1. Why would you assume that a country is the entity which will begin mining the moon?
2. Why would this be any different from any other energy market? Just because Russia is sitting on the lions share of natural gas doesn't mean Europe doesn't benefit. As a customer to someone else who did the mining I still benefit in getting a product and supply and demand dictates that everyone would benefit as a result (except in the case of a monopoly when the whole system breaks down).
1) I just used a country as an example, but whether a country or a corporation, it really doesn't change the questions. 2) Because Russia is drilling their own natural gas. It would be different if Europe sat on the lion's share of the natural gas but didn't have the resources to mine it and Russia drilled at an angle from their territory to get to Europe's natural gas, effectively stealing it, would it not? I don't know about natural gas, but it is usually considered illegal to do it with oil. So, back to the questions, it's all about ownership. In the Russia slant drilling example. If the natural gas is under Europe is it right for Russia to slant drill to get at it and then sell it back to Europe who is the original owner? And what about their natural gas the Russia sells to China and others? Shouldn't Europe receive a piece of the pie? Obviously they benefit because they receive the energy, but that isn't the point, they should be benefiting because it is their natural resource that is be sold world wide in excess of what they need for themself.
So when country X goes to the moon and mines the helium, are they going to come back and distribute it to all of the world's inhabitants or does it just belong to country X? I'm curious, because before mining the moon began, it would seem that we would need to know who owns the moon? Does it belong to the first one who gets there? Does it belong equally to all people? Or will it belong to some mining company?
I have no idea, but I think it's ultimately just an academic exercise. If a single country is able to immediately leap from initial mining operations on the moon to total dominance of the entire surface before anyone else can even start, that implies such an advanced level of technology that the rest of the world would be grovelling at their feet anyway.
Not really. In the 60s two countries vied to be the first to land a man on the moon. It is likely that a similar race to the moon would occur among major countries while most of the world's countries would not be able to compete. Regardless, the question of who owns the moon is a serious question (there are even treaties related to it). Just because somebody has the technology to exploit a resource doesn't mean it is morally right to do so if the resource belongs to somebody else. History is full of examples of exactly that happening. Might doesn't make right. And usually the one exhibiting might is doing so because they know they aren't right.
While I don't know of any cases involving peanut butter, there are plenty involving perfume and cologne where an employee is allergic to strong smells from these substances and other employees are prohibited from using them at the workplace (or even teachers if a student has the condition). Violation of the prohibition costs one their job. By definition, if you lose your job for bringing the banned substance to work because of an allergy another employee has, you are in fact being held accountable [for your actions].
Are you fucking serious?!?!?
Just because one person has some sort of deficiency or problem that limits everyone else in the whole building!?!?!
Why is the onus on all the normal people, and not on the person with the isolated problem???
Geez, why are we always catering to the lowest common denominator for everything these days?
I've never heard of such a thing, and I've worked in govt offices in the past which would likely be the nutjob jobsites that would try to enforce such a thing....
Because the needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many.:) Seriously, though, it falls under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
The earth coalesced from a swirling ball of gas and dust. Which had various quantities of these elements. Then yadda yadda, lifeorms started popping up. Of which man was one of the later variants.
Man needs this fishbowl of earth to survive in the universe, just like goldfish need a fishbowl to survive in our living room. Imagine if the goldfish could get to the refrigerator.
We're just trying to get to the refrigerator. Or maybe even go outside.
The earth is not the center of the universe. It's a smallish planet in the solar system. It's part of the universe. Just like man. Eventually the sun will red giant. If we don't go outside - leave the womb - we're finished. A fruit that died on the vine. Seems like we should be working on that problem now.
And the problem if mankind dies on the vine? Are we that critical to the universe that the universe will suffer if the human race is no longer here? There are two possibilities one, there is other intelligent life in the universe or two, there is not. If there is, then we are not unique, so our loss would not be a loss at all. If there is not other intelligent life, then our loss makes no difference as what we are trying to preserve is of no use, nobody but us cares about it -- there is nobody to leave a legacy for.
In either case, when mankind ceases to exist, our actual existence will not even have been a blink of the eye on the cosmic time scale. The Catholics say "Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return." That phrase was coined long before we knew much about the universe, but has more truth in it than many people realize. At some point in the future, the cosmic dust that created the human race will be returned to the universe. What we are will go on, in new forms, new stars, new planets, maybe even new lifeforms. But who we are will cease and there won't be anybody to care.
Eh, some of the trends are unsustainable projected into the long run.
That said, projected into the long run, there's a 100% chance of the Earth being destroyed.
First I think you mean 100% probability of the earth being destroyed, not chance. 2nd, it is not 100%. There is always a chance, no matter how remote that something happens and the earth is left intact, regardless of the scenario. There is never a 100% certainty of the earths destruction. It's pretty damn close, but not close enough.
What exactly is wrong with the proposition that mining Helium-3 on the moon is evil
Seriously? How about the fact that it privileges an inanimate, lifeless celestial body over the development and happiness of the human race? Most environmental concerns focus on the danger (and immorality) of fucking up biospheres, but the moon has never supported life, and never will (unless we alter it even more radically).
So when country X goes to the moon and mines the helium, are they going to come back and distribute it to all of the world's inhabitants or does it just belong to country X? I'm curious, because before mining the moon began, it would seem that we would need to know who owns the moon? Does it belong to the first one who gets there? Does it belong equally to all people? Or will it belong to some mining company? Because if you get that first basic question wrong then potentionally everything after that becomes immoral because it infringes not on the privelige of some inaimate lifeless celestial body, but real people, here on earth. And if it is immoral, then technically one could consider it evil (although that is a strong word).
