failed to recognize it.
Once all the menial jobs are replaced by robots, what do people that are only suited to menial jobs do? Not everyone can be a robot technician, and there will be fewer robot technicians than robots.
Menial jobs are not "replaced by robots".
At a certain price of labor, it is cheaper to build and use a robot for that task. That does not mean that labor is obsolete, or that robots have taken "all the jobs". (Especially when you consider how specialized robots can be; compare a Roomba to a person + vaccuum)
The important part here is that the relationships are dynamic, not fixed - if there is less demand for menial labor (due to increased productivity), goods get cheaper even as the market price for labor drops - which makes it economically profitable to use human labor in new areas, increasing demand for labor again.
If the end result you're thinking of were possible, it would be better for humanity to destroy robot automation technology and remove all the productivity gains it could provide - and that's a clearly wrong answer.
Thank You. Regardless of religion or political stance people will always murder, rape, terrorize other people. We are a violent race who haven't evolved enough.
What about evolution makes you think peacefulness is the best survival trait?
You seriously think they don't know about that?
It's not about whether or not they know. It's about qualifying claims based on the uncertainty of the evidence/models used. A study that says, "we estimate the earth's age to be X using this decay method and these assumptions" has qualified its claims. (And I think most scientists practice this properly)
A layperson or journalist who then cites that study as "proof that earth's age is X" has gone beyond the evidence and asserted something that was not proven, because you're going beyond what the study actually learned.
If you defend the latter practice, you are promoting a type of dogmatic faith, not science.
Since I am not a expert in that field, I can't affirm this with certainty, and since you are the one with doubt, you should be the one learning on the subject, you obviously lake the necessary knowledge to understand what you criticize.
Why do you feel the need to criticize my stance so harshly when you're not qualified to judge my understanding or expertise?
Most are experimentally verified, even if you stat the contrary.
You can't verify a "billion year" age estimation method in a tiny tiny fraction of that time. (we've developed and practiced the techniques for about 60 years)
If we had 500 million years (50% of billion) of data and observed that the assumptions have held true for all that time, it'd be reasonable (though not absolute proof) to use that to justify the assumptions. We barely have 60 years (0.000006% of billion) of data - and there are some factors we don't fully understand yet - such as solar activity affecting radioactive decay rates.
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2010/august/sun-082310.html
This particular observation only saw tiny tiny effects on decay rate - but how do you know enough to say that this has always been true for billions of years? You don't.
No. This is not necessary to do it that way. We have tons of evidences and experimental data to backup those claims, but you obviously refuse to admit that. ..
For some reason, you think that science is about dogmatically holding beliefs on certain issues.
It's not. Science is about accuracy and repeatability. Because of that, it's better to honestly say, "I don't know based on the limited evidence we have", rather than, "I believe X because all the experts say it's true".
"I don't know, but here's the best guess" is honest. "This best guess is the Truth, and you're anti-science if you don't agree with it" is dishonest - especially when you observe that the mainstream of science has shifted by huge amounts over the past century. Einstein was a quack, rockets couldn't possibly work in a vacuum (what would they push against?), the cat can't be both dead and alive ...
... I think you don't understand there is not on one way used to calculate the age, but multiple ways which all converge to the same value. And with advance in science, this value is more and more accurate.
"multiple ways" has value if each approach is independent of the others. Unfortunately, that's not necessarily true. Ex: Fossils are used to calibrate rock layers which are used to calibrate fossil dating. That type of coupling makes their agreement unsurprising.
There's also a fallacy in believing that better science must guarantee better accuracy. Do you understand the Heisenburg Uncertainty principle? There are limitations to measurements and knowledge.
Likewise, there are limitations to what we can derive about the past based on a few samples in a tiny corner of the universe. That's like trying to determine the properties of earth by examining your bedroom floor. Clearly the entire world must be covered with beige carpet. All observerations agree! Then you step outside your house and notice the limitations of your observations and assumptions.
They can't possibly be SO wrong that we measure billions of years and it's only a few thousand.
And you know this how? 60 years of measurements is a tiny fraction of 1% of a million years. It's a ridiculously tiny fraction of a billion years.
Would you make a yearlong prediction of weather & climate based on a 1 second glimpse outside your window? That wild ass guess would still be based on proportionally more data than a 60 year sample in a billion year window.
Either a higher being made things to appear to be older, or they ARE older.
We don't have a baseline to know what "older" should look like.
When it comes to supernatural creation, we don't know what starting conditions should look like, either. I stuck to the scientific uncertainties, but there are logical uncertainties to consider as well.
