I have also been saying this all along but I disagree with you on this point:
The enormity of the effort they would have to mount given the physics of space travel would be rather significant, and at great cost to themselves.
Who's to say that they just don't think differently than we do? Just because we have a mental block about a particular bit of physics does not mean that they do too. I find it hard to believe that if they think like we do but have solved the physics problem of near light-speed travel that they wouldn't be able to handle their own natural resources for their population.
Mental block? Think about it for a moment.
Never before have we had so many minds looking at this problem than in our entire history.Today we have a tremendous number of physicists, many yearning to venture into space, and none of them have come up with the solution.
Applying basic statistics here, the longer it takes, the less likely a solution will be found. If there were a way we would've found it by now, I think. Or be on the edge of finding it.
So the probability decreases asymptotically with time. Physics is physics. Baryonic matter is baryonic matter. There's only so much you can do with baryonic matter and electromagnetism and the strong and weak nuclear forces and gravitation. That is the set of blocks in our "lego construction set" we have to work with.
Now maybe something more exotic will be discovered by the LHC or future particle experiments, but I strongly doubt it. I don't think it's just that we can't "think out of the physics box". I'm saying that it is extremely unlikely that anything lies outside of that "physics box" that we'd (or any other civilization) find useful for interstellar space travel.
They would not bother to come to Earth to "replenish resources" as they would be able to do this much closer to home. And the ethics argument is very human-centric. Would they even have anything we'd recognize as "ethics?" What if they are more insectoid in nature? Like our ants? Hive-mind?
But, by the same token, I don't think we have much to worry about, anyway. I would think that while life may be plentiful throughout the cosmos, intelligent life that has mastered technology to the point of being space-faring would actually be exceedingly rare. Even in our own planet's 4.5-billion year history, it's barely been a hundred years since the Wright Bros. first flight at Kitty Hawk back in 1903. Yuri Gagarin made it into space in the year I was born in -- 1961. Not even quite 50 years that we've been space-faring at all, and a joke to speak of, as we've never had a human beyond the orbit of the the moon.
Just landing a man on Mars is an enormous effort for our civilization. Mars!!!! One planet over from us! And I'm confident we'll do that someday. And I'm almost equally as confident it'll be done by a country other than the United States. But I digress.
Now one datapoint -- the Human Civilization -- is hardly enough to bake a theory on, but you can at least see what challenges lie in the wake of becoming space-faring, let alone the chances of evolving an intelligent species that would even care. Humans have been around for 2 million years and only in my lifetime -- quite literally -- have we just put a foot in space.
My wild-ass guess is that perhaps there may be 5-10 other civilizations in our galaxy capable of space travel at all, and none of them have probably sent any of themselves past their own stellar systems. The physics for them will be the same as the physics for us. So we should just relax and not worry about a V-type or Independence-Day style alien invasion.
I've been saying what Hawking is saying all along. It is sheer folly to think that an advance race went through all the trouble to cross many, many light-years of intergalactic space just to say "Hi".
The enormity of the effort they would have to mount given the physics of space travel would be rather significant, and at great cost to themselves. The time it would take would depend on how close to the speed of light they can reach. And the physics of THAT means they would have to have the technology to convert matter into energy somehow. Or, it would take them many thousands of years to get here. Either way, it's NOT going to be a friendly housecall, no matter how you shake it.
The public has in its collective imagination all these SF stories that assumes some way has been found to avert the realities of the physics that we now understand. But I am not confident at all that a way can be found to make interstellar space travel "cheap and affordable", per se. Wormholes, if they even exist, require energies way beyond our imagination, way beyond any civilization would be able to harness, energies at galactic scales or worse, and even at that there is no clear understanding if they would actually be useful for travel.
We indeed understand a lot today about physics and cosmology, and nothing I've seen to this time would even hint at the merest possibility of anything that could possibly make interstellar travel "cheap and affordable" my mere civilizations throughout the cosmos
So, I deem it extremely unlikely that Humanity's fantasies about space travel will ever likely be true.
And thus, on that basis, I would firmly agree with Hawking.
But what is the significant difference in a person at 20 years 364 days vs. 20 years 365 days? Is there some sort of "maturity switch" that is magically flipped? Do the gods of time descend upon you and bestow you with something special?
