Actually, since they're talking about orbits, I highly suspect they're talking *nautical* miles, since that's what one would naturally calculate with. Unless they calculated in kilometers, and then converted to statute miles. Too many questions about potentially sloppy media reporting to really say for sure.
>1) In the Elitzur-Vaidman thought experiment, >which part corresponds to the on-off switch?
The entire computer takes the place of the bomb(s). The "on-off switch" is really whether or not a photon enters the computer (thus running the program).
>2) Is the "non-running" experiment physically >performed differently from the normal method, >or is it a refinement made in the data?
The "experiment" only works when it is running. What's "non-running" is the computer, or perhaps more precisely, the computer program. What's physically different between when the program is running and when it isn't is whether or not a photon gets from the "experiment" into the computer. Thanks to QM, you can actually make the probability of the photon entering the computer so small that it never actually runs (or in the bomb-testing case, the bomb is never set off), but you can still infer the result the program would generate.
You bash Many-Worlds as "religion", but the Copenhagen interpretation is no less based on faith. There's no physical description for what a "wavefunction collapse" is, nor exactly what constitutes a "measurement" that causes such behavior. Most physicists believe Copenhagen, but Many-Worlds has been steadily growing in popularity and now rivals Copenhangen for the preferred interpretation.
The bottom line is that it's entirely justifiable to "believe" one theory is likely over another, even though we have no way to prove it yet. For example, the neutrino was accepted as fact before it could be measured, and indeed, for a while before physicists were even sure HOW it could be measured.
I am not a physicist, but I did spend a couple years in college studying it with an intent to become one, and I still maintain a layman's interest in the subject. Unfortunately, the math is beyond me. In any case, a lot of people are confused how this "works", and so I thought I'd try to help.
Basically, what you have here is something called "interaction-free measurement". Because of the quantum mechanics work, a particle's wavefunction evolves in a certain way over time, which then "collapses" when you measure it to something specific. How it evolves is not deterministic, but probabillistic. Because of this, you can set up a quantum system whereby when you place a certain object in it at a certain place, you can change the whole system given the nature of what you add to it.
In this case, you have a quantum computer composed of mirrors that runs on photons. The mirrors are pre-set in a certain configuration to run a certain "program". No electricity is needed to "run" the program; you just inject photons into it and it spits out results when you measure it.
What they've done here is then place that computer in a certain location in an existing quantum mechanical system, the one which the photon comes from. This photon is associated with its own set of mirrors and detectors, and because of where and how the computer is placed into it, it effects the larger system.
Thanks to QM, you can then tweak the exterior system so that the chances of a photon ever actually getting to the quantum computer are infinitessimally small. But because there's still a small chance, the very nature of the computer in that location allows you to determine the results it would generate, even though a photon never actually gets into it to "run" it.
So, it's not to misleading to say the program never actually "runs". And you could say the computer isn't "on", but since it's just a mechanical-optical construct it's always "on". More importantly, though, is that exactly where the "computer" is becomes blurred; while it's true that it's particular programming is self-contained, by hooking it up to the external quantum system, you're sort-of making it a part of the computer as well. The "work" is being done by the photons outside the computer; remove them and you don't get anything.
Wow, reading the above, I didn't really do a good job of explaining this at all. But basically, even though the quantum program never actually executes, you still need to create it, and you still need to put it in a certain spot so that its quantum effect on the world around it can still be measured, and from that, you can infer what the program would actually do.
The submitter got it slightly wrong. First off, Margaret Turnbull's team came up with a list of 17,129 potentially habitable star systems in 2003, and the work she has done since has been to refine that list.
What she announced yesterday were TWO "Top 5" lists. The first list includes the top 5 recommendations for a SETI search:
beta CVn HD 10307 HD 211415 18 Sco 51 Pegasus
The second list includes the top 5 recommendations for the TPF to examine for Earth-like planets:
epsilon Indi A epsilon Eridani omicron2 Eridani alpha Centauri B tau Ceti
Why the difference? Well, the second list is of much closer stars, and much more likely to have planets that TPF can find and image. The first list has stars that are a bit farther away, but are, generally speaking, more like our Sun.
However, those are by country, not by conqueror. I suppose the real measure would be, not what one single ruler ruled over the largest area, but what one single ruler grew his domain by the largest amount during his reign. And that was probably Genghis Khan.
Still, the type of resistance that the likes of Genghis Khan and Alexander the Great encountered in their campaigns is far different from that of, say, Napolean or Hitler. Back in the old days you could just drag an army through a few cities and claim the whole area as yours with very little actual "control" outside the urban areas, and sometimes not even then. The Roman Empire, on the other hand, was much more systematic and substantial in it's control over most areas, but even then at times large areas of the empire were really under Barbarian control with minimal Roman influence.