The process itself is accurate, but a specific half-life can't give you age precision under that half-life.
Do you even understand what it means to "calibrate"? Do you understand what it means that they have to consider things such as sample contamination and so on?
An accurate measurement of the ratio of C12 to C14 atoms does not mean you have an accurate measurement of the age of the item, because you do not know the starting ratio, and you have not validated the assumption that decay rates stays constant over long periods of time.
which help us to measure the age of the universe.
You are not measuring the age of the universe, you are using a set of assumptions to extrapolate an age estimate from a measurement. The accuracy of your measurement is meaningless to the end estimate if you cannot measure the uncertainty introduced by the assumptions.
The good value is almost surely in that range.
Why did you use "almost surely"? Why not "definitely"? What uncertainty are you accounting for with that phrasing?
It's not because we use the word "estimation", the values are wrong or unknown.
Because those values are estimated based on models and not experimentally verified, there is a level of uncertainty left that is not removed by the introduction of new models and new estimates. An assertion that there is low uncertainty is not evidence that there is low uncertainty.
An experiment that verifies the accuracy of long term age estimates requires multiples of the time period in question. When it comes to millions to billions of years, we do not and have the millions and billions of years of data to validate the estimates. In short, they're unprovable claims until we've performed some million/billion year experiments. Inconveniently, those results are outside of our lifetimes.
Please play close attention to what the question was: "How do we even experimentally verify those [dating] methods?"
My dear friends google...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiocarbon_dating#Measurements_and_scales
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_shift
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_the_universe
Best regards.
Understand the limitations of your tools, techniques, models, and assumptions.
1. Radiocarbon dating. From the article: "Radiocarbon dating is a technique ... to estimate the age of organic materials... up to about 58,000 to 62,000 years."
"For approximate analysis it is assumed that the cosmic ray flux is constant over long periods of time; thus carbon-14 is produced at a constant rate"
Human history is somewhere in the 10K year range. How do you verify the accuracy of an age estimate that goes before humans even wrote down history, let alone had a dating technique? How do you verify the accuracy of your compensations and calibrations? In 10,000 years, will the same techniques applied to artifacts from our present give accurate dates?
2. Redshift. Redshift is a technique that tells you about "current" relative velocity between Earth and other stellar objects. You can estimate an age from that based on assumptions. This does not verify an age.
3. Age of the Universe. From the article: "The best estimate of the age of the universe ..." Estimates are not verifications. Also take note of their uncertainty - 13.8 +- 0.37 billion years, or 3%. How will you verify that that uncertainty is accurate? How would you ever know?
But the ideas aren't stolen.
Not in a legal sense, but the phrase, "good artists steal" makes me think the distinction you're making doesn't matter too much.
So creationism/intelligent design is OK, and a higher being managing/guiding the universe is OK; it just doesn't make sense for it to have happened 6000 years ago.
Assuming that our estimates of millions and billions of years based on modern samples is an accurate way to estimate the age of the universe.
How do we even experimentally verify those methods? Prepare some samples and ask future scientists to check the results every 10,000 years to confirm conformance to our models?
... how about we discuss the storied and terrible history of Standard Oil, which became the first modern monopoly in the world through predatory business practices, rampant exploitation of natural resources, workers, price manipulation, etc. It was the catalyst for the passage of the Sherman Antitrust Act and its later dismantlement by the government at significant cost to taxpayers. Most of our domestic oil producers can still trace their roots back to this monolithic entity that at one point controlled over 90% of domestic production and 80% of sales.
Interesting you point to Standard Oil as an example of evil monopolies. Recently read an article challenging that common view. Excerpt:
http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2013/Hendersonbarons.html#.UTjpzGTanh0.facebook
" But what is not speculative is how he [Rockefeller, of Standard Oil] expanded his market share. He did so by cutting prices and almost quadrupling sales. University of Chicago economics professor Lester Telser, in his 1987 book, A Theory of Efficient Cooperation and Competition,4 points out that between 1880 and 1890, the output of petroleum products rose 393 percent, while the price fell 61 percent. Telser writes: "The oil trust did not charge high prices because it had 90 percent of the market. It got 90 percent of the refined oil market by charging low prices." Some monopoly! "
... Standard Oil, if it existed today, would probably own close to a third of the country, and have an operating revenue of over a trillion USD. That trillion a year revenue would be coming out of our pockets.
Uh, who else will pay for our individual oil consumption but ourselves? If that trillion a dollar revenue buys 2 trillion dollars of value for the buyers (to use for transportation, heating, oil byproducts), that trillion dollar figure would be a good thing!
