Obviously [nuclear disarmament] is never going to work
Damn it.
Every year that nuclear weapons exist there is a certain chance that someone uses them and triggers the apocalypse. I don't know what that chance is. But even if it's very low, given enough time it is certain to happen! Bear in mind that nuclear war has almost started on several occasions, including by accident. We cannot survive this situation forever.
Qualia are the one thing for which there is no scientific evidence, but everyone knows exists.
The thing about qualia is that they cause humans to go about arguing about qualia! Given that they have this massive effect on the world, I find it hard to believe they aren't physical.
It looks to me like it's intended as a reductio ad absurdum of the concept of free will: i.e. assume free will exists, then show that ridiculous things follow.
To me, it's obvious that free will doesn't exist. Our brains are made of the same stuff as the rest of the universe, obeying the same laws. These laws may be indeterministic, but since we have no control over quantum randomness, that randomness doesn't help us in any way.
Women are valuable because they are less replaceable [...] you need women to carry the babies.
Ridiculous. The human race currently has over 6 billion members. It's not some endangered species where females of breeding age are to be preserved above everything else. If a man and a women of equal age have to choose between them who gets rescued, they should flip a coin.
No. Some planets suitable for life have almost certainly existed in this galaxy for billions of years longer than the Earth. By now, one would expect there to have been civilisations that spread throughout the galaxy and therefore brought Earth within detection range of their signals...
Warhammer has, so far, been vastly preferable in terms of player age and conversation.
Adults with jobs can buy a game on its release day, but 12 year olds need to pester their parents, save up pocket money, or wait till Christmas.
But just wait. They're coming. They're coming.
Re:More than scientific learning
on
LHC Success!
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· Score: 1
.1%, a number pulled entirely out of someones ass, with no justification whatsoever
There's no objectively correct number except 0% or 100%. Either it will destroy Earth, or it won't. The question is: what odds would you put on it if you were living on another planet and had to bet on Earth's survival? What odds would you choose to lay?
There's not really a right answer.
Re:More than scientific learning
on
LHC Success!
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· Score: 1
If they haven't learned by now, and they haven't, they never will. The world has been perpetually ending for the entire 2000 year odd era of Christian thought alone, with God and Jesus coming down "any moment now."
Basically, you're saying that the world ending is totally impossible and can never happen, because every prediction of it has so far failed. So let's just take whatever risks we like.
Sooner or later someone will make a correct prediction of the world ending, but people will ignore it, and it will be your fault.:)
Re:More than scientific learning
on
LHC Success!
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· Score: 1
My only question is, when the smoke clears and we're all fine, will the doomsayers ever learn for the next time? Probably not.
(Firstly, collisions don't start for another month, but I'll ignore that.)
What doomsayers are you talking about? No sensible person thought the LHC was certain to destroy the Earth. Merely that it couldn't entirely be ruled out. Many sane people gave it odds of, say, 0.1% - because they felt there wasn't enough evidence to prove beyond doubt that it was impossible.
So what do you want people to learn? That we should ignore risks that seem low? How many times can we get away with that?
At any rate, at professional levels ("dan"), it's played with 1 handicap stone for every 3 ranks! So a 2 dan player would only get 2 stones head start against the master in TFA. The computer got 9. Assuming that the game was relatively even matched, that would put the computer's skill barely above the line between casual player and intermediate player.
Mmm. I think you're conflating amateur dan ranks and professional dan ranks. Amateurs are supposed to start at about 30-kyu, then rise up to 1-kyu, after which they enter the amateur dan ranks. 7-dan is usually the highest rank given to an amateur.
A weak or new professional would be ranked at 1-dan, but this is on the professional scale. A 1-dan pro is probably better than a 7-dan amateur.
Why is this flagged as "greygoo"? The grey goo scenario involves self-replicating nanites consuming the planet. What the article is talking about is a more mundane concern about toxicity.