That reminds me of a video I saw by Barats and Bereta. He calls an insurance company and argues about why it's all of a sudden cheaper when you turn 25 and why men cost more than women along with a couple other things. Check it out, it's pretty funny! (Some of the language used in it may be NSFW, so make sure you have headphones... he says "penis" quite a bit)
addendum: never allow a friend to say anything on facebook you wouldn't want shouted from the mountaintops.
More seriously, I think there is a different kind of privacy concern that comes from mass data-mining... it's not the "will I be scammed/blackmailed" but more of a "will I be blacklisted". Will potential employers, governments or other organizations begin to define a sort of "social credit score" that impacts my career, the rate at which I am "randomly" picked out for an audit, etc. I don't have any secrets worth hiding, but I have a terrible fear of "death by random red tape".
This is already going on. I've already had one place mention my postings on an online forum when I went in for the interview. They claimed not to take it against me, but I never got the job.
We want less of things we cannot entirely get rid of (alcohol related deaths, for example), and more of things we cannot have in infinite quantities (like money). We also try to find a balance between contradictory values (my freedom to consume alcohol vs your freedom to not be run over). So, yes, it becomes a trade-off. How important is it that I, and a large majority of people like me, get alcohol, or that you, and a small minority of people like you, don't die*? Those are value judgments that science and math cannot answer in an objective fashion.
As for age, that's just a proxy for social responsibility.
* That sounds cruel, but the same question can be asked replacing "alcohol" with driving, leaving the house, playing sports, or hundreds of other activities.
These are idealized suppositions, not actualities. Someone who drinks is not necessarily someone who drives. Drunk driving is still a problem despite the laws, and I know of a person or two injured by drunk drivers.
The behavior of driving after drinking is the problem; not the drinking itself, per se. Sleepy drivers are also a major problem, probably as high as drunk driving, but I'll have to recheck the stats on that.
It all gets back to getting people to think and act responsibly vs. making laws that you hope they will follow. The laws have all failed.
Instead of silly controls on drinking, how about making it so that if you get into an accident drunk, you are never allowed to drive again -- ever? I bet if you did it that way, you'd see an abrupt drop in drunk driving problem. Keep in mind also that people do drive drunk over the age of 21.
But then, that is the difference between law and mathematics, I suppose. 20 years and 364 days old, you're too young to drink, it's illegal, and there are sanctions. 20 years and 365 days -- 21 years old, and it's perfectly legal. But what is the significant difference in a person at 20 years 364 days vs. 20 years 365 days? Is there some sort of "maturity switch" that is magically flipped? Do the gods of time descend upon you and bestow you with something special?
The stupidity of these rules is even more obvious if you consider the differences between countries. In germany that magic maturity switch hast 3 settings: below 16: illegal, [16,18): legal to drink non-distilled beverages, 18+: allowed to drink anything. In France you not are allowed to buy alcohol below 18, but *drinking* alcohol is perfectly fine at any age. In Italy, buying alcohol is allowed at any age (in most parts of the country), but you are not allowed to be served drinks in public if under 16. In the UK, you have to be 16 to order a drink accompanying a meal, but 18 if you don't order a meal. If you are at home, you are allowed to drink from age 5 (sic).
And I've been to France and England; I did not notice drinking to be a problem in either country. Funny that. They have rules too, but obviously a lot less restrictive than the US, so why don't they have an alcohol problem with their youth? And why does the US put so much energy into "preventing" underage drinking (and getting nowhere with it?)
But then, that is the difference between law and mathematics, I suppose. 20 years and 364 days old, you're too young to drink, it's illegal, and there are sanctions. 20 years and 365 days -- 21 years old, and it's perfectly legal. But what is the significant difference in a person at 20 years 364 days vs. 20 years 365 days? Is there some sort of "maturity switch" that is magically flipped? Do the gods of time descend upon you and bestow you with something special?
So how would your fuzzy law work, would you create a maturity test that you have to pass so you can get a drinker's license? Then how do you define maturity? Would there be an appeals process if the powers that be decided you weren't yet ready?
