CRISPR kits cost around $100-$1000. If you were to mass produce therapeutic CRISPR injections in batches of a million, they'd cost pennies per dose. The extra cost is recouping research, profit, costs associated with extra care for experimental patients, etc.
That seems to be true. Look elsewhere in the world. The US has a weird government-industrial complex that doesn't seem to be the least bit efficient. Moving towards a nice modern mixed economy like almost all the other wealthy nations have would probably do wonders.
Education, particularly female education, is by far the biggest predictor of family size. One of the major non-political barriers to education is child labour.
As people have to work less, they have *fewer* kids. The world fertility rate has dropped by half in the last 50 years. Forecasts expect it to drop to below replacement by mid-century or so. An AI revolution could speed that up.
You would only replace a human worker with a robot if the robot were more efficient. That lowers the price of whatever you're doing, which means replacing that human worker created *more* wealth, not less.
Now, you are left with the problem of how you make sure that wealth is shared reasonably. You said the company would have to be forced to lower their prices. That's true. Other companies making the same product are supposed to lower their prices, forcing the first company to do likewise, until market equilibrium is reached. That's capitalism. If that doesn't happen for some reason, the people, acting through their representative government, can step in. That's socialism.
Yes. Socialism doesn't work when there's scarcity. It works really well when there's plenty. At least, you'd better hope so, because our current brand of capitalism is doomed.
The only alternative is a type of capitalism where big concentrations of capital are almost meaningless, where the means of production are accessible to almost anyone. That might happen too: the majority of the cost of making most things is labour.
"the elites in most countries who decide such matters will never willingly allow some of their wealth to be given to "non productive" members of society."
Then they'll die. Hoarding wealth in a golden age of plenty is a good way to get yourself guillotined. I hope that the leaders in every country are smart enough to realize that, but probably some are not.
Why? There will be more wealth. Employment is just a mechanism for distributing it. Yes, if half of people lose their jobs and the idiots at the top don't figure out a new way to spread the money around then there will be a bloody revolution. As there should be.
Diesel subs are very difficult to track. Much harder than nuclear subs. While submerged. The Achilles heel of diesel subs is that their speed and range is severely limited while underwater, because they have to operate on batteries.
However, there are tricks you can play to get around that. Carrying the sub underneath an innocent looking surface ship until you get close enough for it to make the trip underwater, for example. But a shipping container would probably be easier for a first strike.
The residual strong force, yes. We'd definitely see neutrons in dark matter proportions in particle searches, but they can fit a lot of the cosmological observations because they don't interact electromagnetically. Both the neutron and neutrino were theoretical objects before they were discovered, just like dark matter particles are today. There's nothing magic about new particles that are hard to detect, make theories work properly, and are later discovered.
The neutron was actually discovered just before the first evidence for dark matter. Someone must have thought the two might be connected in the 1930s.
When we're finally forced to give up the fantasy of wealth redistribution through employment we'll have to come up with a better system. That will probably involve some nastiness. But we'll be the better for it.
It's not really new territory, we've been through it before. It's just that this time the usual solution, make-work, is probably going to be so obviously ridiculous nobody will buy it.
The aether story is overly simplified by people who don't understand history or physics.
Classical aether was disproven (sort of) by the Michaelson-Morely experiments. There were also contemporary proposals for aether that were compatible with those observations, and in fact are compatible with special relativity. Modern quantum field theory is essentially a relativistic, quantum aether theory: fields that permeate all of space, one for each particle.
Lots of physicists have written about why dark matter is a more attractive option than modified gravity. Measurement error is highly unlikely: the story is consistent across a wide variety of different types of measurements, many of them very basic. Cluster motion and galactic rotation curves require that you believe in the Doppler effect and spectroscopy. Gravitation lensing experiments require that you believe gravity bends light.
The biggest strike against particle dark matter is that we haven't found any particles yet. The alternative, modifying gravity, isn't nearly as simple as that phrase makes it sound. You can't really just modify gravity, as MOND tried to do, because there's no way to make that fit all the data. You have to add additional fields, essentially adding new forces like, but not the same as, gravity. Weirdly, those forces have to be concentrated where the normal matter isn't to explain galactic clusters.
Sure it would. "Seasonal jobs" seems like a pretty flimsy excuse. Just like any job, you hire enough people to adequately cover the work without overtime, or you pay the overtime, employers' choice.
My reading of those instructions are that you shouldn't use an Oxford comma in Maine law (fine) but if you find yourself in a situation where the meaning is ambiguous then you should rewrite the sentence to be clear. Which would leave the interpretation of the law as written in the favour of the truckers.
Ha ha, right. If you were talking about quantity you'd be right. But if my batteries make someone's phone last three times as long as yours do, it's you and your investors who have the problem.
Sure we have. The modern US is the probably the modern country with the most inequitable wealth distribution system, but it's still a socialist paradise compared to anything that existed even 150 ago. Americans think socialism is a bad word, but they still spend at least 2/3 of their public money on social programs.
The world, all of it, has been moving towards more social equality and fairer income distribution for a long time. Some places seem to have been trying to buck that trend more recently. History suggests that's not such a good idea.
Slashdot Mirror
CRISPR kits cost around $100-$1000. If you were to mass produce therapeutic CRISPR injections in batches of a million, they'd cost pennies per dose. The extra cost is recouping research, profit, costs associated with extra care for experimental patients, etc.
That seems to be true. Look elsewhere in the world. The US has a weird government-industrial complex that doesn't seem to be the least bit efficient. Moving towards a nice modern mixed economy like almost all the other wealthy nations have would probably do wonders.