Here in the real world, however... the reality is that had we not done something, Saddam likely would have gassed more of his own people than are dead today, twice over.
Gassed them with the chemical weapons he didn't have?
Right, sorry, I want to go back and restate my original argument in a more coherent way (I sometimes wish/. had an edit function).
Firstly, we agree that our psychology was largely shaped by the differential survival of people in an environment very different from ours. Perhaps I wasn't clear enough on that point.
My argument, really, is that, as far as casual sex is concerned, it makes more sense for a man to seek someone a bit older than what you suggest. A woman is more fertile at a somewhat older age. I'm not sure that life-expectancy is a problem here. A woman (in the ancestral environment) who has survived to be 25 probably has a life-expectancy of 40+, even if the life-expectancy at birth is 30.
But I would say that it makes a lot of sense for a man to seek a very young woman if he intends to marry her - since he then has her entire life to have children with her. But 12 seems too young; he would just be wasting time on a girl who won't conceive or who could well die in childbirth, leaving him to raise the child alone.
Well, OK, I acknowledged everything except the lower lifespans in the environment of evolutionary adaptation. But does that average lifespan include infant mortality? If it does, then most people who survived childhood would live to be rather older than the average lifespan...
Another thing that might be mentioned is that a 25 year old woman in modern society probably looks as good as an 18 year old living in "the wild".
Quite so. I consider myself broadly pro-gay, in that I support gay marriage and oppose any discrimination. But I find it hard to avoid the conclusion that, biologically, something must have gone wrong in a gay person. I wish it was easier to separate the biology from the politics.
Lusting after attractive 12 year olds is not wrong from a purely biological standpoint, in fact it makes perfect sense. In order to propagate your genes as much as possible, the best tactic is to impregnate as many young girls as possible.
Well. There are two things a man might look for in a mate: current fertility, and potential fertility. If a man is looking for a one-night stand, the sexiest woman is a woman in her mid-twenties or so, since at that age she should be fertile and the chances are high that a child born to her would survive.
On the other hand, a youngish woman, ideally a virgin, is the best choice if a man's looking for someone to marry, as he then has her entire life to have children with her. I don't see any value in choosing a girl who's prepubescent though, but someone around 16 or so would do. (I live in a country where the age of consent is 16, which means I can say this without fear. Phew.)
Just as a caveat (not aimed at the above poster), bear in mind that these arguments assume that our psychology evolved in an era when we were living in small tribes in the savanna, or similar circumstances. We should never assume that our psychology is the best possible for today's environment.
Multiverse doesn't say anything about the occurance of intelligence in ours.
It can explain why the universe we're in has physics perfect for life, which might otherwise seem to good to be true. But if there are a great many universes, we will naturally find ourselves in one of the few where the physics are right.
We also know that life is very robust and can take hold under very extreme circumstances.
"Extreme circumstances" is a pretty relative term. If the universe was nothing but a cloud of hydrogen, I doubt there would be life.
Just look at the hubble deep view pictures. Trillions and Trillions indeed, galaxies that is. Even if the chance of intelligence is very, very small there will be an immesurable amount of smart lifeforms out there.
Perhaps. It depends on how likely life is to get started (on any given planet) in the first place, which is an open question.
You know what I find cool? That under both scenarios it's almost inevitable that we will encounter other intelligent life, somewhere out there.
Not necessarily. Under various multiverse theories, there are a whole bunch of universes, most of which have no intelligent life at all, but the occasional one gets lucky and has at least one intelligent species. There's no strong reason to believe that in such a universe, it's especially likely that there will be more than one intelligent species.
(Why would one believe in multiple universes? Well, either it or God are the only theories that nicely explain "fine tuning"...)
Slashdot Mirror
This appears to be a more useful link:
http://www.eso.org/public/outreach/press-rel/pr-2009/pr-27-09.html
Obviously [nuclear disarmament] is never going to work
Damn it.
