The friend paid $5 for a $3 share of the cost. That's where the "profit" comes from. And I wouldn't be surprised if the original poster agrees with your assertion that this isn't a profit.
Even if it were written in stone, we have the following:
Article XVI
Any State Party to the Treaty may give notice of its withdrawal from the Treaty one year after its entry into force by written notification to the Depositary Governments. Such withdrawal shall take effect one year from the date of receipt of this notification.
Just written notice and one year later you are free of the entanglements of the treaty and it's just as written into stone as the rest of the treaty. That's why having Congress pass laws like this is interesting. It provides an easily attainable alternate framework to the original treaty.
Hint, the NSF might have programs that have to do with national security (or the national security apparatus has a vested interest in). So they dictate everyone gets a thorough check.
If this particular branch of the NSF is involved in actual national security, or even just merely near it, then there's something very wrong. Like a teacher assuring you his classroom will be safe because he wears a condom.
You cannot simply remove a Theory form its field and apply it within another.
Sometimes that statement turns out to be wrong. And when it does, you occasionally get some amazing stuff.
For a physics example, group theory turns out to have several remarkable applications. One can derive the elementary subatomic particles from it, for example, or determine the vibration modes of gases of molecules with symmetries.
Or geometry applied to dynamical systems helps study the existence and properties of chaotic behavior. For example, local divergence of solutions to a differential equation can be determined by the curvature of the solution space (it happens when the curvature is negative, meaning the space has a sort of "saddle" shape) and a bounded set of locally divergent solutions in a finite dimensional space exhibits chaotic behavior (well to my knowledge, I may be ignorant of important exceptions).
One of the powers of math is that when you have a mathematical theory or model, if the premises of the thing apply, then so do its consequences and conclusions - even if you are completely ignorant of the theory and the association with whatever system you're dealing with.
Some fields are particularly amenable to transplant into other areas. Information theory is one of these fields that transplants to a wide range of fields, though perhaps not easily. The reason is that a lot of scientific analysis boils down to extrapolating from a heavily transformed dependent observation the actual phenomena we wish to observe. Information theory provides a variety of tools for trying to find underlying phenomena for derived observations (such as interpreting what a seismograph network is observing deep underground from altered vibrations that originated with known small earthquakes throughout the world).
And there too is another feature of Dragon. The high usage rate will make them safer than the "safe" choice. Sure, that assurance won't help when you have clueless news reporters with mics. That's what a good PR department is for. Admittedly, Boeing's PR is better than SpaceX's.
And it's clear that removing the human element has done nothing to reduce the cost of programs like JWST. On the contrary, it's blown the cost out by over 300%.
300% of what? You're making the unwarranted assumption that the telescope would have cost less. I don't see that happening. I think it would have cost about the same amount either way. That's because that's how much money was available to be snagged.
So in August 2013 she took a leave from Union College to join the National Science Foundation (NSF) as a program director in its Division of Undergraduate Education.
So we have background checks concerning membership in terrorist organizations for this? Seriously? I can see some degree of care is required for jobs that have national security relevance, but this is stupid. If she doesn't have felony convictions in the past seven years, then that's good enough for me. I don't see that the feds even should have the authority to ask about association with terrorist groups in a situation like this.
For people who complain that she lied, well, maybe she did. But the employer should have an responsibility to not create the opportunity for such things. If they hadn't asked her, she wouldn't have allegedly lied, served her two years, and life would move on without an excess of drama.
While bledri gave a sensible reply, there are a few things I think bear mentioning.
First, I doubt that you've never heard of some peoples' desire to colonize space. So your "no purpose" is merely a purpose that you choose not to back. It remains that manned spaceflight is a necessary precursor to colonization. You can't do colonization for a tenth or hundredth of the price using unmanned missions. And if you want to do such colonization sooner rather than later, then manned spaceflight needs to be sooner as well.
Second, space development not just about science (again as bledri noted). What bears mentioning here is that space science is only as useful as what we end up doing in space. If we have a lot of people living in space, then space science is very useful. If we don't then it's just another very expensive hobby.