I simply would not have a law at all restricting drinking age, and would instead encourage everyone to be sensible and make the right decisions for themselves and their kids. I've raised my kids this way and they turned out OK. I've been to other countries that do not have such draconian drinking laws and it didn't seem to be a problem for them.
If you trust people to be intelligent, they will usually make the right decisions -- and of course suffer the consequences if they don't. If you take away all personal responsibility and try to turn government into a "super-nanny", people will rebel and go straight for the things you're trying to keep them away from, nevermind never getting much experience in thinking and behaving responsibly. Commonsense, really. And of course, we here in the US never learn these simple lessons the rest of the world seems to understand.
Do you want your people always tugging at mommy's apron, or do you want them to make responsible decisions? You decide what world you want for yourselves.
The world would be a pretty big nightmare if you never defined something just because its meaning isn't completely definite. Of course there's no "maturity switch," but you HAVE TO draw a line somewhere...
Why must you "draw a line" somewhere? Like I said, I've been to a number of other countries where there were no such draconian restrictions on drinking, and I did not see scores of teens stammering around drunk in the streets. Just didn't happen.
Since maturity is an individual matter, the decision should be left up to the individuals, not to some "one size fits all" approach that fits none. We are NOT all the same. Some are mature enough at 18; others aren't even close to mature at 30. In doing a "one size fits all", you are generating numerous type 1 and type 2 errors.
In other words, you wind up either oppressing certain individuals, or not restraining other individuals that perhaps should be restrained.
And worse--creating that demarcation only attracts more attention to the issue, encouarging more behavior or activity of the very thing you're trying to stop.
Has the law made any measurable and discernable difference in underage drinking? I would think not. Instead, it encourages more of the same.
Same can be said for restriction on gun ownership. Stats show that gun-related crimes tends to be higher in those states per capita that are the most restrictive of gun ownership. On the other hand, states like New Hampshire -- where I reside-- have a very low gun crime rate. Why? Because anyone can own a gun here, and carry one openly in public, without any license or any such nonsense. Criminals here know this and thus curtail themselves.
It's all a matter of reality vs. perceptions of reality. Rationalism vs. Emotionalism. Science vs. Politics. Which side are you on?
I'm trying to say that voting to make big decisions on complex issues is the wrong approach. It's inefficient and is vulnerable to games such as lobbyists and collusions.Meanwhile, a thorough analysis on whether a thing should be done *at all* or not is almost never undertaken. And when they do attempt to do just that, it's usually a joke anyway.
I've been to other countries where they don't have a age drinking limit -- or don't take it seriously, anyway, and everything seemed to be OK.
The U.S. is much too paranoid about such things, really. Prohibition only attracts people to the thing you're trying to forbid them from. If you didn't make such a big deal of it, no one would care, anyway.
Long before the Internet became a household word, the accepted bit of "sage wisdom" was this:
Never say on the Internet what you wouldn't want shouted from mountaintops.
And never before has this been true. There is almost nothing on my Facebook profile I wouldn't mind being shouted from mountaintops. And for those few things I might care about are things I wouldn't want my Ex knowing about. But she hardly lacks the sophistication to discover these things.:-)
This reminds me about the bit with Verizon employees thinking that 0.002 dollars is the same thing as 0.002 cents.
Simply astounding how stupid some people can be. And nevermind education -- this is basic commonsense. 2/3 does not equal 0.66. 33/50 cannot be reduced to 2/3. Any 2nd-grader can tell you that. Duh.
They would need 138 votes. 137 is less than 2/3rds. 0.66 != 2/3. Plain and simple.
But I think it's amusing to say the least -- splitting hairs on a vote.
Really, the who notion of voting is severely flawed from a mathematical point of view. One extra vote makes all the difference between whether or not a bill is implemented. What is the intrinsic importance of making it 2/3rds? Why not 3/4ths? 1/2? 5/8ths? What is the significance of 2/3? Seems arbitrary.
But then, that is the difference between law and mathematics, I suppose. 20 years and 364 days old, you're too young to drink, it's illegal, and there are sanctions. 20 years and 365 days -- 21 years old, and it's perfectly legal. But what is the significant difference in a person at 20 years 364 days vs. 20 years 365 days? Is there some sort of "maturity switch" that is magically flipped? Do the gods of time descend upon you and bestow you with something special?