Presumably we would have that little detail figured out by the time we would be in a position to do large scale mining on the moon.
Or a cost benefit ratio of how much its going to cost per unit of energy retrieved compared to other energy sources. No doubt helium 3 is there for the taking. It's just really costly to get there and take it and transport it back. Figure in the energy required to launch transport ships back and forth and it makes one even wonder whether this would be a net increase in energy reserves or not.
Maybe Cass can use the same explanation to explain our $16 Trillion debt.
Actually the inaction on the debt and on climate change are problem closely related. Both are huge problems that are going to take people to change their habits now. Both won't have payoffs until sometime in the future. In both, most of us today will be long gone before any of the proposed solutions have a chance of making any real change.
So, why no change on the debt or climate? It's simple there is no immediate payoff for us today. To make the necessary changes, we need people to suffer (meaning change our habits) now for some hope for payoff well beyond our lifetime. Simply put, we are to selfish to give up something today for our children's children tomorrow, let alone if they are somebody else's kids that we don't even know in low lying areas in South East Asia.
It's not psychology per say, it's all about what makes us happy now, not tomorrow.
If i want to bring a peanut butter sandwich to work with full knowledge that Bob from accounting is allergic, the only reasonable action i must take is to make sure that I don't purposely expose Bob my delicious sandwich. If i get into an argument with Bob and be punches me in the face and steals my lunch and proceeds to wolf it down in front of me, i am not responsible for his actions.
There has to be a cut off where personal responsibility takes over.
If someone is driving and decides to ignore the laws and text, phone, do their makeup, drink, jump out the car, light themselves on fire, it is not the responsibility of a third party to ensure they don't do any of those things. I've never heard the defense of "Sorry, i was too distracted by that hot blonde in the other lane" being used to defend their reckless behavior. There are hundreds of distractions when driving. It is up to the driver to focus on the task at hand..
There have been cases and people successfully prosecuted for taking off their blouses (women of course) while going down the freeway and that act distracting drivers and causing an accident. A key part of such prosecutions is that the defendant, the woman who took off their blouse, knew or should have know it would have been a distraction on the freeway.
How is that different from what the court is saying here: If you know that somebody is driving and you continue to engage them in text messaging while they are driving, you can be held liable?
Most people consider text messaging to be asynchronous communication to be responded to when the receiver is able. The only occasion I can think of where the sender ought to be liable is if they were the driver's employer and required the driver to respond quickly.
It would depend on the facts. If I text you where are you? And you respond with I'm driving to Philadelphia, then I am aware that you are driving a car. I could text you Call me when you get there. Or I can continue texting you with whatever I wanted to talk about.
It is that latter case the court is talking about. 1) I know you are driving and 2) I continue to engage in a texting conversation. Since texting and driving is illegal in that jurisdiction, I am participating in the crime with you, with full knowledge since I know you are driving and therefore, if an accident ensues, I have contributed to that accident.
The slippery slope in all of this is what if I don't know you are driving. I have still participated in the crime and contributed to the accident. The courts have not looked favorably on get away drivers for a crime who use the defense that they didn't know a crime was going on. How would a jury respond when looking for somebody to blame in a tragic accident caused by texting?
> Well, if you put it like that, then yeah, the court's decision would be nonsensical. But the court didn't say that. The court said that you share responsibility if you have good reasons to believe the text receiver is not merely driving, but will read the text while driving.
You repeating the nonsense doesn't make it any less moronic.
The driver has free will. The driver as moral awareness. The driver is a legal adult. The driver is capable of being in control of himself and the situation.
It's the driver's duty to not do dangerous stupid shit.
You demean all of us when you try to strip people of moral responsibility for their actions. You turn us into something less than human.
Everything you say about the driver applies to you, too. If you know that the other person is driving a car then why are you continuing to text them? Yes, you could send them a text that says, when you get home, call (or whatever), but the moment they respond and you respond back, you are now a willing participant in their distraction.
I don't view this a stripping people of moral responsibility, but just the opposite. Just like you shouldn't text and drive, if you know somebody is driving, don't text them, either. It is illegal for a 16 year old to drink, but nobody would argue that offering one a beer doesn't make you liable because the 16 year old has free will and could refuse the beer. Likewise, the court is saying doing something you know is wrong makes you liable.
I have been wondering for some time now why peanut allergies are virtually unknown in China and were unknown in The Netherlands until say, 15 years ago. Now, it's every third kid that has a pretty dangerous allergy. And it's not a case of overdiagnosing either.
My hypothesis is that while crop growers are very good at hardening the fruits and vegetables against disease and insects, they forget (or rather: ignore) the fact that the reason fruit and vegetables are resistant is because they are using a frightful array of chemical defenses. And those defenses include proteins, most of them not being analyzed since we're talking "harmless and healthy vegetables". I think that if we'd analyze the chemical defenses in the current crops really carefully, we'd probably discover some nasty surprises.
And I agree that it sounds as if US schools are overreacting horribly. Noone will choke to death from touching a peanut butter sandwhich. They won't like it (blisters will likely occur), but that will just teach 'em not to touch places where peanut butter sandwiches have been. But don't blame the kids with allergies for the way your school "handles" this problem. Although this does depend on the age of the kids. At age 3-, you can't expect the kids to take care of this issue themselves. At age 10, I sure as hell expect kids to watch out what they put in their mouth.