Finally, there's the matter of how effective unmanned missions could be. The whole program is achingly slow to the point that scientist can and do die of old age before resolving unknown problems brought up in a previous unmanned mission. So sure, if your idea of doing things in space, are a few space probes (and I consider the 100 or so currently active NASA space science missions just a few), then it doesn't make sense to manned missions for scientific endeavors. A Mars rover putting around for half a decade does about as much research as two people in two days, but that's ok as long as all you want to do is check off a box ("doing Mars science?" "Check!").
Even if you don't have a human presence on site, having people a fraction of a light second away rather than a light hour really steps up that game.
And I haven't even touched on my main beef with unmanned efforts - completely ignoring powerful economies of scale (for example, making several probes at a time rather than a never ending series of one-off missions in order to spread development costs over more science-producing probes).
So to summarize, you aren't the only person with space-oriented purposes (and some of those other purposes do require manned spaceflight) and a manned presence, which necessarily means manned spaceflight, would really help space science, the thing you are interested in, both by enabling it to be more effective with a shorter command loop, and by providing a far stronger rationalization for the pursuance of space science than merely idle intellectual curiosity.
OTOH, the cost of JWST has blown out even further than Hubble (approx $9b, from an initial budget below $2b) precisely because there's no human servicing
No, it's because it's a one-off mission with no incentive to cut costs beyond what money is available to consume. Even without human spaceflight, you could make this spacecraft cheaper per unit and more reliable, just by making more than one of them.
The topic I'm discussing is the unrealistic figures produced by people who call themselves economists (despite showing "almost no knowledge at all") with respect to energy projects as complained about by the post above.
I recall you didn't actually provide any such qualifier in the statement that kicked off this little thread. "As far as economists see it, it is free." That's a pretty broad brush. But now, you now claim you referred to "economists" who aren't actually economists, but whom you choose to call "economists".
The topic I'm discussing is the unrealistic figures produced by people who call themselves economists (despite showing "almost no knowledge at all") with respect to energy projects as complained about by the post above. The topic you appear to be discussing is about pretending that specific point is a general case so that you can build a large enough strawman in my name to be easy to attack.
Like those "economists" you never actually get around to naming? That sort of straw man? I wonder if my straw men are anything like your straw men.
Originally, I was thinking the most annoying rhetorical habit you had was the a priori ruling out of knowledge for frivolous reasons such as because it comes from "economists" with "tiny minds" or blowing off yet another of my posts because it has "baggage". But how could I have forgotten the brazen hypocrisy of accusing someone of some rhetorical and all too frequently imaginary foible while amply and heavy-handedly demonstrating its use in the same complaint?
Not a little boy? Then why the little boy act?
More of the same.
You know when I was complaining of "poo-flinging" this is the sort of thing I had in mind.
A specific type of situation where a field of knowledge is dumbed down to almost no knowledge at all is not an example of "ignoring a whole field of knowledge".
Sounds exactly like ignoring to me. So why are you "dumbing down" economics to "almost no knowledge at all"? Or are the pet economists of the pushers of large projects forcing you to dumb down your knowledge of economics?
And really the assertion makes no sense in other ways. For example, if I oversimplify the theory of gravity (say to support my assertion that the Earth is flat), that doesn't invalidate Newtonian mechanics or general relativity. So why should an oversimplified, or even merely terrible explanation of economics for personal gain, invalidate economics? Actual knowledge doesn't work that way.
but taxes would help with three problems: traffic, pollution (and GW), and gas dependance. Four actually: gov't revenue to help pay down debt and other uses.
So why are these "problems" bad enough that they justify fuel taxes? As to problem number 4, sure, the money could be used to pay down debt, but it probably won't.
More likely, they'll spend a lot of money while other parties get that VR thing. MS has a long history of letting opportunity slide through its grasp. I don't see the current proposed purchase changing that. Rather, I consider the long term worth of this transaction to be a transfer of wealth from a has-been to a creator of value.
Bees are pretty much considered non-intelligent, even though hives/swarms may have some kind of emergent behavior that looks purposeful. They don't think and they certainly don't make purposeful decisions. They're more reactive/random than that.
And yet, there's the evidence of purposeful, economically significant behavior to the contrary. You simply aren't questioning your underlying assumption that a lot of intelligence is required for making purposeful decisions. For example, how dumb does a human have to get before they can no longer make purposeful decisions?