Another important attribute of a potential spaceport, aside from being near the equator, is to have a large body of water to the east of you, because usually you're going to be launching eastward (to take advantage of the Earth's rotation). So the UAE also benefits from having an eastern coastline. It doesn't have to be a particularly large body of water; just enough so any spent rocket stanges can be dropped off into the ocean. Alternatively, large stretches of empty land can also work.
Space Adventures isn't a "new" start-up to compete with Virgin Galactic. Space Adventures has been around since 1998, and was one of the first companies (in the modern era, anyway; not talking about old space sweepstakes from decades ago) to actually plan on sending tourists into space. It is Virgin Galactic that is the "new" start-up, competeing with the likes of Space Adventures.
That having been said, right now Space Adventures is little more than a middle man. They've been working with various other private companies (like Scaled Composites, SpaceX, Armadillo, etc.) to essentially use whatever suborbital rocket THEY build, to ferry passangers who reserve flights now with Space Adventures. Right now there are a few hundred people who've plunked down $100,000 or so for a reservation; I assume Space Adventures is just making money off of investments while waiting for a private company to finally actually produce a sub-orbital ship.
I should also point out the Space Adventures has been "anticipating" this first flight to take place as early as 2000, and have delayed it every year since then. Who knows if any spacecraft maker will ever actually complete a project such that Space Adventures reservations get filled. Virgin Galactic, on the other hand, has already locked up a deal with Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites, so it would seem unlikely that SpaceShipTwo would be available to take Space Adventures' reservations, unless Virgin Galactic buys out the contracts. And since Burt Rutan is currently the only guy who has demosntrated any success in this field so far, things don't look good for SA.
But that's just my opinion.
Bruce
PS - SA has managed to get a "finder's fee" for hooking up three private space tourists for trips to the ISS via the Russians, for $20M a pop. Frankly, I don't know HOW they managed that; seems to me I can phone up Rosaviacosmos directly. But maybe Russia prefers dealing exclusively through SA for potential private clients.
You've just trivialized a really, really difficult problem in philosophy: the problem of evil. It doesn't have a satisfactory answer, unlike what you're trying to say.
It's a perfectly satisfactory answer to me! Other philosophers and theologists have their own problems with it, but not me. I wouldn't say I "trivialized" it, though; I believe I summarized the most crucial aspects that were relevant to this particular context.
The problem arises from the fact that you've got three poorly-defined terms - omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent. Unsurprisingly, when you've got 3 poorly defined terms, you can get a contradiction.
Nope, that's not the problem here. When defined properly as they are meant, there's still a contradiction with free will and evil. One of them has to go.
If you properly define them, however, the contradiction can easily go away.
No, it doesn't. Perhaps if you IMPROPERLY define them...
One easy answer to your above statement is this: you're assuming that it is possible to construct a Universe without evil. While you can imagine one, that doesn't mean that it's possible. (I can imagine myself travelling faster than light. That doesn't mean it's possible).
This answer doesn't work, if you do some reading past your intro philosophy text. Assuming a Universe without evil is impossible because of Free Will requires an "actual choice" conception of Free Will, which doesn't make sense. If you had some other "reason" why evil must exist, you'd have to show that; you can't just say, "There might be one, so we're going to assume God is anyway for some reason we don't know."
In fact, it's easy to reconcile the three if you believe that our Universe is the one of least evil. Given the lack of handy alternative Universes, it's difficult to disprove this statement (or support it, but it's a belief, not a hypothesis).
Sure, but again, see above.:) And we can easily imagine universes less evil, as you yourself suggested before. You can't say, "Well, they may be impossible, so we'll just assume they are." You have to demonstrate that.
The other easy answers to your statement involve proper definitions of the other two terms.
I'm afraid not. Define them as you like; you can't avoid the problems (at least, not unless you define them down to such an extent that they mean something else entirely).
Easier contradictions along the same line involve the question "can God create a rock that he cannot lift?" The answer there along the same lines as before is "there is no such thing as a rock that God cannot lift."
This is actually a different line, involved God doing the logically impossible. I already addressed that earlier.
The problems all arise in poor semantics, and are all extraordinarily similar to problems in set theory (unsurprisingly) where the creation of an all-inclusive set fails the Zermelo-Frankel set construction axioms (specifically, the axiom of separation), leading to the wonderful statement "the set of all sets is not a set". The wording of the question above is almost entirely equivalent to Russell's paradox.
I have no real idea what you're referring to here, but I can assure you, it's not a semantic problem. Unfortunately I don't have a reference to the article I'm thinking of handy, so I understand if you don't take my word for it.
Semantics are an interesting diversion; to a certain degree, every argument is a semantic argument. But even if you properly define things in a way everyone can agree for the sake of the argument, the Problem of Evil still exists. It can, though, lead to insight into one's definitions -- perhaps God isn't strictly "omnipotent", but is still more powerful than anything else that exists; perhaps God isn't strictly "omnibenevolent", but is still nicer than anything else that exists, etc.