That could be, but more likely it isn't the case. I agree that it isn't overdiagnosing, either, but it is just better diagnosing. People have many allergies, very few lead to anaphylactic shock. I for one am allergic to peanuts and yet I eat them all the time and enjoy peanut butter. There is a difference between having an allergy and having a life threatening allergy. Today, kids get test routinely for allergies. As such, they are now diagnosed as having these allergies, whereas previous you would only get tested if you were having actual allergy problems. Most people are allergic to a myriad of things. If the symptoms are problematic you take allergy pills. If the symptoms are deadly, you avoid the source all together and carry an epi pen just in case.
Probably the reason you don't hear of many peanut allergies in China is that like the US, most people do not have a serious allergy to them but unlike the US, most Chinese people don't get the medical care and testing that occurs in the US to determine if they are even mildly allergic.
Bringing a delicious peanut butter sandwich to work for lunch is totally innocuous. Doing so with the full knowledge that Bob from Accounting is lethally allergic is...not.
I can't be held accountable if Bob steals my lunch, then eats it.
Apparently you can in Joisey
You would be wrong, even in Joisey. It depends on if you have been warned. If Bob has a deadly allergy to peanuts and even the slightest contact is enough to trigger a lethal attack and (this is the important part) the employees in the office have been notified of the problem and that they are not to bring peanut butter onto the premises, you can be held accountable.
While I don't know of any cases involving peanut butter, there are plenty involving perfume and cologne where an employee is allergic to strong smells from these substances and other employees are prohibited from using them at the workplace (or even teachers if a student has the condition). Violation of the prohibition costs one their job. By definition, if you lose your job for bringing the banned substance to work because of an allergy another employee has, you are in fact being held accountable [for your actions].
Whether the other employee, Bob in the AC's post, takes the sandwich or not, does not remove your accountability for your own action. For all Bob knew, he might argue, it was supposed to be an almond butter sandwich, not peanut butter. It doesn't matter, if you didn't bring the banned substance in the first place, Bob would never have had the opportunity to come into contact with it.
You're missing the point, which is that Dropbox did bad by obfuscating the code, because they should have made it Open Source right from the start and focus on selling their server-side hosting services. Keeping client code proprietary when it involves security and encryption of possibly confidential data is virtually always bad practise (outside the realm of embedded military applications using tamper-proof chips, perhaps).
"Always" is a strong word to use and speaks more of ideology than of reality.
What we realized is that genome sequencing technology is plummeting in cost and increasing in speed independent of our competition. Today, companies can do this for less than $5,000 per genome, in a few days or less - and are moving quickly towards the goals we set for the prize.
If you look at the graphs at https://www.genome.gov/sequencingcosts/ what it actually shows is that after plummeting faster than Moore's Law for 3 years between 2008 and 2011, the cost has been basically flat for the past year and a half, probably due to lack of competition.
Or it could be simple supply and demand and the market, so to speak, has reached equilibrium. With cuts in federal research dollars, manufacturers of sequencers can either lower the price of their wares or leave the price alone and not sell any. It's basic econ 101.
The winner will retire, one productive scientist less.
Very few scientists are in it for the money. Many would love $10M to invest in a lab or fund their Nobel dream research. Many scientists love their work. It is like the Iowa farmer who won five million in the lottery. A reporter asked him what he would do with the money. His answer was "I'll probably just keep farming till it is gone."
Oh, such altruistic scientists. Scientists most definitely are in it for the money. It's called publish or perish. It's just that they don't get to benefit directly from the money, their university does and in return they get to keep their job. But, don't kid yourself, they have bills to pay, kids to send to college and plain old greed, just like everybody else. If that weren't the case, there wouldn't need to be an XPrize to begin with.
so Microsoft wants only the agile and extreme to survive, while the slackers get left behind. makes sense to me.
Sounds more to me like Microsoft is making consumers be beta testers for all of the 3rd party software out there, and putting a much higher support burden on the independent software developers since they can't test their software on the released OS until the public does.
Or, since Microsoft developers have access to the code, their apps can be tested and ready to go when 8.1 releases, giving them an advantage over their competition. Of course, they would have to hope that the Justice Department forgets that they sanctioned Microsoft in the past for that very behavior.
Science cannot answer that question, but philosophy can.
The role of philosophy is to raise interesting questions, and that is important.
However, philosophy is not equipped to answer anything.
Philosophy answers questions that deal with why or should (and their derivatives). Science deals with how and what (and their derivatives).
Can we do such and such is a scientific question. Should we do such and such is a philosophical question. If philosophy isn't equipped to answer such questions, then what is?
Yes, it is true that epistemologists and philosophers of science very badly want testimony to count as a justification of a belief (in the technical sense), but that was not my point. The beauty of science is that ultimately, testimony does not HAVE to be the justification of a scientific claim: we have reason and empirical tests to fulfil that function. In epistemically less rigorous contexts, like our everyday lives, testimony is perfectly fine. I am willing to accept that there is water in a bottle I buy from a store simply because it's labelled as being water. What's special about science is that we can crank up the epistemic rigour all the way and (in principle) find out for ourselves whether a claim that is being made is true or false. There are plenty of domains where this is not the case. Religion (which you mentioned) is one, and so are certain social situations (unless you're willing to involve, say, Jerry Springer). In practice we often do end up relying on testimony, but, again, the beauty of science is that I (you (we, as a species)) don't have to.