I'm not an expert on economics so perhaps you can elaborate. I thought you said the Austrian School doesn't consider the actions of things like bees, but now you're saying they are agents capable of action like humans in the Austrian School?
I said that all along. But yes, bees are agents capable of purposeful action, though perhaps not to the degree that humans are.
First, the purpose of a bee's life and all of its choices is to feed the hive and propagate its particular collection of genes (evolution is very efficient at creating and maintaining this particular purpose). Second, they have a great deal of latitude in how they perform that purpose, such as choosing to serve in the hive or going out into the field. And in the field, there are all sorts of choices such as where to go, what flowers to visit, and when to return to the hive.
As to the economic value of this hive, honey has a direct economic value to humans. So do future generations of this hive who may end up serving humans in fertilizing agricultural crops or producing honey even if the current hive is nowhere near human agriculture.
True, though it's more likely that they'll just reduce the intensity of future conflicts either through fear of their use and/or through massive reduction in the population and available technology and infrastructure for fighting.
A final year undergraduate subject entitled precisely that is where I came to such a sad realisation, later reinforced when working in a mechanical engineering university department that shared a building with business studies and later again working on various projects on private enterprise.
Then your ignorance of the subject is inexcusable.
It's a truly spectacular reading comprehension failure if you think I am being critical of "Jane Q. Public" in any way.
I'll accept that then.
I still don't appreciate your slam of economics, ignoring a whole field of knowledge just because it doesn't fit your current argument. Yes, it's not a pretty field. Economics has the enormous problem that most of what it's about is highly valuable to a lot of people with the ability to buy lots of credentialled opinion. As a result, with stakes that high, we see a lot of corruption of the field for gain or ideology. I don't deny that.
It's still a field of science that has many valid, well observed insights about us and our society. One of those insights is that we really do have a good grasp of doing long term, high value projects. We've done a lot of them over the millennia and it's not magic any more.
And yes, a lot of what goes into current day calculations is effectively a compound interest calculation and that does the job. For someone who supposedly has some exposure to the field, maybe you could develop some judgment and figure out the difference between the valuable stuff and the stuff that someone is merely trying to sell to you?
Of course it could be said that such people are not "real" economists, they are just pointless "yes" men, but those pushing the large projects call them economists.
I think that bears rephrasing. They can be "real" economists in that they have the appropriate degrees, but they aren't acting as economists. They are the modern day astrologers, entrails readers, diviners, oracles, etc. These people rationalize whatever the boss says.
You admit that they aren't actually doing economics, but rather helping to push "large projects", so why the insistence on painting the whole field of economics just because of these people?
And that brings us to my next point on this. Why should we take the self-interested word of "those pushing large projects" that this is economics in action? If I were pushing a large dam, would you suddenly take my word for it that you were an innumerate, poo flinging savage? Maybe I need to get my pet economist to make that argument with an authoritative, confident manner? I doubt it works that way.
Admit it, you just saw the little dot of color behind my name and decided I needed to be taken down a peg or two since I've been critical of you in the past.
Sure, now that you brought my attention to it, I notice it. There's lots of junk on a slashdot page that I ignore including funny colored circles. But yes, I dofeel the need to take you down a peg. My goal here is some day you'll want to be more than just another poo flinging savage on slashdot.
And that leads to my point, an inconsistency in this particular choice of axioms or with reality was found merely through considering a couple of well known empirical counterexamples.
A computer trading program is a tool used by humans.
But a tool which can act quite independently when it is not under close supervision. And let us not forget human children. Here, we have a process very similar to making a tool, conception and giving birth, where the result is a new human, capable of Austrian-style action, not merely a new tool.
A computer trading program is a tool used by humans. Animals "act" in the vernacular sense but the Austrian school's idea of action derives from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P... which is the study of *human* action.
I see the failing is more widespread. In the examples I gave, animals are acting in the Austrian School sense of making purposeful decisions. I guess that makes them at least somewhat *human* in the Austrian School sense.