You make a good point, as others have pointed out. While I am not so firm a believer in SR that I don't think it can't be violated, I'm not willing to believe in some sort of global, instantaneous hidden variable theory. But it certainly is possible.:)
1) If God knows all causality, then he could have brought about everything into being originally AND have it, from science's view BE random and undetermined. The two are not mutally exclusive when God is the best pool player of all time, setting up the most elaborate shot of all time.
Unfortuantely, this idea of a "hidden determinism" is simply logically impossible, given what we currently know about quantum mechanics. Hidden variables simply don't work. And if you believe God can do the logically impossible, then there's really no reason to debate further, since you can literally believe anything.
But for those who believe that God, if he exists, must be constrained by logic, then hidden variable determinism is simply not possible.
2) God could act via influencing things in ways that, due to quantum outcomes, would indeed be like magic to us, and undetectable or testable (hence we can still believe in a God that does miracles)
Again, see above, but I suppose if one believes God's own actions are not deterministic, then he could influence everything via QM. But it's unclear how God could actually achieve any particular outcome; ultimately he'd be violating statistical properties that could be measured with enough sensitivity. But if we're talking about very small changes over eons, then it might be impossible to distinguish a God-influenced universe from simply a "luckier" one. See the Anthropic Principle for more thoughts along these lines.:)
3) Evolution itself has plenty of room for a valid new theology based on the idea that God would WANT life to be free of God's direct design. This is known as "liberation theology" and though many Catholics disdain it, it's perfectly plausible.
Actually, I don't think you meant "liberation" or "libertarian" theology, but simply so-called "liberal" theology, which is more of a fuzzy notion about God and theology where every viewpoint is potentially valid and all persons must engage in their own spiritual journey to find truths they and their community find seem to work for them within the context in which they live. In some ways, it's Protestantism to the extreme, although the irony is that modern Christian fundamentalism has Protestant roots, where the authority of the majority simply substitutes for that of the Pope when interpreting scripture. But I digress...
To get back to the notion that God has a teleological purpose in mind for man, well, I'm sure you know that's well-explored territory in postmodern Christianity (a form of liberal theology itself). But I feel it necessary to point out the conflict between God's omnipotence, Free Will, and the Existance of Evil. Unless one believes in the Actual Choice conception of Free Will (which seems unpalatable, if not illogical), then one of the above three has to give, and we know it's not Evil. And given that Free Will is an essential element to Liberal theology, it would seem that God's omnipotence, even within the logical realm, must be discarded, and in that case one has to question just to what extent God can influence the universe teleologically.
In retrospect, I got way more out of the Philosophy of Religion classes in college than I did from Calculus...
Yeah, I'm okay with that. Most missions have $X invested when they get canned, so there's "wasted" money in every cancellation.
Dawn may not be "trivial" science, but I really can't rank it up there in terms of scientific importance with, say, a Europa Orbiter, or a Terrestial Planet Finder, or Mars Sample Return, or Messenger. Any way you slice it, characterizing Ceres, etc. just isn't as important as the other missions.
I'm not opposed to Dawn, but on my list of space probe priorities, it's probably down around #17.
Yeah, I'm okay with that. Most missions have $X invested when they get canned, so there's "wasted" money in every cancellation.
Dawn may not be "trivial" science, but I really can't rank it up there in terms of scientific importance with, say, a Europa Orbiter, or a Terrestial Planet Finder, or Mars Sample Return, or Messenger. Any way you slice it, characterizing Ceres, etc. just isn't as important as the other missions.
I'm not opposed to Dawn, but on my list of space probe priorities, it's probably down around #17.
Bruce
And he's right, in that yes, sometimes things CAN appear to be moving faster than light at first calculation. I don't think it would work exactly as he described with an object coming straight at you, however.
And he's right, in that yes, sometimes things CAN appear to be moving faster than light at first calculation. I don't think it would work exactly as he described with an object coming straight at you, however.
I actually don't mind the space science is getting cut, if it means getting the CEV up in time for STS retirement. The problem I have is it's being cut to cover "overruns" in the CEV. Really, the Shuttle isn't at fault here... you have to do X number of Shuttle missions before retirement, any way you slice it, so it's not really something you can adjust much in terms of funding. I'm more annoyed that the CEV is costing too much, or perhaps, being forced out the door too quickly.
I also don't like WHERE the cuts are going in space science. I'm actually okay with Dawn getting canned (although not officially yet); it was costing too much and its more of a "nice to have" mission than something that you'd want to prioritize. But Space Interferometry Mission? Terrrestial Planet Finder? Europe Orbiter? Mars Telecommunications Orbiter? These are the top things that SHOULD be on the space sicence agenda, along with James Webb Telescope, Messenger, and New Horizons, as well as continued support for existing probes. If there's not enough money for that, then I think it's the CEV that should "give", not space science.