It's not that they want testimony to count as a justification of a belief, but without actually conducting the experiments or working the proofs or experiencing the phenomenon in question, the human person simply cannot know something to be true and must rely on the testimony of others -- or simply we cannot know but must believe something to be true.
Most people would say the earth revolves around the sun is a true statement. But, how do we actually know that? Have we made the observations and done the math to verify that? Most likely no, we accept it based on what experts in the field have told us. When enough experts in a field agree, we accept it, but that doesn't mean that we as individuals "know" it to be true, instead we can only "believe" it to be true. Most people would agree that the earth is round and there is a lot of evidence to support this such as seeing the curvature of the horizon if you are high enough, However, unless you are one of the view to go into space and see it for yourself, from the vantage point of being on earth, you can not know with certainty that it is round, that is unless you do a lot of math and calculations, which most of us have not done, so instead we rely on the testimony of others and we "believe" that the earth is round.
This is exactly how religion works, too. Followers believe based on the testimony of others. Now there is one big distinction. With science, most of us can, at least for rudimentary things, conduct the experiments or observations ourselves so that we could actually "know" something to be true instead of believing based on the testimony of others. While that is technically true, most of us never do, and instead we walk around thinking we know all of this stuff, when in fact, we know very little, but we do believe a lot.
So, I would challenge your very last statement by saying that instead of we often end up relying on testimony that we almost always rely on testimony, even when given the option of not having to.
The problem today is that scientists can't do anything without acceptance from the moral masses. Want to cure cancer, you can, just don't you dare have a cage full of diseased mice in your lab because that is wrong. Want to cure genetic diseases, you can, just don't you dare try to use stem cells because some people consider that abortion. Want to solve world hunger, you can, just don't you dare splice a tomato gene with an eggplant. Want to prove the world is round, you can, just be respectful of those that believe in 2000 years of lies and intolerance to truth.
I agree there are obvious scientific research that is immoral and unacceptable, but the problem now is that if this study is a truthful indication of the state of scientific research today, then science will fail, and with it, our civilization will collapse.
It is a common theory that the Roman Empire fell is because in essence stupid people out grew the ability for the intellects to solve their problems or improve social conditions. I'm afraid the trend is repeating. FUD is the new God.
There has been a push during the last 50 years to de-emphasize the study of philosophy when pursuing degrees in college and universities. Many have put forth that the lack of basic understanding that comes from studying the great philosophers is what leads to the issues you point out for both scientists and the public. In short, what you are really asking is at what point is too much too much? Where does the line get drawn between moral and immoral? Science cannot answer that question, but philosophy can.
Alas, we don't require philosophy to be studied in most of our degree programs any more, so people make invalid philosophical arguments with potentially devastating results. Even primitive man understood that when throwing a spear a small error in initial trajectory led to a large error at the target. With modern societies lack of sound philosophical underpinnings, the possibility for those small errors is great and the likelihood of large errors or unintended consequences therefore even greater.
The beauty of science is that you don't have to believe in it, in the sense of 'to believe' meaning 'to accept on someone else's authority.' I point this out because I have a feeling I would be ranked extremely highly on this 'belief in science' scale while I consider myself to not believe in science at all; the authority of science derives from empirical testing and reason, not belief.
The beauty of science is that unless you have conducted the research yourself or performed the proofs yourself, you in fact are accepting things on someone else's authority. In philosophical parlance this is known as accepting the testimony of others. It holds true whether one relies on the testimony of learned scientists or religious leaders. In both cases, a belief system is created, codified, passed down and accepted by others.
Unless one does the empirical testing for themself, they do not have first had knowledge of the phenomenon being tested but rely on the testimony of others. How do we know the earth revolves around the sun? Most of us have not down the equations or performed the experiments to prove it, we have excepted the testimony of others. Granted if enough experts testify to the same thing it adds credence to their testimony, but still, we are accepting something as true as an act of faith that the others are correct.
As such, while science does involve empirical testing, its authority relies very much on the testimony of those who conduct that testing, in otherwords, belief. In the end, almost everything we "know" we don't actually know, but instead we believe - including where the authority of science comes from.
Disclaimer: I am not saying scientific belief is the same as religious belief nor am I raising religious inquiry upto the level of scientific inquiry, so please do not go there.
Yes, the church condemned him, based on scripture, that's all the church, by its own rules could condemn somebody on. However, where do you find that he was going to be burned? Even in the English translation of the sentence, it talks about imprisonment for three years. Basing one's arguments solely on the the wording of the sentence is a bit like Galileo basing his proof on Copernicus' argument. You would think with the plethora of detailed documentation around Galileo and the Catholic Church one would not rely on the formulaic exhortation of the sentence as the sole evidence of what had transpired any more than the not guilty verdict in the OJ Simpson trial adequately summarizes what transpired there.
You are free to interpret history any way you like, but the accepted historical account is not what you imply in your post as evidenced by the numerous writings of the event at the time and since. Even wikipedia (which I know is not a definitive source) discusses it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei.
Could you elaborate on why LibreOffice is so much worse than OpenOffice? I use LibreOffice mostly for opening documents, or making some spreadsheets, so I have no idea what you're talking about (I mean, I'm no poweruser, for any serious documents I use TeX).
There is nothing wrong with OpenOffice it is developed, per the linked article, mainly be developers from IBM. LibreOffice is developed mainly by the original OpenOffice developers. Right now there are two similar code bases, but with time they will drift apart and follow the direction and vision of their developers and sponsors. The article about Andrew in the summary has more information on it and other Apache projects.