In thinking of economics, while it certainly makes sense to consider the actions of animals as you noted, the only relevance is in guiding the actions of humans. It's irrelevant to consider what honeybees are going to do outside of how that impacts humans and how we must react to them.
Except that once the precepts of the Austrian School are satisfied, then the conclusions inevitably follow, whether it be honey bees living in the wild or human traders on a stock market. It doesn't matter whether or how you choose to ignore this.
Slashdot Mirror
Heads I win. Tails you lose.
You are the one making that argument, so it's your logic.
The friend paid $5 for a $3 share of the cost. That's where the "profit" comes from. And I wouldn't be surprised if the original poster agrees with your assertion that this isn't a profit.
Article XVI
Any State Party to the Treaty may give notice of its withdrawal from the Treaty one year after its entry into force by written notification to the Depositary Governments. Such withdrawal shall take effect one year from the date of receipt of this notification.
Just written notice and one year later you are free of the entanglements of the treaty and it's just as written into stone as the rest of the treaty. That's why having Congress pass laws like this is interesting. It provides an easily attainable alternate framework to the original treaty.
Hint, the NSF might have programs that have to do with national security (or the national security apparatus has a vested interest in). So they dictate everyone gets a thorough check.
If this particular branch of the NSF is involved in actual national security, or even just merely near it, then there's something very wrong. Like a teacher assuring you his classroom will be safe because he wears a condom.
You cannot simply remove a Theory form its field and apply it within another.
Sometimes that statement turns out to be wrong. And when it does, you occasionally get some amazing stuff.
For a physics example, group theory turns out to have several remarkable applications. One can derive the elementary subatomic particles from it, for example, or determine the vibration modes of gases of molecules with symmetries.
Or geometry applied to dynamical systems helps study the existence and properties of chaotic behavior. For example, local divergence of solutions to a differential equation can be determined by the curvature of the solution space (it happens when the curvature is negative, meaning the space has a sort of "saddle" shape) and a bounded set of locally divergent solutions in a finite dimensional space exhibits chaotic behavior (well to my knowledge, I may be ignorant of important exceptions).
One of the powers of math is that when you have a mathematical theory or model, if the premises of the thing apply, then so do its consequences and conclusions - even if you are completely ignorant of the theory and the association with whatever system you're dealing with.
Some fields are particularly amenable to transplant into other areas. Information theory is one of these fields that transplants to a wide range of fields, though perhaps not easily. The reason is that a lot of scientific analysis boils down to extrapolating from a heavily transformed dependent observation the actual phenomena we wish to observe. Information theory provides a variety of tools for trying to find underlying phenomena for derived observations (such as interpreting what a seismograph network is observing deep underground from altered vibrations that originated with known small earthquakes throughout the world).
And there too is another feature of Dragon. The high usage rate will make them safer than the "safe" choice. Sure, that assurance won't help when you have clueless news reporters with mics. That's what a good PR department is for. Admittedly, Boeing's PR is better than SpaceX's.
And it's clear that removing the human element has done nothing to reduce the cost of programs like JWST. On the contrary, it's blown the cost out by over 300%.
300% of what? You're making the unwarranted assumption that the telescope would have cost less. I don't see that happening. I think it would have cost about the same amount either way. That's because that's how much money was available to be snagged.
So in August 2013 she took a leave from Union College to join the National Science Foundation (NSF) as a program director in its Division of Undergraduate Education.
So we have background checks concerning membership in terrorist organizations for this? Seriously? I can see some degree of care is required for jobs that have national security relevance, but this is stupid. If she doesn't have felony convictions in the past seven years, then that's good enough for me. I don't see that the feds even should have the authority to ask about association with terrorist groups in a situation like this.
For people who complain that she lied, well, maybe she did. But the employer should have an responsibility to not create the opportunity for such things. If they hadn't asked her, she wouldn't have allegedly lied, served her two years, and life would move on without an excess of drama.
While bledri gave a sensible reply, there are a few things I think bear mentioning.
First, I doubt that you've never heard of some peoples' desire to colonize space. So your "no purpose" is merely a purpose that you choose not to back. It remains that manned spaceflight is a necessary precursor to colonization. You can't do colonization for a tenth or hundredth of the price using unmanned missions. And if you want to do such colonization sooner rather than later, then manned spaceflight needs to be sooner as well.