I hope the unfunded projects simply get delayed 2-5 years, rather than killed completely. They're all projects we NEED to do at some point.
Those people bend any environmental issue into a caricature.
No, the environmentalist movement largely did this to itself.
Spotted owls were just a representative of the entire temperate rainforest ecosystem they lived in, they weren't the whole story.
Of course they were the whole story! If they weren't, then there was another species in the "temperature rainforest ecosystem", as you call it, which would have been put forth as endangered. But no, it was the spotted owl that was at issue.
More importantly, it was not even that the spotted owl was endangered in old growth forests, thus putting a roadblock to logging there. It was that they were found to live in second and third growth forests, too, and rather than sensibly taking this to mean that we could now go back and log old growth forests responsibly without endangering the spotted owl, it led to the shutting down of logging in the newer forests as well, thus killing the logging industry and putting tens of thousands of people into poverty. No wonder the Democrats like this; the more jobs they eliminate with their "caring" lesgislation, the more poor people they create whom they can then turn around and court for votes in return for federal aid dollars, which they just steal from rich people.
It still took no time for the stereotype of the whacky environmentalist who wants to ruin a whole industry to protect the spotted owl to spring up.
That's because environmentalists ARE wacky people who want to ruin entire industries and send mankind back to the stone age. Perhaps you don't feel that way, and I sympathize with you and other moderates of your movement who simply want reasonable conservation measure. But the "leaders" of the environmentalist movement, the ones getting on TV and running organizations like Greenpeace and PETA and so on, really DO want to eliminate entire industries, free all animals from any human involvement, ban the eating of meat and fish, etc. And so long as you keep supporting such extremeists in order to further your cause, you'll be ridiculed like the crazy whackjobs you are.
If you don't believe me, you should check out a few episodes of Penn & Teller: Bullshit. It'll set you straight.
Even convincing that sort of person to preserve "hot spots" like this one is an uphill battle, leaving alone general conservation issues. In the US, the Republican Party that produced Teddy Roosevelt is long gone, having been split in the 1910s...
Teddy Roosevelt, while respecting the environment, nevertheless participated in expeditions that killed THOUSANDS of animals, including endangered ones. Your fellow environmentalists wouldn't like his kind of conservation any more than current Republicans. Do you seriously think Teddy wouldn't want to drill in ANWR?
No, it wasn't me who emailed Abe, but I'd love to know who did and get in touch with them.:) I haven't had any luck tracking down old SPS folks; the Purdue Alumni Association has been no help, and there's limited data on Classmates.com. Anyway, feel free to have Abe email me as well; I won't respond right away but I'll try to get in touch later this week.
I do hope to come back to Purdue someday, and when I do I will certainly stop by the lounge to see the old place.:)
Your memory does serve you wrong. They had pit steel at the time. The bulk of armor in the day was bronze, due largely to availability. And no, it was lack of iron, not lack of iron technology. Doesn't matter if you know how to work it if you don't have much to speak of.
Actually, lack of iron wasn't really important, either. Contrary to popular belief, cold-worked tin bronze is actually SUPERIOR to wrought iron in both hardness and holding an edge. Only when iron making developed carburization, essentially steel, did iron become superior, and that happened after King Tut's death.
Another theory is that it was actually a lack of ready supplies of tin (perhaps due to the collapse of the Minoan civilization) to make bronze that prompted the switch to iron, despite its inferiorities.
The loveseat, nicknamed MoJo, has been a fixture in the lounge of the physics building for 15 years and was beginning to fall apart, SPS treasurer Abraham Spinelli said.
Hey, I helped BUY that couch 15 years ago... actually I think it was 16 or 17 (it was 1989 or 1990). We put in new carpet as well. The Purdue SPS started making lots of money once we started selling soda pop, and that's what enabled us to make so many renovations to the lounge. I was SPS Secretary for a while. I must have spent 12 hours a day or more in the SPS Lounge on some days.
The real credit to our success lay with then-Treasurer Marshall K. Patterson, who was a financial wizard. Marshall, if you're out there, drop me a line; I still have your copy of Dieties and Demigods. (Anyone else from the Purdue SPS from 1988-1991 who remembers me, feel free to drop me a line as well!)
There never been an exact cost released by NASA for what it takes to launch a shuttle, but I'm quite sure that it is very much more than the 500 million they said before the Columbia disaster. Some say more than a billion dollars.
Sure they have, but the thing is the cost varies depending on how many launches you make in a year. The bulk of the cost of the shuttle program is simply keeping the shuttles maintained and refurbished between flights; the incremental cost of an actual flight itself is not that large. Rocket fuel isn't THAT expensive, and you don't lay off your controllers between flights.