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2 questions:
1. Why would you assume that a country is the entity which will begin mining the moon?
2. Why would this be any different from any other energy market? Just because Russia is sitting on the lions share of natural gas doesn't mean Europe doesn't benefit. As a customer to someone else who did the mining I still benefit in getting a product and supply and demand dictates that everyone would benefit as a result (except in the case of a monopoly when the whole system breaks down).
1) I just used a country as an example, but whether a country or a corporation, it really doesn't change the questions.
2) Because Russia is drilling their own natural gas. It would be different if Europe sat on the lion's share of the natural gas but didn't have the resources to mine it and Russia drilled at an angle from their territory to get to Europe's natural gas, effectively stealing it, would it not? I don't know about natural gas, but it is usually considered illegal to do it with oil. So, back to the questions, it's all about ownership. In the Russia slant drilling example. If the natural gas is under Europe is it right for Russia to slant drill to get at it and then sell it back to Europe who is the original owner? And what about their natural gas the Russia sells to China and others? Shouldn't Europe receive a piece of the pie? Obviously they benefit because they receive the energy, but that isn't the point, they should be benefiting because it is their natural resource that is be sold world wide in excess of what they need for themself.
So when country X goes to the moon and mines the helium, are they going to come back and distribute it to all of the world's inhabitants or does it just belong to country X? I'm curious, because before mining the moon began, it would seem that we would need to know who owns the moon? Does it belong to the first one who gets there? Does it belong equally to all people? Or will it belong to some mining company?
I have no idea, but I think it's ultimately just an academic exercise. If a single country is able to immediately leap from initial mining operations on the moon to total dominance of the entire surface before anyone else can even start, that implies such an advanced level of technology that the rest of the world would be grovelling at their feet anyway.
Not really. In the 60s two countries vied to be the first to land a man on the moon. It is likely that a similar race to the moon would occur among major countries while most of the world's countries would not be able to compete. Regardless, the question of who owns the moon is a serious question (there are even treaties related to it). Just because somebody has the technology to exploit a resource doesn't mean it is morally right to do so if the resource belongs to somebody else. History is full of examples of exactly that happening. Might doesn't make right. And usually the one exhibiting might is doing so because they know they aren't right.
Are you fucking serious?!?!?
Just because one person has some sort of deficiency or problem that limits everyone else in the whole building!?!?!
Why is the onus on all the normal people, and not on the person with the isolated problem???
Geez, why are we always catering to the lowest common denominator for everything these days?
I've never heard of such a thing, and I've worked in govt offices in the past which would likely be the nutjob jobsites that would try to enforce such a thing....
Because the needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many. :)
Seriously, though, it falls under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
The elements in our bodies come from exploding stars.
The earth coalesced from a swirling ball of gas and dust. Which had various quantities of these elements. Then yadda yadda, lifeorms started popping up. Of which man was one of the later variants.
Man needs this fishbowl of earth to survive in the universe, just like goldfish need a fishbowl to survive in our living room. Imagine if the goldfish could get to the refrigerator.
We're just trying to get to the refrigerator. Or maybe even go outside.
The earth is not the center of the universe. It's a smallish planet in the solar system. It's part of the universe. Just like man. Eventually the sun will red giant. If we don't go outside - leave the womb - we're finished. A fruit that died on the vine. Seems like we should be working on that problem now.
And the problem if mankind dies on the vine? Are we that critical to the universe that the universe will suffer if the human race is no longer here? There are two possibilities one, there is other intelligent life in the universe or two, there is not. If there is, then we are not unique, so our loss would not be a loss at all. If there is not other intelligent life, then our loss makes no difference as what we are trying to preserve is of no use, nobody but us cares about it -- there is nobody to leave a legacy for.
In either case, when mankind ceases to exist, our actual existence will not even have been a blink of the eye on the cosmic time scale. The Catholics say "Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return." That phrase was coined long before we knew much about the universe, but has more truth in it than many people realize. At some point in the future, the cosmic dust that created the human race will be returned to the universe. What we are will go on, in new forms, new stars, new planets, maybe even new lifeforms. But who we are will cease and there won't be anybody to care.
Cross out fusion generator and add in any of many alternatives.
My favorite would be flying car.
They have flying cars. One even won a Darwin Award.
Eh, some of the trends are unsustainable projected into the long run.
That said, projected into the long run, there's a 100% chance of the Earth being destroyed.
First I think you mean 100% probability of the earth being destroyed, not chance. 2nd, it is not 100%. There is always a chance, no matter how remote that something happens and the earth is left intact, regardless of the scenario. There is never a 100% certainty of the earths destruction. It's pretty damn close, but not close enough.
What exactly is wrong with the proposition that mining Helium-3 on the moon is evil
Seriously? How about the fact that it privileges an inanimate, lifeless celestial body over the development and happiness of the human race? Most environmental concerns focus on the danger (and immorality) of fucking up biospheres, but the moon has never supported life, and never will (unless we alter it even more radically).
So when country X goes to the moon and mines the helium, are they going to come back and distribute it to all of the world's inhabitants or does it just belong to country X? I'm curious, because before mining the moon began, it would seem that we would need to know who owns the moon? Does it belong to the first one who gets there? Does it belong equally to all people? Or will it belong to some mining company? Because if you get that first basic question wrong then potentionally everything after that becomes immoral because it infringes not on the privelige of some inaimate lifeless celestial body, but real people, here on earth. And if it is immoral, then technically one could consider it evil (although that is a strong word).