Every year that nuclear weapons exist there is a certain chance that someone uses them and triggers the apocalypse. I don't know what that chance is. But even if it's very low, given enough time it is certain to happen! Bear in mind that nuclear war has almost started on several occasions, including by accident. We cannot survive this situation forever.
Qualia are the one thing for which there is no scientific evidence, but everyone knows exists.
The thing about qualia is that they cause humans to go about arguing about qualia! Given that they have this massive effect on the world, I find it hard to believe they aren't physical.
It looks to me like it's intended as a reductio ad absurdum of the concept of free will: i.e. assume free will exists, then show that ridiculous things follow. To me, it's obvious that free will doesn't exist. Our brains are made of the same stuff as the rest of the universe, obeying the same laws. These laws may be indeterministic, but since we have no control over quantum randomness, that randomness doesn't help us in any way.
Women are valuable because they are less replaceable [...] you need women to carry the babies.
Ridiculous. The human race currently has over 6 billion members. It's not some endangered species where females of breeding age are to be preserved above everything else. If a man and a women of equal age have to choose between them who gets rescued, they should flip a coin.
"other alien races are as leery of sending out giant seedships that they themselves can't ride in"
But for this argument to work, you have to believe that every alien race declines to send out automated self-replicators.
"Maybe we are the first to achieve this capability."
Absolutely. That's the explanation I favour, but it means that intelligent life is much, much rarer than a lot of people suppose.
"Paradox solved, right?"
No. Some planets suitable for life have almost certainly existed in this galaxy for billions of years longer than the Earth. By now, one would expect there to have been civilisations that spread throughout the galaxy and therefore brought Earth within detection range of their signals...
Oh for God's sake. Just because there have been five major extinction events in the past doesn't mean we should gladly cause a sixth.
Am I the only one who lives in a land where "moral" and "ethical" mean the same thing?
Warhammer has, so far, been vastly preferable in terms of player age and conversation.
Adults with jobs can buy a game on its release day, but 12 year olds need to pester their parents, save up pocket money, or wait till Christmas.
But just wait. They're coming. They're coming.
There's no objectively correct number except 0% or 100%. Either it will destroy Earth, or it won't. The question is: what odds would you put on it if you were living on another planet and had to bet on Earth's survival? What odds would you choose to lay?
There's not really a right answer.
If they haven't learned by now, and they haven't, they never will. The world has been perpetually ending for the entire 2000 year odd era of Christian thought alone, with God and Jesus coming down "any moment now."
Basically, you're saying that the world ending is totally impossible and can never happen, because every prediction of it has so far failed. So let's just take whatever risks we like.
Sooner or later someone will make a correct prediction of the world ending, but people will ignore it, and it will be your fault. :)
My only question is, when the smoke clears and we're all fine, will the doomsayers ever learn for the next time? Probably not.
(Firstly, collisions don't start for another month, but I'll ignore that.)
What doomsayers are you talking about? No sensible person thought the LHC was certain to destroy the Earth. Merely that it couldn't entirely be ruled out. Many sane people gave it odds of, say, 0.1% - because they felt there wasn't enough evidence to prove beyond doubt that it was impossible.
So what do you want people to learn? That we should ignore risks that seem low? How many times can we get away with that?
At any rate, at professional levels ("dan"), it's played with 1 handicap stone for every 3 ranks! So a 2 dan player would only get 2 stones head start against the master in TFA. The computer got 9. Assuming that the game was relatively even matched, that would put the computer's skill barely above the line between casual player and intermediate player.
Mmm. I think you're conflating amateur dan ranks and professional dan ranks. Amateurs are supposed to start at about 30-kyu, then rise up to 1-kyu, after which they enter the amateur dan ranks. 7-dan is usually the highest rank given to an amateur.
A weak or new professional would be ranked at 1-dan, but this is on the professional scale. A 1-dan pro is probably better than a 7-dan amateur.
Why is this flagged as "greygoo"? The grey goo scenario involves self-replicating nanites consuming the planet. What the article is talking about is a more mundane concern about toxicity.