Second, space development not just about science (again as bledri noted). What bears mentioning here is that space science is only as useful as what we end up doing in space. If we have a lot of people living in space, then space science is very useful. If we don't then it's just another very expensive hobby.
Finally, there's the matter of how effective unmanned missions could be. The whole program is achingly slow to the point that scientist can and do die of old age before resolving unknown problems brought up in a previous unmanned mission. So sure, if your idea of doing things in space, are a few space probes (and I consider the 100 or so currently active NASA space science missions just a few), then it doesn't make sense to manned missions for scientific endeavors. A Mars rover putting around for half a decade does about as much research as two people in two days, but that's ok as long as all you want to do is check off a box ("doing Mars science?" "Check!").
Even if you don't have a human presence on site, having people a fraction of a light second away rather than a light hour really steps up that game.
And I haven't even touched on my main beef with unmanned efforts - completely ignoring powerful economies of scale (for example, making several probes at a time rather than a never ending series of one-off missions in order to spread development costs over more science-producing probes).
So to summarize, you aren't the only person with space-oriented purposes (and some of those other purposes do require manned spaceflight) and a manned presence, which necessarily means manned spaceflight, would really help space science, the thing you are interested in, both by enabling it to be more effective with a shorter command loop, and by providing a far stronger rationalization for the pursuance of space science than merely idle intellectual curiosity.
"Theory" also means scientifically a body of knowledge, like "information theory". It has multiple meanings in the scientific world too.
OTOH, the cost of JWST has blown out even further than Hubble (approx $9b, from an initial budget below $2b) precisely because there's no human servicing
No, it's because it's a one-off mission with no incentive to cut costs beyond what money is available to consume. Even without human spaceflight, you could make this spacecraft cheaper per unit and more reliable, just by making more than one of them.
I recall you didn't actually provide any such qualifier in the statement that kicked off this little thread. "As far as economists see it, it is free." That's a pretty broad brush. But now, you now claim you referred to "economists" who aren't actually economists, but whom you choose to call "economists".
Like those "economists" you never actually get around to naming? That sort of straw man? I wonder if my straw men are anything like your straw men.
Originally, I was thinking the most annoying rhetorical habit you had was the a priori ruling out of knowledge for frivolous reasons such as because it comes from "economists" with "tiny minds" or blowing off yet another of my posts because it has "baggage". But how could I have forgotten the brazen hypocrisy of accusing someone of some rhetorical and all too frequently imaginary foible while amply and heavy-handedly demonstrating its use in the same complaint?
Not a little boy? Then why the little boy act?
More of the same. You know when I was complaining of "poo-flinging" this is the sort of thing I had in mind.
A specific type of situation where a field of knowledge is dumbed down to almost no knowledge at all is not an example of "ignoring a whole field of knowledge".
Sounds exactly like ignoring to me. So why are you "dumbing down" economics to "almost no knowledge at all"? Or are the pet economists of the pushers of large projects forcing you to dumb down your knowledge of economics?
And really the assertion makes no sense in other ways. For example, if I oversimplify the theory of gravity (say to support my assertion that the Earth is flat), that doesn't invalidate Newtonian mechanics or general relativity. So why should an oversimplified, or even merely terrible explanation of economics for personal gain, invalidate economics? Actual knowledge doesn't work that way.
but taxes would help with three problems: traffic, pollution (and GW), and gas dependance. Four actually: gov't revenue to help pay down debt and other uses.
So why are these "problems" bad enough that they justify fuel taxes? As to problem number 4, sure, the money could be used to pay down debt, but it probably won't.
More likely, they'll spend a lot of money while other parties get that VR thing. MS has a long history of letting opportunity slide through its grasp. I don't see the current proposed purchase changing that. Rather, I consider the long term worth of this transaction to be a transfer of wealth from a has-been to a creator of value.
Bees are pretty much considered non-intelligent, even though hives/swarms may have some kind of emergent behavior that looks purposeful. They don't think and they certainly don't make purposeful decisions. They're more reactive/random than that.