Presumably we would have that little detail figured out by the time we would be in a position to do large scale mining on the moon.
Or a cost benefit ratio of how much its going to cost per unit of energy retrieved compared to other energy sources. No doubt helium 3 is there for the taking. It's just really costly to get there and take it and transport it back. Figure in the energy required to launch transport ships back and forth and it makes one even wonder whether this would be a net increase in energy reserves or not.
Maybe Cass can use the same explanation to explain our $16 Trillion debt.
Actually the inaction on the debt and on climate change are problem closely related. Both are huge problems that are going to take people to change their habits now. Both won't have payoffs until sometime in the future. In both, most of us today will be long gone before any of the proposed solutions have a chance of making any real change.
So, why no change on the debt or climate? It's simple there is no immediate payoff for us today. To make the necessary changes, we need people to suffer (meaning change our habits) now for some hope for payoff well beyond our lifetime. Simply put, we are to selfish to give up something today for our children's children tomorrow, let alone if they are somebody else's kids that we don't even know in low lying areas in South East Asia.
It's not psychology per say, it's all about what makes us happy now, not tomorrow.
That's a awful sense of logic.
If i want to bring a peanut butter sandwich to work with full knowledge that Bob from accounting is allergic, the only reasonable action i must take is to make sure that I don't purposely expose Bob my delicious sandwich. If i get into an argument with Bob and be punches me in the face and steals my lunch and proceeds to wolf it down in front of me, i am not responsible for his actions.
There has to be a cut off where personal responsibility takes over.
If someone is driving and decides to ignore the laws and text, phone, do their makeup, drink, jump out the car, light themselves on fire, it is not the responsibility of a third party to ensure they don't do any of those things. I've never heard the defense of "Sorry, i was too distracted by that hot blonde in the other lane" being used to defend their reckless behavior. There are hundreds of distractions when driving. It is up to the driver to focus on the task at hand..
There have been cases and people successfully prosecuted for taking off their blouses (women of course) while going down the freeway and that act distracting drivers and causing an accident. A key part of such prosecutions is that the defendant, the woman who took off their blouse, knew or should have know it would have been a distraction on the freeway.
How is that different from what the court is saying here: If you know that somebody is driving and you continue to engage them in text messaging while they are driving, you can be held liable?
Most people consider text messaging to be asynchronous communication to be responded to when the receiver is able. The only occasion I can think of where the sender ought to be liable is if they were the driver's employer and required the driver to respond quickly.
It would depend on the facts. If I text you where are you? And you respond with I'm driving to Philadelphia, then I am aware that you are driving a car. I could text you Call me when you get there. Or I can continue texting you with whatever I wanted to talk about.
It is that latter case the court is talking about. 1) I know you are driving and 2) I continue to engage in a texting conversation. Since texting and driving is illegal in that jurisdiction, I am participating in the crime with you, with full knowledge since I know you are driving and therefore, if an accident ensues, I have contributed to that accident.
The slippery slope in all of this is what if I don't know you are driving. I have still participated in the crime and contributed to the accident. The courts have not looked favorably on get away drivers for a crime who use the defense that they didn't know a crime was going on. How would a jury respond when looking for somebody to blame in a tragic accident caused by texting?
> Well, if you put it like that, then yeah, the court's decision would be nonsensical. But the court didn't say that. The court said that you share responsibility if you have good reasons to believe the text receiver is not merely driving, but will read the text while driving.
You repeating the nonsense doesn't make it any less moronic.
The driver has free will. The driver as moral awareness. The driver is a legal adult. The driver is capable of being in control of himself and the situation.
It's the driver's duty to not do dangerous stupid shit.
You demean all of us when you try to strip people of moral responsibility for their actions. You turn us into something less than human.
Everything you say about the driver applies to you, too. If you know that the other person is driving a car then why are you continuing to text them? Yes, you could send them a text that says, when you get home, call (or whatever), but the moment they respond and you respond back, you are now a willing participant in their distraction.
I don't view this a stripping people of moral responsibility, but just the opposite. Just like you shouldn't text and drive, if you know somebody is driving, don't text them, either. It is illegal for a 16 year old to drink, but nobody would argue that offering one a beer doesn't make you liable because the 16 year old has free will and could refuse the beer. Likewise, the court is saying doing something you know is wrong makes you liable.
I have been wondering for some time now why peanut allergies are virtually unknown in China and were unknown in The Netherlands until say, 15 years ago. Now, it's every third kid that has a pretty dangerous allergy. And it's not a case of overdiagnosing either.
My hypothesis is that while crop growers are very good at hardening the fruits and vegetables against disease and insects, they forget (or rather: ignore) the fact that the reason fruit and vegetables are resistant is because they are using a frightful array of chemical defenses. And those defenses include proteins, most of them not being analyzed since we're talking "harmless and healthy vegetables". I think that if we'd analyze the chemical defenses in the current crops really carefully, we'd probably discover some nasty surprises.
And I agree that it sounds as if US schools are overreacting horribly. Noone will choke to death from touching a peanut butter sandwhich. They won't like it (blisters will likely occur), but that will just teach 'em not to touch places where peanut butter sandwiches have been. But don't blame the kids with allergies for the way your school "handles" this problem. Although this does depend on the age of the kids. At age 3-, you can't expect the kids to take care of this issue themselves. At age 10, I sure as hell expect kids to watch out what they put in their mouth.