Education, particularly female education, is by far the biggest predictor of family size. One of the major non-political barriers to education is child labour.
As people have to work less, they have *fewer* kids. The world fertility rate has dropped by half in the last 50 years. Forecasts expect it to drop to below replacement by mid-century or so. An AI revolution could speed that up.
It's weird how people get stuck on jobs.
You would only replace a human worker with a robot if the robot were more efficient. That lowers the price of whatever you're doing, which means replacing that human worker created *more* wealth, not less.
Now, you are left with the problem of how you make sure that wealth is shared reasonably. You said the company would have to be forced to lower their prices. That's true. Other companies making the same product are supposed to lower their prices, forcing the first company to do likewise, until market equilibrium is reached. That's capitalism. If that doesn't happen for some reason, the people, acting through their representative government, can step in. That's socialism.
Yes. Socialism doesn't work when there's scarcity. It works really well when there's plenty. At least, you'd better hope so, because our current brand of capitalism is doomed.
The only alternative is a type of capitalism where big concentrations of capital are almost meaningless, where the means of production are accessible to almost anyone. That might happen too: the majority of the cost of making most things is labour.
"the elites in most countries who decide such matters will never willingly allow some of their wealth to be given to "non productive" members of society."
Then they'll die. Hoarding wealth in a golden age of plenty is a good way to get yourself guillotined. I hope that the leaders in every country are smart enough to realize that, but probably some are not.
Why? There will be more wealth. Employment is just a mechanism for distributing it. Yes, if half of people lose their jobs and the idiots at the top don't figure out a new way to spread the money around then there will be a bloody revolution. As there should be.
It seems to me "my brain is magic" is more of a religious belief. His "heresies" are all effectively variations on that theme.
Level of female education is the strongest predictor of birth rate. But educational attainment in general is limited by conditions of extreme poverty.
Diesel subs are very difficult to track. Much harder than nuclear subs. While submerged. The Achilles heel of diesel subs is that their speed and range is severely limited while underwater, because they have to operate on batteries.
However, there are tricks you can play to get around that. Carrying the sub underneath an innocent looking surface ship until you get close enough for it to make the trip underwater, for example. But a shipping container would probably be easier for a first strike.
Soldering iron?
The residual strong force, yes. We'd definitely see neutrons in dark matter proportions in particle searches, but they can fit a lot of the cosmological observations because they don't interact electromagnetically. Both the neutron and neutrino were theoretical objects before they were discovered, just like dark matter particles are today. There's nothing magic about new particles that are hard to detect, make theories work properly, and are later discovered.
The neutron was actually discovered just before the first evidence for dark matter. Someone must have thought the two might be connected in the 1930s.
When we're finally forced to give up the fantasy of wealth redistribution through employment we'll have to come up with a better system. That will probably involve some nastiness. But we'll be the better for it.
It's not really new territory, we've been through it before. It's just that this time the usual solution, make-work, is probably going to be so obviously ridiculous nobody will buy it.
Wow, you had the expensive memory upgrade hey?
Aw, it's been years since an electric universe nut posted on Slashdot. Happy memories!
The aether story is overly simplified by people who don't understand history or physics.
Classical aether was disproven (sort of) by the Michaelson-Morely experiments. There were also contemporary proposals for aether that were compatible with those observations, and in fact are compatible with special relativity. Modern quantum field theory is essentially a relativistic, quantum aether theory: fields that permeate all of space, one for each particle.
You know that modern quantum field theory holds that photons are excitations that move through a field that permeates all of space, right?
Additionally, there are similar fields for every other particle, which also permeate all of space.
Lots of physicists have written about why dark matter is a more attractive option than modified gravity. Measurement error is highly unlikely: the story is consistent across a wide variety of different types of measurements, many of them very basic. Cluster motion and galactic rotation curves require that you believe in the Doppler effect and spectroscopy. Gravitation lensing experiments require that you believe gravity bends light.
The biggest strike against particle dark matter is that we haven't found any particles yet. The alternative, modifying gravity, isn't nearly as simple as that phrase makes it sound. You can't really just modify gravity, as MOND tried to do, because there's no way to make that fit all the data. You have to add additional fields, essentially adding new forces like, but not the same as, gravity. Weirdly, those forces have to be concentrated where the normal matter isn't to explain galactic clusters.
Neutrons too. Half of everything around us is made up of things that would be great dark matter particles if they didn't decay outside a nucleus.
And yet we let people drive. And diagnose cancer.
Sure it would. "Seasonal jobs" seems like a pretty flimsy excuse. Just like any job, you hire enough people to adequately cover the work without overtime, or you pay the overtime, employers' choice.
My reading of those instructions are that you shouldn't use an Oxford comma in Maine law (fine) but if you find yourself in a situation where the meaning is ambiguous then you should rewrite the sentence to be clear. Which would leave the interpretation of the law as written in the favour of the truckers.
It seems unlikely that this is legal. It would interfere with regular FM radio stations.
Ha ha, right. If you were talking about quantity you'd be right. But if my batteries make someone's phone last three times as long as yours do, it's you and your investors who have the problem.
Sure we have. The modern US is the probably the modern country with the most inequitable wealth distribution system, but it's still a socialist paradise compared to anything that existed even 150 ago. Americans think socialism is a bad word, but they still spend at least 2/3 of their public money on social programs.
The world, all of it, has been moving towards more social equality and fairer income distribution for a long time. Some places seem to have been trying to buck that trend more recently. History suggests that's not such a good idea.