In short, your logic is bullshit: Every major infrastructure industry in this country depended on the government to get up and running, or to expand to a societal level of influence. Every. Last. One.
Your examples fail to prove your conclusion. Please point to the Oil Development and Subsidy Act, or the Law to Subsidize Coal Research and Development, or the Law to Tax Horse and Buggies for Less Smelly Alternatives, if you wish to insist that current green energy subsidies are exactly like what was done in the past.
So... considering that's we hear about this with EVERY major catastrophe, would this be the sort of national infrastructure concern that we would want to mandate that the cell companies install extra capacity? You know, in case of emergencies. Are we at the point that we can consider cellular connection, or generically wireless connection, to be a basic utility and not a cutting edge hip new ordeal that only the rich can afford?
How technically feasible is that?
Scaling up landlines is (somewhat) straightforward - you install the copper wire, you add corresponding capability to upstream processing. Scaling up cell coverage/capability is not because cells are mobile. You might have an international event that causes a few streets to have 1000x the cell phone density as normal. How much are you paying for the extra cell phone capacity?
Whether you feel cell phone technologies are a utility is irrelevant - the scaling issues are the limiting factor.
Unlike the non-violence that produced Peace for Our Time right before WWI.
Humans produce violence. The only question is who is going to be left standing.
No one's suggesting they aren't free to do that. Vocal players (eg a part of their market audience) are just telling them what they are willing to spend money on.
They can ignore free feedback it at their own peril.
The willingness of a particular country to use Wind + Solar doesn't indicate that it's a good idea. Some countries have adopted really bad ideas before. It's also silly to say that wind + solar covers everything; solar is off at night, and there's no guarantee that nights are windy.
A better measure is cost per kWH, since the entire point of energy production is to provide human beings with energy. Energy that costs less is something that does the same job with less resources.
Wind power cost estimates tend to be underestimates as they ignore the cost of backup power.
This study that includes those costs finds that "There is no economic case for wind-power."
http://www.civitas.org.uk/economy/electricitycosts2012.pdf
Nuclear Energy is part of a complete energy plan. Hydroelectric, Wind, Solar, Fossil Fuels, etc. are needed to.
Wind, Solar, are not needed at all. They're "solutions" looking for a problem. They don't scale well to current needs, and if the "solution" involves reducing our needs, that can be done just as well and more reliably with existing power generation methods.
An application like battery charging for electric cars you mean?
"Sorry Hon, I'm going to be walking home today because it was cloudy and my electric car didn't charge. See you in two hours."
Somewhat depends on what processes they're using; they may well be prepared to shutdown for a few days a year if the price of the power contract was more favourable that way, particularly if they were given some notice.
"Work is canceled on account of a cloudy day. No, we're not paying you for work you didn't do. Pray for a sunny day tomorrow."
Your "depends" is fluff. List some real world businesses that are willing to run that way. If the factory is profitable, then they want it to be running with maximal uptime and efficiency. Random power outages work against that.
Power rates could compensate a little bit for random power outages, but there's a labor and opportunity cost that needs to be covered as well - so there would have to be some extreme cost savings to solar in order for it to be a net gain.
Problem: solar isn't cheaper than the alternatives - so no, it doesn't make sense (and probably never will).
Interesting!
So with exponentially growing computing power, how does that affect the rate we find new resources?
Lanza killed a lot of young children. It's the sort of thing the news media eats up because 1) it involves children which immediately gets the attention of every parent int he country and 2) Lanza had serious emotional issues (and psychological ones too).
And once the deed is done, you'll have the "world" spending days talking about you, trying to "understand" your motives, and why didn't the "world" treat you better, etc.
It's acting out a fantasy; and it's interesting how often foiled wannabe mass murderers choose to shoot themselves after being wounded by armed responders.
Nuclear power cannot provide reliable dispatchable power generation. Peak is about 50% greater than base around here, so every watt of nuclear has to be backed up with 0.5 watts of some other power source. Here in Ontario it used to be coal, but we're in the midst of an extremely expensive and politically loaded switch to NG.
Solar is not reliable dispatchable power generation, either.
You can turn it off, but you don't have full control of when it's on. Higher energy usage does generally correspond to daytime, but sunlight can be quite variable depending local weather.
Then there's land area. The amount of solar cells you would need to reach 50% of your base would make for some interesting solar "forests" that you hope don't get hail or heavy wind or other bad weather.
That's before we even start dealing with the environmentalists who will try to protect some endangered desert tortoise or ground squirrel.