That could be, but more likely it isn't the case. I agree that it isn't overdiagnosing, either, but it is just better diagnosing. People have many allergies, very few lead to anaphylactic shock. I for one am allergic to peanuts and yet I eat them all the time and enjoy peanut butter. There is a difference between having an allergy and having a life threatening allergy. Today, kids get test routinely for allergies. As such, they are now diagnosed as having these allergies, whereas previous you would only get tested if you were having actual allergy problems. Most people are allergic to a myriad of things. If the symptoms are problematic you take allergy pills. If the symptoms are deadly, you avoid the source all together and carry an epi pen just in case.
Probably the reason you don't hear of many peanut allergies in China is that like the US, most people do not have a serious allergy to them but unlike the US, most Chinese people don't get the medical care and testing that occurs in the US to determine if they are even mildly allergic.
I can't be held accountable if Bob steals my lunch, then eats it.
Apparently you can in Joisey
You would be wrong, even in Joisey. It depends on if you have been warned. If Bob has a deadly allergy to peanuts and even the slightest contact is enough to trigger a lethal attack and (this is the important part) the employees in the office have been notified of the problem and that they are not to bring peanut butter onto the premises, you can be held accountable.
While I don't know of any cases involving peanut butter, there are plenty involving perfume and cologne where an employee is allergic to strong smells from these substances and other employees are prohibited from using them at the workplace (or even teachers if a student has the condition). Violation of the prohibition costs one their job. By definition, if you lose your job for bringing the banned substance to work because of an allergy another employee has, you are in fact being held accountable [for your actions].
Whether the other employee, Bob in the AC's post, takes the sandwich or not, does not remove your accountability for your own action. For all Bob knew, he might argue, it was supposed to be an almond butter sandwich, not peanut butter. It doesn't matter, if you didn't bring the banned substance in the first place, Bob would never have had the opportunity to come into contact with it.
You're missing the point, which is that Dropbox did bad by obfuscating the code, because they should have made it Open Source right from the start and focus on selling their server-side hosting services. Keeping client code proprietary when it involves security and encryption of possibly confidential data is virtually always bad practise (outside the realm of embedded military applications using tamper-proof chips, perhaps).
"Always" is a strong word to use and speaks more of ideology than of reality.
What we realized is that genome sequencing technology is plummeting in cost and increasing in speed independent of our competition. Today, companies can do this for less than $5,000 per genome, in a few days or less - and are moving quickly towards the goals we set for the prize.
If you look at the graphs at https://www.genome.gov/sequencingcosts/ what it actually shows is that after plummeting faster than Moore's Law for 3 years between 2008 and 2011, the cost has been basically flat for the past year and a half, probably due to lack of competition.
Or it could be simple supply and demand and the market, so to speak, has reached equilibrium. With cuts in federal research dollars, manufacturers of sequencers can either lower the price of their wares or leave the price alone and not sell any. It's basic econ 101.
The winner will retire, one productive scientist less.
Very few scientists are in it for the money. Many would love $10M to invest in a lab or fund their Nobel dream research. Many scientists love their work. It is like the Iowa farmer who won five million in the lottery. A reporter asked him what he would do with the money. His answer was "I'll probably just keep farming till it is gone."
Oh, such altruistic scientists. Scientists most definitely are in it for the money. It's called publish or perish. It's just that they don't get to benefit directly from the money, their university does and in return they get to keep their job. But, don't kid yourself, they have bills to pay, kids to send to college and plain old greed, just like everybody else. If that weren't the case, there wouldn't need to be an XPrize to begin with.
so Microsoft wants only the agile and extreme to survive, while the slackers get left behind. makes sense to me.
Sounds more to me like Microsoft is making consumers be beta testers for all of the 3rd party software out there, and putting a much higher support burden on the independent software developers since they can't test their software on the released OS until the public does.
Or, since Microsoft developers have access to the code, their apps can be tested and ready to go when 8.1 releases, giving them an advantage over their competition. Of course, they would have to hope that the Justice Department forgets that they sanctioned Microsoft in the past for that very behavior.
The role of philosophy is to raise interesting questions, and that is important.
However, philosophy is not equipped to answer anything.
Philosophy answers questions that deal with why or should (and their derivatives). Science deals with how and what (and their derivatives).
Can we do such and such is a scientific question. Should we do such and such is a philosophical question. If philosophy isn't equipped to answer such questions, then what is?
Yes, it is true that epistemologists and philosophers of science very badly want testimony to count as a justification of a belief (in the technical sense), but that was not my point. The beauty of science is that ultimately, testimony does not HAVE to be the justification of a scientific claim: we have reason and empirical tests to fulfil that function. In epistemically less rigorous contexts, like our everyday lives, testimony is perfectly fine. I am willing to accept that there is water in a bottle I buy from a store simply because it's labelled as being water. What's special about science is that we can crank up the epistemic rigour all the way and (in principle) find out for ourselves whether a claim that is being made is true or false. There are plenty of domains where this is not the case. Religion (which you mentioned) is one, and so are certain social situations (unless you're willing to involve, say, Jerry Springer). In practice we often do end up relying on testimony, but, again, the beauty of science is that I (you (we, as a species)) don't have to.
It's not that they want testimony to count as a justification of a belief, but without actually conducting the experiments or working the proofs or experiencing the phenomenon in question, the human person simply cannot know something to be true and must rely on the testimony of others -- or simply we cannot know but must believe something to be true.