The bottom line is, depending on how you slice it, a typical shuttle flight "costs the government" between $200M and $2B per year. Some years, the government spends billions and don't get any flights; other years, it can get 6-8. The incremental cost of adding an additional shuttle flight used to be around $100M; it's probably more now, and we can't really launch more than about 4 missions a year anyway at current levels.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, since they're talking about orbits, I highly suspect they're talking *nautical* miles, since that's what one would naturally calculate with. Unless they calculated in kilometers, and then converted to statute miles. Too many questions about potentially sloppy media reporting to really say for sure.
Bruce
>1) In the Elitzur-Vaidman thought experiment,
>which part corresponds to the on-off switch?
The entire computer takes the place of the bomb(s). The "on-off switch" is really whether or not a photon enters the computer (thus running the program).
>2) Is the "non-running" experiment physically
>performed differently from the normal method,
>or is it a refinement made in the data?
The "experiment" only works when it is running. What's "non-running" is the computer, or perhaps more precisely, the computer program. What's physically different between when the program is running and when it isn't is whether or not a photon gets from the "experiment" into the computer. Thanks to QM, you can actually make the probability of the photon entering the computer so small that it never actually runs (or in the bomb-testing case, the bomb is never set off), but you can still infer the result the program would generate.
Bruce
Actually, there is a possible test of Many-Worlds:
http://www.hedweb.com/manworld.htm#detect
You bash Many-Worlds as "religion", but the Copenhagen interpretation is no less based on faith. There's no physical description for what a "wavefunction collapse" is, nor exactly what constitutes a "measurement" that causes such behavior. Most physicists believe Copenhagen, but Many-Worlds has been steadily growing in popularity and now rivals Copenhangen for the preferred interpretation.
The bottom line is that it's entirely justifiable to "believe" one theory is likely over another, even though we have no way to prove it yet. For example, the neutrino was accepted as fact before it could be measured, and indeed, for a while before physicists were even sure HOW it could be measured.
Bruce
That's 37, not 42!
Bruce
I am not a physicist, but I did spend a couple years in college studying it with an intent to become one, and I still maintain a layman's interest in the subject. Unfortunately, the math is beyond me. In any case, a lot of people are confused how this "works", and so I thought I'd try to help.
- testing_problem
Someone else already posted an useful background URL with is a good place to start:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elitzur-Vaidman_bomb
Basically, what you have here is something called "interaction-free measurement". Because of the quantum mechanics work, a particle's wavefunction evolves in a certain way over time, which then "collapses" when you measure it to something specific. How it evolves is not deterministic, but probabillistic. Because of this, you can set up a quantum system whereby when you place a certain object in it at a certain place, you can change the whole system given the nature of what you add to it.
In this case, you have a quantum computer composed of mirrors that runs on photons. The mirrors are pre-set in a certain configuration to run a certain "program". No electricity is needed to "run" the program; you just inject photons into it and it spits out results when you measure it.
What they've done here is then place that computer in a certain location in an existing quantum mechanical system, the one which the photon comes from. This photon is associated with its own set of mirrors and detectors, and because of where and how the computer is placed into it, it effects the larger system.
Thanks to QM, you can then tweak the exterior system so that the chances of a photon ever actually getting to the quantum computer are infinitessimally small. But because there's still a small chance, the very nature of the computer in that location allows you to determine the results it would generate, even though a photon never actually gets into it to "run" it.
So, it's not to misleading to say the program never actually "runs". And you could say the computer isn't "on", but since it's just a mechanical-optical construct it's always "on". More importantly, though, is that exactly where the "computer" is becomes blurred; while it's true that it's particular programming is self-contained, by hooking it up to the external quantum system, you're sort-of making it a part of the computer as well. The "work" is being done by the photons outside the computer; remove them and you don't get anything.
Wow, reading the above, I didn't really do a good job of explaining this at all. But basically, even though the quantum program never actually executes, you still need to create it, and you still need to put it in a certain spot so that its quantum effect on the world around it can still be measured, and from that, you can infer what the program would actually do.
Bruce
The submitter got it slightly wrong. First off, Margaret Turnbull's team came up with a list of 17,129 potentially habitable star systems in 2003, and the work she has done since has been to refine that list.
b le.shtml
What she announced yesterday were TWO "Top 5" lists. The first list includes the top 5 recommendations for a SETI search:
beta CVn
HD 10307
HD 211415
18 Sco
51 Pegasus
The second list includes the top 5 recommendations for the TPF to examine for Earth-like planets:
epsilon Indi A
epsilon Eridani
omicron2 Eridani
alpha Centauri B
tau Ceti
Why the difference? Well, the second list is of much closer stars, and much more likely to have planets that TPF can find and image. The first list has stars that are a bit farther away, but are, generally speaking, more like our Sun.
And here's a useful link:
http://www.aaas.org/news/releases/2006/0218habita
Bruce
... what are the Stargate addresses for those ten? :)
Bruce
http://www.unconfirmedsources.com/?itemid=1516&cat id=9
Bruce
http://www.hostkingdom.net/earthrul.html
However, those are by country, not by conqueror. I suppose the real measure would be, not what one single ruler ruled over the largest area, but what one single ruler grew his domain by the largest amount during his reign. And that was probably Genghis Khan.