We humans make so much ado over meaningless arbitrary demarcations. Life situations are fuzzy and spread out, not the digital of "on/off". It all seems rather a bit silly! Splitting arbitrary hairs without real meaning.
Slashdot Mirror
So again, it's fine to say that voting is the wrong approach. But what's your method for making decisions?
Fractopoly
Admittedly a work in progress, but this should solve all the problems I've mentioned and many I have not.
I have also been saying this all along but I disagree with you on this point:
The enormity of the effort they would have to mount given the physics of space travel would be rather significant, and at great cost to themselves.
Who's to say that they just don't think differently than we do? Just because we have a mental block about a particular bit of physics does not mean that they do too. I find it hard to believe that if they think like we do but have solved the physics problem of near light-speed travel that they wouldn't be able to handle their own natural resources for their population.
Mental block? Think about it for a moment.
Never before have we had so many minds looking at this problem than in our entire history.Today we have a tremendous number of physicists, many yearning to venture into space, and none of them have come up with the solution.
Applying basic statistics here, the longer it takes, the less likely a solution will be found. If there were a way we would've found it by now, I think. Or be on the edge of finding it.
So the probability decreases asymptotically with time. Physics is physics. Baryonic matter is baryonic matter. There's only so much you can do with baryonic matter and electromagnetism and the strong and weak nuclear forces and gravitation. That is the set of blocks in our "lego construction set" we have to work with.
Now maybe something more exotic will be discovered by the LHC or future particle experiments, but I strongly doubt it. I don't think it's just that we can't "think out of the physics box". I'm saying that it is extremely unlikely that anything lies outside of that "physics box" that we'd (or any other civilization) find useful for interstellar space travel.
They would not bother to come to Earth to "replenish resources" as they would be able to do this much closer to home. And the ethics argument is very human-centric. Would they even have anything we'd recognize as "ethics?" What if they are more insectoid in nature? Like our ants? Hive-mind?
Just landing a man on Mars is an enormous effort for our civilization. Mars!!!! One planet over from us! And I'm confident we'll do that someday. And I'm almost equally as confident it'll be done by a country other than the United States. But I digress.
Now one datapoint -- the Human Civilization -- is hardly enough to bake a theory on, but you can at least see what challenges lie in the wake of becoming space-faring, let alone the chances of evolving an intelligent species that would even care. Humans have been around for 2 million years and only in my lifetime -- quite literally -- have we just put a foot in space.
My wild-ass guess is that perhaps there may be 5-10 other civilizations in our galaxy capable of space travel at all, and none of them have probably sent any of themselves past their own stellar systems. The physics for them will be the same as the physics for us. So we should just relax and not worry about a V-type or Independence-Day style alien invasion.
But I hear we'd make great pets anyway.
The enormity of the effort they would have to mount given the physics of space travel would be rather significant, and at great cost to themselves. The time it would take would depend on how close to the speed of light they can reach. And the physics of THAT means they would have to have the technology to convert matter into energy somehow. Or, it would take them many thousands of years to get here. Either way, it's NOT going to be a friendly housecall, no matter how you shake it.
The public has in its collective imagination all these SF stories that assumes some way has been found to avert the realities of the physics that we now understand. But I am not confident at all that a way can be found to make interstellar space travel "cheap and affordable", per se. Wormholes, if they even exist, require energies way beyond our imagination, way beyond any civilization would be able to harness, energies at galactic scales or worse, and even at that there is no clear understanding if they would actually be useful for travel.
We indeed understand a lot today about physics and cosmology, and nothing I've seen to this time would even hint at the merest possibility of anything that could possibly make interstellar travel "cheap and affordable" my mere civilizations throughout the cosmos
So, I deem it extremely unlikely that Humanity's fantasies about space travel will ever likely be true.
And thus, on that basis, I would firmly agree with Hawking.
But what is the significant difference in a person at 20 years 364 days vs. 20 years 365 days? Is there some sort of "maturity switch" that is magically flipped? Do the gods of time descend upon you and bestow you with something special?