Most people would say the earth revolves around the sun is a true statement. But, how do we actually know that? Have we made the observations and done the math to verify that? Most likely no, we accept it based on what experts in the field have told us. When enough experts in a field agree, we accept it, but that doesn't mean that we as individuals "know" it to be true, instead we can only "believe" it to be true. Most people would agree that the earth is round and there is a lot of evidence to support this such as seeing the curvature of the horizon if you are high enough, However, unless you are one of the view to go into space and see it for yourself, from the vantage point of being on earth, you can not know with certainty that it is round, that is unless you do a lot of math and calculations, which most of us have not done, so instead we rely on the testimony of others and we "believe" that the earth is round.
This is exactly how religion works, too. Followers believe based on the testimony of others. Now there is one big distinction. With science, most of us can, at least for rudimentary things, conduct the experiments or observations ourselves so that we could actually "know" something to be true instead of believing based on the testimony of others. While that is technically true, most of us never do, and instead we walk around thinking we know all of this stuff, when in fact, we know very little, but we do believe a lot.
So, I would challenge your very last statement by saying that instead of we often end up relying on testimony that we almost always rely on testimony, even when given the option of not having to.
The problem today is that scientists can't do anything without acceptance from the moral masses. Want to cure cancer, you can, just don't you dare have a cage full of diseased mice in your lab because that is wrong. Want to cure genetic diseases, you can, just don't you dare try to use stem cells because some people consider that abortion. Want to solve world hunger, you can, just don't you dare splice a tomato gene with an eggplant. Want to prove the world is round, you can, just be respectful of those that believe in 2000 years of lies and intolerance to truth.
I agree there are obvious scientific research that is immoral and unacceptable, but the problem now is that if this study is a truthful indication of the state of scientific research today, then science will fail, and with it, our civilization will collapse.
It is a common theory that the Roman Empire fell is because in essence stupid people out grew the ability for the intellects to solve their problems or improve social conditions. I'm afraid the trend is repeating. FUD is the new God.
There has been a push during the last 50 years to de-emphasize the study of philosophy when pursuing degrees in college and universities. Many have put forth that the lack of basic understanding that comes from studying the great philosophers is what leads to the issues you point out for both scientists and the public. In short, what you are really asking is at what point is too much too much? Where does the line get drawn between moral and immoral? Science cannot answer that question, but philosophy can.
Alas, we don't require philosophy to be studied in most of our degree programs any more, so people make invalid philosophical arguments with potentially devastating results. Even primitive man understood that when throwing a spear a small error in initial trajectory led to a large error at the target. With modern societies lack of sound philosophical underpinnings, the possibility for those small errors is great and the likelihood of large errors or unintended consequences therefore even greater.
It's not FUD being the new god, it's ignorance.
The beauty of science is that you don't have to believe in it, in the sense of 'to believe' meaning 'to accept on someone else's authority.' I point this out because I have a feeling I would be ranked extremely highly on this 'belief in science' scale while I consider myself to not believe in science at all; the authority of science derives from empirical testing and reason, not belief.
The beauty of science is that unless you have conducted the research yourself or performed the proofs yourself, you in fact are accepting things on someone else's authority. In philosophical parlance this is known as accepting the testimony of others. It holds true whether one relies on the testimony of learned scientists or religious leaders. In both cases, a belief system is created, codified, passed down and accepted by others.
Unless one does the empirical testing for themself, they do not have first had knowledge of the phenomenon being tested but rely on the testimony of others. How do we know the earth revolves around the sun? Most of us have not down the equations or performed the experiments to prove it, we have excepted the testimony of others. Granted if enough experts testify to the same thing it adds credence to their testimony, but still, we are accepting something as true as an act of faith that the others are correct.
As such, while science does involve empirical testing, its authority relies very much on the testimony of those who conduct that testing, in otherwords, belief. In the end, almost everything we "know" we don't actually know, but instead we believe - including where the authority of science comes from.
Disclaimer: I am not saying scientific belief is the same as religious belief nor am I raising religious inquiry upto the level of scientific inquiry, so please do not go there.
So what they are saying is that society has so emphasized science that its pursuit has taken on the trappings of an ideology.
Yes, the church condemned him, based on scripture, that's all the church, by its own rules could condemn somebody on. However, where do you find that he was going to be burned? Even in the English translation of the sentence, it talks about imprisonment for three years. Basing one's arguments solely on the the wording of the sentence is a bit like Galileo basing his proof on Copernicus' argument. You would think with the plethora of detailed documentation around Galileo and the Catholic Church one would not rely on the formulaic exhortation of the sentence as the sole evidence of what had transpired any more than the not guilty verdict in the OJ Simpson trial adequately summarizes what transpired there.
You are free to interpret history any way you like, but the accepted historical account is not what you imply in your post as evidenced by the numerous writings of the event at the time and since. Even wikipedia (which I know is not a definitive source) discusses it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei.
Could you elaborate on why LibreOffice is so much worse than OpenOffice? I use LibreOffice mostly for opening documents, or making some spreadsheets, so I have no idea what you're talking about (I mean, I'm no poweruser, for any serious documents I use TeX).
There is nothing wrong with OpenOffice it is developed, per the linked article, mainly be developers from IBM. LibreOffice is developed mainly by the original OpenOffice developers. Right now there are two similar code bases, but with time they will drift apart and follow the direction and vision of their developers and sponsors. The article about Andrew in the summary has more information on it and other Apache projects.