Still, the type of resistance that the likes of Genghis Khan and Alexander the Great encountered in their campaigns is far different from that of, say, Napolean or Hitler. Back in the old days you could just drag an army through a few cities and claim the whole area as yours with very little actual "control" outside the urban areas, and sometimes not even then. The Roman Empire, on the other hand, was much more systematic and substantial in it's control over most areas, but even then at times large areas of the empire were really under Barbarian control with minimal Roman influence.
Bruce
Another important attribute of a potential spaceport, aside from being near the equator, is to have a large body of water to the east of you, because usually you're going to be launching eastward (to take advantage of the Earth's rotation). So the UAE also benefits from having an eastern coastline. It doesn't have to be a particularly large body of water; just enough so any spent rocket stanges can be dropped off into the ocean. Alternatively, large stretches of empty land can also work.
Bruce
Space Adventures isn't a "new" start-up to compete with Virgin Galactic. Space Adventures has been around since 1998, and was one of the first companies (in the modern era, anyway; not talking about old space sweepstakes from decades ago) to actually plan on sending tourists into space. It is Virgin Galactic that is the "new" start-up, competeing with the likes of Space Adventures.
That having been said, right now Space Adventures is little more than a middle man. They've been working with various other private companies (like Scaled Composites, SpaceX, Armadillo, etc.) to essentially use whatever suborbital rocket THEY build, to ferry passangers who reserve flights now with Space Adventures. Right now there are a few hundred people who've plunked down $100,000 or so for a reservation; I assume Space Adventures is just making money off of investments while waiting for a private company to finally actually produce a sub-orbital ship.
I should also point out the Space Adventures has been "anticipating" this first flight to take place as early as 2000, and have delayed it every year since then. Who knows if any spacecraft maker will ever actually complete a project such that Space Adventures reservations get filled. Virgin Galactic, on the other hand, has already locked up a deal with Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites, so it would seem unlikely that SpaceShipTwo would be available to take Space Adventures' reservations, unless Virgin Galactic buys out the contracts. And since Burt Rutan is currently the only guy who has demosntrated any success in this field so far, things don't look good for SA.
But that's just my opinion.
Bruce
PS - SA has managed to get a "finder's fee" for hooking up three private space tourists for trips to the ISS via the Russians, for $20M a pop. Frankly, I don't know HOW they managed that; seems to me I can phone up Rosaviacosmos directly. But maybe Russia prefers dealing exclusively through SA for potential private clients.
It's a perfectly satisfactory answer to me! Other philosophers and theologists have their own problems with it, but not me. I wouldn't say I "trivialized" it, though; I believe I summarized the most crucial aspects that were relevant to this particular context.
The problem arises from the fact that you've got three poorly-defined terms - omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent. Unsurprisingly, when you've got 3 poorly defined terms, you can get a contradiction.
Nope, that's not the problem here. When defined properly as they are meant, there's still a contradiction with free will and evil. One of them has to go.
If you properly define them, however, the contradiction can easily go away.
No, it doesn't. Perhaps if you IMPROPERLY define them...
One easy answer to your above statement is this: you're assuming that it is possible to construct a Universe without evil. While you can imagine one, that doesn't mean that it's possible. (I can imagine myself travelling faster than light. That doesn't mean it's possible).
This answer doesn't work, if you do some reading past your intro philosophy text. Assuming a Universe without evil is impossible because of Free Will requires an "actual choice" conception of Free Will, which doesn't make sense. If you had some other "reason" why evil must exist, you'd have to show that; you can't just say, "There might be one, so we're going to assume God is anyway for some reason we don't know."
In fact, it's easy to reconcile the three if you believe that our Universe is the one of least evil. Given the lack of handy alternative Universes, it's difficult to disprove this statement (or support it, but it's a belief, not a hypothesis).
Sure, but again, see above. :) And we can easily imagine universes less evil, as you yourself suggested before. You can't say, "Well, they may be impossible, so we'll just assume they are." You have to demonstrate that.
The other easy answers to your statement involve proper definitions of the other two terms.
I'm afraid not. Define them as you like; you can't avoid the problems (at least, not unless you define them down to such an extent that they mean something else entirely).
Easier contradictions along the same line involve the question "can God create a rock that he cannot lift?" The answer there along the same lines as before is "there is no such thing as a rock that God cannot lift."
This is actually a different line, involved God doing the logically impossible. I already addressed that earlier.
The problems all arise in poor semantics, and are all extraordinarily similar to problems in set theory (unsurprisingly) where the creation of an all-inclusive set fails the Zermelo-Frankel set construction axioms (specifically, the axiom of separation), leading to the wonderful statement "the set of all sets is not a set". The wording of the question above is almost entirely equivalent to Russell's paradox.