That reminds me of a video I saw by Barats and Bereta. He calls an insurance company and argues about why it's all of a sudden cheaper when you turn 25 and why men cost more than women along with a couple other things. Check it out, it's pretty funny! (Some of the language used in it may be NSFW, so make sure you have headphones... he says "penis" quite a bit)
ROFL!!!!!
addendum: never allow a friend to say anything on facebook you wouldn't want shouted from the mountaintops. More seriously, I think there is a different kind of privacy concern that comes from mass data-mining ... it's not the "will I be scammed/blackmailed" but more of a "will I be blacklisted". Will potential employers, governments or other organizations begin to define a sort of "social credit score" that impacts my career, the rate at which I am "randomly" picked out for an audit, etc. I don't have any secrets worth hiding, but I have a terrible fear of "death by random red tape".
This is already going on. I've already had one place mention my postings on an online forum when I went in for the interview. They claimed not to take it against me, but I never got the job.
"And never before has this been [so?] true."
"...she hardly lacks the sophistication.." - so she HAS the sophistication???
Careful what you type, we might understand you ... NOT
Whoops! My old age is starting to show in my quoting of an old adage....
THOUGHT TO VERBAL TRANSLATOR UNIT DOWN FOR REPAIRS....
Well, you get the idea.
I was born on a Leap Day (Feb 29th) you insensitive clod.
My great and sincere apologies.
<snicker>
We want less of things we cannot entirely get rid of (alcohol related deaths, for example), and more of things we cannot have in infinite quantities (like money). We also try to find a balance between contradictory values (my freedom to consume alcohol vs your freedom to not be run over). So, yes, it becomes a trade-off. How important is it that I, and a large majority of people like me, get alcohol, or that you, and a small minority of people like you, don't die*? Those are value judgments that science and math cannot answer in an objective fashion.
As for age, that's just a proxy for social responsibility.
* That sounds cruel, but the same question can be asked replacing "alcohol" with driving, leaving the house, playing sports, or hundreds of other activities.
These are idealized suppositions, not actualities. Someone who drinks is not necessarily someone who drives. Drunk driving is still a problem despite the laws, and I know of a person or two injured by drunk drivers.
The behavior of driving after drinking is the problem; not the drinking itself, per se. Sleepy drivers are also a major problem, probably as high as drunk driving, but I'll have to recheck the stats on that.
It all gets back to getting people to think and act responsibly vs. making laws that you hope they will follow. The laws have all failed.
Instead of silly controls on drinking, how about making it so that if you get into an accident drunk, you are never allowed to drive again -- ever? I bet if you did it that way, you'd see an abrupt drop in drunk driving problem. Keep in mind also that people do drive drunk over the age of 21.
20 years and 365 days may not mean someone is 21 years old, we have leap years to make it fun.
Talk about REALLY splitting hairs!!!!!!
The Gods of time descend upon you and bestow the maturity switch (only in the USA) when you reach 21.
And then the Gods of alcohol descend, and flick that maturity switch back off again!!
And they all high-5 the gods of chaos!
But then, that is the difference between law and mathematics, I suppose. 20 years and 364 days old, you're too young to drink, it's illegal, and there are sanctions. 20 years and 365 days -- 21 years old, and it's perfectly legal. But what is the significant difference in a person at 20 years 364 days vs. 20 years 365 days? Is there some sort of "maturity switch" that is magically flipped? Do the gods of time descend upon you and bestow you with something special?
The stupidity of these rules is even more obvious if you consider the differences between countries. In germany that magic maturity switch hast 3 settings: below 16: illegal, [16,18): legal to drink non-distilled beverages, 18+: allowed to drink anything. In France you not are allowed to buy alcohol below 18, but *drinking* alcohol is perfectly fine at any age. In Italy, buying alcohol is allowed at any age (in most parts of the country), but you are not allowed to be served drinks in public if under 16. In the UK, you have to be 16 to order a drink accompanying a meal, but 18 if you don't order a meal. If you are at home, you are allowed to drink from age 5 (sic).
And I've been to France and England; I did not notice drinking to be a problem in either country. Funny that. They have rules too, but obviously a lot less restrictive than the US, so why don't they have an alcohol problem with their youth? And why does the US put so much energy into "preventing" underage drinking (and getting nowhere with it?)