Here in the real world, however... the reality is that had we not done something, Saddam likely would have gassed more of his own people than are dead today, twice over.
Gassed them with the chemical weapons he didn't have?
Right, sorry, I want to go back and restate my original argument in a more coherent way (I sometimes wish /. had an edit function).
Firstly, we agree that our psychology was largely shaped by the differential survival of people in an environment very different from ours. Perhaps I wasn't clear enough on that point.
My argument, really, is that, as far as casual sex is concerned, it makes more sense for a man to seek someone a bit older than what you suggest. A woman is more fertile at a somewhat older age. I'm not sure that life-expectancy is a problem here. A woman (in the ancestral environment) who has survived to be 25 probably has a life-expectancy of 40+, even if the life-expectancy at birth is 30.
But I would say that it makes a lot of sense for a man to seek a very young woman if he intends to marry her - since he then has her entire life to have children with her. But 12 seems too young; he would just be wasting time on a girl who won't conceive or who could well die in childbirth, leaving him to raise the child alone.
OK, I think I'm done! :-)
Well, OK, I acknowledged everything except the lower lifespans in the environment of evolutionary adaptation. But does that average lifespan include infant mortality? If it does, then most people who survived childhood would live to be rather older than the average lifespan... Another thing that might be mentioned is that a 25 year old woman in modern society probably looks as good as an 18 year old living in "the wild".
Uh, yes, I think I acknowledged all of that in my final paragraph.
Quite so. I consider myself broadly pro-gay, in that I support gay marriage and oppose any discrimination. But I find it hard to avoid the conclusion that, biologically, something must have gone wrong in a gay person. I wish it was easier to separate the biology from the politics.
Lusting after attractive 12 year olds is not wrong from a purely biological standpoint, in fact it makes perfect sense. In order to propagate your genes as much as possible, the best tactic is to impregnate as many young girls as possible.
Well. There are two things a man might look for in a mate: current fertility, and potential fertility. If a man is looking for a one-night stand, the sexiest woman is a woman in her mid-twenties or so, since at that age she should be fertile and the chances are high that a child born to her would survive.
On the other hand, a youngish woman, ideally a virgin, is the best choice if a man's looking for someone to marry, as he then has her entire life to have children with her. I don't see any value in choosing a girl who's prepubescent though, but someone around 16 or so would do. (I live in a country where the age of consent is 16, which means I can say this without fear. Phew.)
Just as a caveat (not aimed at the above poster), bear in mind that these arguments assume that our psychology evolved in an era when we were living in small tribes in the savanna, or similar circumstances. We should never assume that our psychology is the best possible for today's environment.
Multiverse doesn't say anything about the occurance of intelligence in ours.
It can explain why the universe we're in has physics perfect for life, which might otherwise seem to good to be true. But if there are a great many universes, we will naturally find ourselves in one of the few where the physics are right.
We also know that life is very robust and can take hold under very extreme circumstances.
"Extreme circumstances" is a pretty relative term. If the universe was nothing but a cloud of hydrogen, I doubt there would be life.
Just look at the hubble deep view pictures. Trillions and Trillions indeed, galaxies that is. Even if the chance of intelligence is very, very small there will be an immesurable amount of smart lifeforms out there.
Perhaps. It depends on how likely life is to get started (on any given planet) in the first place, which is an open question.
You know what I find cool? That under both scenarios it's almost inevitable that we will encounter other intelligent life, somewhere out there.
Not necessarily. Under various multiverse theories, there are a whole bunch of universes, most of which have no intelligent life at all, but the occasional one gets lucky and has at least one intelligent species. There's no strong reason to believe that in such a universe, it's especially likely that there will be more than one intelligent species.
(Why would one believe in multiple universes? Well, either it or God are the only theories that nicely explain "fine tuning"...)
You know, I used to ask "why is there something rather than nothing?" but then I thought "why should there be nothing rather than something?"