I have no real idea what you're referring to here, but I can assure you, it's not a semantic problem. Unfortunately I don't have a reference to the article I'm thinking of handy, so I understand if you don't take my word for it.
Semantics are an interesting diversion; to a certain degree, every argument is a semantic argument. But even if you properly define things in a way everyone can agree for the sake of the argument, the Problem of Evil still exists. It can, though, lead to insight into one's definitions -- perhaps God isn't strictly "omnipotent", but is still more powerful than anything else that exists; perhaps God isn't strictly "omnibenevolent", but is still nicer than anything else that exists, etc.
Bruce
You make a good point, as others have pointed out. While I am not so firm a believer in SR that I don't think it can't be violated, I'm not willing to believe in some sort of global, instantaneous hidden variable theory. But it certainly is possible. :)
Bruce
Unfortuantely, this idea of a "hidden determinism" is simply logically impossible, given what we currently know about quantum mechanics. Hidden variables simply don't work. And if you believe God can do the logically impossible, then there's really no reason to debate further, since you can literally believe anything.
But for those who believe that God, if he exists, must be constrained by logic, then hidden variable determinism is simply not possible.
2) God could act via influencing things in ways that, due to quantum outcomes, would indeed be like magic to us, and undetectable or testable (hence we can still believe in a God that does miracles)
Again, see above, but I suppose if one believes God's own actions are not deterministic, then he could influence everything via QM. But it's unclear how God could actually achieve any particular outcome; ultimately he'd be violating statistical properties that could be measured with enough sensitivity. But if we're talking about very small changes over eons, then it might be impossible to distinguish a God-influenced universe from simply a "luckier" one. See the Anthropic Principle for more thoughts along these lines. :)
3) Evolution itself has plenty of room for a valid new theology based on the idea that God would WANT life to be free of God's direct design. This is known as "liberation theology" and though many Catholics disdain it, it's perfectly plausible.
Actually, I don't think you meant "liberation" or "libertarian" theology, but simply so-called "liberal" theology, which is more of a fuzzy notion about God and theology where every viewpoint is potentially valid and all persons must engage in their own spiritual journey to find truths they and their community find seem to work for them within the context in which they live. In some ways, it's Protestantism to the extreme, although the irony is that modern Christian fundamentalism has Protestant roots, where the authority of the majority simply substitutes for that of the Pope when interpreting scripture. But I digress...
To get back to the notion that God has a teleological purpose in mind for man, well, I'm sure you know that's well-explored territory in postmodern Christianity (a form of liberal theology itself). But I feel it necessary to point out the conflict between God's omnipotence, Free Will, and the Existance of Evil. Unless one believes in the Actual Choice conception of Free Will (which seems unpalatable, if not illogical), then one of the above three has to give, and we know it's not Evil. And given that Free Will is an essential element to Liberal theology, it would seem that God's omnipotence, even within the logical realm, must be discarded, and in that case one has to question just to what extent God can influence the universe teleologically.
In retrospect, I got way more out of the Philosophy of Religion classes in college than I did from Calculus...
Bruce
Yeah, I'm okay with that. Most missions have $X invested when they get canned, so there's "wasted" money in every cancellation.
Dawn may not be "trivial" science, but I really can't rank it up there in terms of scientific importance with, say, a Europa Orbiter, or a Terrestial Planet Finder, or Mars Sample Return, or Messenger. Any way you slice it, characterizing Ceres, etc. just isn't as important as the other missions.
I'm not opposed to Dawn, but on my list of space probe priorities, it's probably down around #17.
Bruce
Yeah, I'm okay with that. Most missions have $X invested when they get canned, so there's "wasted" money in every cancellation. Dawn may not be "trivial" science, but I really can't rank it up there in terms of scientific importance with, say, a Europa Orbiter, or a Terrestial Planet Finder, or Mars Sample Return, or Messenger. Any way you slice it, characterizing Ceres, etc. just isn't as important as the other missions. I'm not opposed to Dawn, but on my list of space probe priorities, it's probably down around #17. Bruce
He's talking about this:
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/S peedOfLight/Superluminal/superluminal.html
And he's right, in that yes, sometimes things CAN appear to be moving faster than light at first calculation. I don't think it would work exactly as he described with an object coming straight at you, however.
Bruce
He's talking about this:
S peedOfLight/Superluminal/superluminal.html
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/
And he's right, in that yes, sometimes things CAN appear to be moving faster than light at first calculation. I don't think it would work exactly as he described with an object coming straight at you, however.
Bruce
I actually don't mind the space science is getting cut, if it means getting the CEV up in time for STS retirement. The problem I have is it's being cut to cover "overruns" in the CEV. Really, the Shuttle isn't at fault here... you have to do X number of Shuttle missions before retirement, any way you slice it, so it's not really something you can adjust much in terms of funding. I'm more annoyed that the CEV is costing too much, or perhaps, being forced out the door too quickly.