So how would your fuzzy law work, would you create a maturity test that you have to pass so you can get a drinker's license? Then how do you define maturity? Would there be an appeals process if the powers that be decided you weren't yet ready?
I simply would not have a law at all restricting drinking age, and would instead encourage everyone to be sensible and make the right decisions for themselves and their kids. I've raised my kids this way and they turned out OK. I've been to other countries that do not have such draconian drinking laws and it didn't seem to be a problem for them.
If you trust people to be intelligent, they will usually make the right decisions -- and of course suffer the consequences if they don't. If you take away all personal responsibility and try to turn government into a "super-nanny", people will rebel and go straight for the things you're trying to keep them away from, nevermind never getting much experience in thinking and behaving responsibly. Commonsense, really. And of course, we here in the US never learn these simple lessons the rest of the world seems to understand.
Do you want your people always tugging at mommy's apron, or do you want them to make responsible decisions? You decide what world you want for yourselves.
The world would be a pretty big nightmare if you never defined something just because its meaning isn't completely definite. Of course there's no "maturity switch," but you HAVE TO draw a line somewhere...
Why must you "draw a line" somewhere? Like I said, I've been to a number of other countries where there were no such draconian restrictions on drinking, and I did not see scores of teens stammering around drunk in the streets. Just didn't happen.
In other words, you wind up either oppressing certain individuals, or not restraining other individuals that perhaps should be restrained.
And worse--creating that demarcation only attracts more attention to the issue, encouarging more behavior or activity of the very thing you're trying to stop.
Has the law made any measurable and discernable difference in underage drinking? I would think not. Instead, it encourages more of the same.
Same can be said for restriction on gun ownership. Stats show that gun-related crimes tends to be higher in those states per capita that are the most restrictive of gun ownership. On the other hand, states like New Hampshire -- where I reside-- have a very low gun crime rate. Why? Because anyone can own a gun here, and carry one openly in public, without any license or any such nonsense. Criminals here know this and thus curtail themselves.
It's all a matter of reality vs. perceptions of reality. Rationalism vs. Emotionalism. Science vs. Politics. Which side are you on?
And if you really want to get into it, there's leap seconds to consider.
I'm trying to say that voting to make big decisions on complex issues is the wrong approach. It's inefficient and is vulnerable to games such as lobbyists and collusions.Meanwhile, a thorough analysis on whether a thing should be done *at all* or not is almost never undertaken. And when they do attempt to do just that, it's usually a joke anyway.
The U.S. is much too paranoid about such things, really. Prohibition only attracts people to the thing you're trying to forbid them from. If you didn't make such a big deal of it, no one would care, anyway.
Oh, and if you DO screw up, nasty consequences. Really nasty.
That's more like it!!!!
Never say on the Internet what you wouldn't want shouted from mountaintops.
And never before has this been true. There is almost nothing on my Facebook profile I wouldn't mind being shouted from mountaintops. And for those few things I might care about are things I wouldn't want my Ex knowing about. But she hardly lacks the sophistication to discover these things. :-)
Simply astounding how stupid some people can be. And nevermind education -- this is basic commonsense. 2/3 does not equal 0.66. 33/50 cannot be reduced to 2/3. Any 2nd-grader can tell you that. Duh.
But I think it's amusing to say the least -- splitting hairs on a vote.
Really, the who notion of voting is severely flawed from a mathematical point of view. One extra vote makes all the difference between whether or not a bill is implemented. What is the intrinsic importance of making it 2/3rds? Why not 3/4ths? 1/2? 5/8ths? What is the significance of 2/3? Seems arbitrary.
But then, that is the difference between law and mathematics, I suppose. 20 years and 364 days old, you're too young to drink, it's illegal, and there are sanctions. 20 years and 365 days -- 21 years old, and it's perfectly legal. But what is the significant difference in a person at 20 years 364 days vs. 20 years 365 days? Is there some sort of "maturity switch" that is magically flipped? Do the gods of time descend upon you and bestow you with something special?
We humans make so much ado over meaningless arbitrary demarcations. Life situations are fuzzy and spread out, not the digital of "on/off". It all seems rather a bit silly! Splitting arbitrary hairs without real meaning.