And yet, there's the evidence of purposeful, economically significant behavior to the contrary. You simply aren't questioning your underlying assumption that a lot of intelligence is required for making purposeful decisions. For example, how dumb does a human have to get before they can no longer make purposeful decisions?
I'm not an expert on economics so perhaps you can elaborate. I thought you said the Austrian School doesn't consider the actions of things like bees, but now you're saying they are agents capable of action like humans in the Austrian School?
I said that all along. But yes, bees are agents capable of purposeful action, though perhaps not to the degree that humans are.
First, the purpose of a bee's life and all of its choices is to feed the hive and propagate its particular collection of genes (evolution is very efficient at creating and maintaining this particular purpose). Second, they have a great deal of latitude in how they perform that purpose, such as choosing to serve in the hive or going out into the field. And in the field, there are all sorts of choices such as where to go, what flowers to visit, and when to return to the hive.
As to the economic value of this hive, honey has a direct economic value to humans. So do future generations of this hive who may end up serving humans in fertilizing agricultural crops or producing honey even if the current hive is nowhere near human agriculture.
True, though it's more likely that they'll just reduce the intensity of future conflicts either through fear of their use and/or through massive reduction in the population and available technology and infrastructure for fighting.
A final year undergraduate subject entitled precisely that is where I came to such a sad realisation, later reinforced when working in a mechanical engineering university department that shared a building with business studies and later again working on various projects on private enterprise.
Then your ignorance of the subject is inexcusable.
It's a truly spectacular reading comprehension failure if you think I am being critical of "Jane Q. Public" in any way.
I'll accept that then.
I still don't appreciate your slam of economics, ignoring a whole field of knowledge just because it doesn't fit your current argument. Yes, it's not a pretty field. Economics has the enormous problem that most of what it's about is highly valuable to a lot of people with the ability to buy lots of credentialled opinion. As a result, with stakes that high, we see a lot of corruption of the field for gain or ideology. I don't deny that.
It's still a field of science that has many valid, well observed insights about us and our society. One of those insights is that we really do have a good grasp of doing long term, high value projects. We've done a lot of them over the millennia and it's not magic any more.
And yes, a lot of what goes into current day calculations is effectively a compound interest calculation and that does the job. For someone who supposedly has some exposure to the field, maybe you could develop some judgment and figure out the difference between the valuable stuff and the stuff that someone is merely trying to sell to you?
And in another post in this thread:
Of course it could be said that such people are not "real" economists, they are just pointless "yes" men, but those pushing the large projects call them economists.
I think that bears rephrasing. They can be "real" economists in that they have the appropriate degrees, but they aren't acting as economists. They are the modern day astrologers, entrails readers, diviners, oracles, etc. These people rationalize whatever the boss says.
You admit that they aren't actually doing economics, but rather helping to push "large projects", so why the insistence on painting the whole field of economics just because of these people?
And that brings us to my next point on this. Why should we take the self-interested word of "those pushing large projects" that this is economics in action? If I were pushing a large dam, would you suddenly take my word for it that you were an innumerate, poo flinging savage? Maybe I need to get my pet economist to make that argument with an authoritative, confident manner? I doubt it works that way.
Admit it, you just saw the little dot of color behind my name and decided I needed to be taken down a peg or two since I've been critical of you in the past.
Sure, now that you brought my attention to it, I notice it. There's lots of junk on a slashdot page that I ignore including funny colored circles. But yes, I dofeel the need to take you down a peg. My goal here is some day you'll want to be more than just another poo flinging savage on slashdot.
There will be no low cost energy, there will be no reserves. It's just a quick cash grab.
Which is a good thing in itself. A short term windfall that only last four more years is still better than no windfall.
Do you have some reason to think I might be incorrect? Or is this just another argument from ignorance fallacy?
And that leads to my point, an inconsistency in this particular choice of axioms or with reality was found merely through considering a couple of well known empirical counterexamples.
A computer trading program is a tool used by humans.
But a tool which can act quite independently when it is not under close supervision. And let us not forget human children. Here, we have a process very similar to making a tool, conception and giving birth, where the result is a new human, capable of Austrian-style action, not merely a new tool.
Then I guess I better go with that as well. I don't want people considering me any more of an idiot than they already do.