I also don't like WHERE the cuts are going in space science. I'm actually okay with Dawn getting canned (although not officially yet); it was costing too much and its more of a "nice to have" mission than something that you'd want to prioritize. But Space Interferometry Mission? Terrrestial Planet Finder? Europe Orbiter? Mars Telecommunications Orbiter? These are the top things that SHOULD be on the space sicence agenda, along with James Webb Telescope, Messenger, and New Horizons, as well as continued support for existing probes. If there's not enough money for that, then I think it's the CEV that should "give", not space science.
I hope the unfunded projects simply get delayed 2-5 years, rather than killed completely. They're all projects we NEED to do at some point.
Bruce
No, the environmentalist movement largely did this to itself.
Spotted owls were just a representative of the entire temperate rainforest ecosystem they lived in, they weren't the whole story.Of course they were the whole story! If they weren't, then there was another species in the "temperature rainforest ecosystem", as you call it, which would have been put forth as endangered. But no, it was the spotted owl that was at issue.
More importantly, it was not even that the spotted owl was endangered in old growth forests, thus putting a roadblock to logging there. It was that they were found to live in second and third growth forests, too, and rather than sensibly taking this to mean that we could now go back and log old growth forests responsibly without endangering the spotted owl, it led to the shutting down of logging in the newer forests as well, thus killing the logging industry and putting tens of thousands of people into poverty. No wonder the Democrats like this; the more jobs they eliminate with their "caring" lesgislation, the more poor people they create whom they can then turn around and court for votes in return for federal aid dollars, which they just steal from rich people.
It still took no time for the stereotype of the whacky environmentalist who wants to ruin a whole industry to protect the spotted owl to spring up.That's because environmentalists ARE wacky people who want to ruin entire industries and send mankind back to the stone age. Perhaps you don't feel that way, and I sympathize with you and other moderates of your movement who simply want reasonable conservation measure. But the "leaders" of the environmentalist movement, the ones getting on TV and running organizations like Greenpeace and PETA and so on, really DO want to eliminate entire industries, free all animals from any human involvement, ban the eating of meat and fish, etc. And so long as you keep supporting such extremeists in order to further your cause, you'll be ridiculed like the crazy whackjobs you are.
If you don't believe me, you should check out a few episodes of Penn & Teller: Bullshit. It'll set you straight.
Even convincing that sort of person to preserve "hot spots" like this one is an uphill battle, leaving alone general conservation issues. In the US, the Republican Party that produced Teddy Roosevelt is long gone, having been split in the 1910s...Teddy Roosevelt, while respecting the environment, nevertheless participated in expeditions that killed THOUSANDS of animals, including endangered ones. Your fellow environmentalists wouldn't like his kind of conservation any more than current Republicans. Do you seriously think Teddy wouldn't want to drill in ANWR?
Bruce
I do hope to come back to Purdue someday, and when I do I will certainly stop by the lounge to see the old place. :)
Bruce
Actually, lack of iron wasn't really important, either. Contrary to popular belief, cold-worked tin bronze is actually SUPERIOR to wrought iron in both hardness and holding an edge. Only when iron making developed carburization, essentially steel, did iron become superior, and that happened after King Tut's death.
Another theory is that it was actually a lack of ready supplies of tin (perhaps due to the collapse of the Minoan civilization) to make bronze that prompted the switch to iron, despite its inferiorities.
Bruce
Hey, I helped BUY that couch 15 years ago... actually I think it was 16 or 17 (it was 1989 or 1990). We put in new carpet as well. The Purdue SPS started making lots of money once we started selling soda pop, and that's what enabled us to make so many renovations to the lounge. I was SPS Secretary for a while. I must have spent 12 hours a day or more in the SPS Lounge on some days.
The real credit to our success lay with then-Treasurer Marshall K. Patterson, who was a financial wizard. Marshall, if you're out there, drop me a line; I still have your copy of Dieties and Demigods. (Anyone else from the Purdue SPS from 1988-1991 who remembers me, feel free to drop me a line as well!)
Bruce
Well there's "the future" and then there's THE FUTURE...
Bruce
Sure they have, but the thing is the cost varies depending on how many launches you make in a year. The bulk of the cost of the shuttle program is simply keeping the shuttles maintained and refurbished between flights; the incremental cost of an actual flight itself is not that large. Rocket fuel isn't THAT expensive, and you don't lay off your controllers between flights. The bottom line is, depending on how you slice it, a typical shuttle flight "costs the government" between $200M and $2B per year. Some years, the government spends billions and don't get any flights; other years, it can get 6-8. The incremental cost of adding an additional shuttle flight used to be around $100M; it's probably more now, and we can't really launch more than about 4 missions a year anyway at current levels.
Bruce