Could you explain this? I assume you're talking about a human zygote [iupui.edu] ("and a new diploid human zygote results (2n) - the first cell of the new animal..")? A human zygote is actually obviously human. Perhaps you meant to say something else?
No, I meant 'zygote'. It's a cell. It has no desires or feelings, has need of thought or freedom or property, feels no pleasure or pain, possesses no information or ideas or principles or goals. It operates on the level of any other cellular-level parasite. It has a long way to move along the aforementioned continuum before it will have more in common with us people than it does with (say) E. coli.
If you call a zygote a 'human' in the sense that you and I are humans, then you've sacrificed meaningful distinctions (mind versus non-mind) for meaningless ones (e.g. similar genetics). And that will prevent you from making a defensible case against abortion.
Pro-abortion advocates make the exact same mistake in reverse, erroneously defining humanity as the moment of birth or whatever.
Only when we realize that we are trying to impose a binary distinction atop a continuum, will we see why the issue is still unresolved and apparently unsolvable.
OK, when does it become human? Two cells? 100? Birth? When it finds a job and pays its own way? When does it become human? I bet if you perform a DNA test on it, it will show up as 100% human.
You'll never solve the abortion problem by seeking a "bright line" of when a thing suddenly becomes human.
The same difficulty occurs when we try to define 'adult'. The difficulty is in drawing a line somewhere upon what is actually a continuum.
A continuum runs from zygote to newborn. A newborn is obviously human, whereas a zygote is obviously not. In between is the continuum, a progression of increasing humanity.
Any pro- or anti-abortion cause that fails to recognize this, will fail to establish a defensible ideology, simply because there is no way to defend the location of an arbitrary line on a continuum.
Since you don't believe we have any anonymity right now, would you please post your name, address, and phone number here please? Thanks.
1. Pointing out alleged hypocrisy, does not a rebuttal make.
2. Just because it is already possible to obtain that information about the poster, does not mean the poster wishes to make it easy. The present hurdle is adequate to deter 99% of people who might wish to annoy or harm the poster.
3. Indeed, the government is also subject to said hurdle. And so the present hurdle is also adequate to deter the government from anything short of a serious, focused investigation. This translates to the very justifiable feeling that one can express oneself freely on the net, because keyword-scanning data-mining oppression is still too expensive.
The likelyhood that simple RF is how advanced cultures communicate is ludicrous. I don't want to get all sci-fi on this thread, but chances are something like subspace (e.g. faster than light) communication is required to really be effective. Otherwise you'll have years and years to wait for a reply from anything, especially given the nearest possibly populated planets are what, hundreds of light years away?
Why do you assume that other intelligent lifeforms operate on our timescale?
We are on a short timescale. To us, a month is quite a while, and so a hundred years' wait for a reply is unthinkable. But what if the other critters were on a much longer timescale?
That's exactly the sort of critters you'd see evolving out of a cold world, as opposed to a warm lively one such as our own.
Indeed, if mankind becomes spacefaring, the very first order of business will be to convert our metabolism over to a longer timescale. At that time, the speed of light (or even 0.1c) will seem plenty quick.
I suppose that all depends on what you consider to be "moral" and what your values are. Additionally, if you have any sort of moral code, you have objectified what is moral and what is not.
Yes. In order to make choices, one must have expectations about how actions will affect one's values. A person can dispense with the idea of morality, but he must still make choices and try to maximize his outcomes based on limited knowledge... and so he will still live submerged in the morality he denies.
What I was getting at was more along the lines that unless everybody accepts the same moral and ethical standards, any justification for invading another nation will be quite relative. Just because one group believes it is the correct thing to do does not imply that anyone else will agree.
I understand what you were getting at. I am proposing a whole different dimension for the concept 'morality'.
It doesn't matter if anyone else agrees with a group's beliefs: those beliefs will still have positive and negative consequences. When those consequences are forseeable to the actors, we can issue moral judgments about their choices... but still, it doesn't matter what our judgments are, not in any primary way.
Consider this. You are alone on a desert island. There are no humans for 1000 miles, and none are ever going to show up. You will live out your life alone. What, then, is morality?
I have been speaking of morality as the system of choosing actions based on one's rational understanding of long-term future consequences upon one's goals. Morality, therefore, is at its strongest when one is alone, when there are no others around to rescue a person from his errors.
This is what I mean when I say that morality is not about consensus or judgment. While consensus and judgment certainly play a constant secondary role (because we have to deal with others and their opinions of us), morality at its core is personal: it is the optimal knowable route to obtaining and protecting one's values.
It has to be, because values are still required when alone on a desert island. Rightness is still necessary, because otherwise you'll die.
I do not believe your definition of morality ["Morality is about how an action will affect our values in the future. It doesn't require an authority, a judgment, or even a consensus."] would be widely accepted or understood. It is certainly not the definition I was using.
By any definition I am familiar with, morality requires a degree of authority, judgement and consensus. Your definition of morality appears to be highly relative.
I don't understand what "highly relative" means. If it's meant as a criticism, it seems to apply more strongly to a "authority and consensus" view of morality.
For the record, here is the derivation to morality:
Mortal creatures can die, and so they require values in order to continue living.
Some mortal creatures are sophisticated enough to be able to choose their actions.
Not all actions will yield the values that the creature needs. Some will pan out better than others.
Some mortal creatures have knowledge, and limited abilities to analyze that knowledge.
Rational creatures such as humans are able to apply their limited knowledge to their choices.
Rightness consists in selecting the choices which, according to knowledge on-hand, have the best expected value yield.
That's morality. Rightness is selecting the choice that is rationally expected to maximize goodness (i.e. maximize values). With me so far?
The argument, then, is: what is the standard of value? How do we judge 'goodness'? In other words: to what ultimate end should a rational creature toil?
Is it the self? Or is it something else?
Because there can be only one ultimate end, to which all other ends are subservient.
The Russian landers were built with insulating systems designed to buy them a couple of hours before being overwhelmed. That is indeed a Hard Problem.
Maybe we need to just buy a flare-riding ship, which carries a small black hole onboard that functions as a billion-ton heatsink. Anybody got the number for the Daedalus Club?
Sure they do. They're just deluded enough to think that's what they're getting.
I know that they say they want freedom. But when any question of policy comes up, are their actions consistent with their professed desire?
To my eye, we still have the vestiges of our 18th-century freedom memes, enough to make us talk about freedom and feel guilty when we fail to fight for it... but it's just vestiges. As the grandparent comment said, freedom is mentally and emotionally taxing. Games and black bread require less CPU power.
But if there are no objective standards as to what constitutes "broken", then pretty much anything goes, provided that you have sufficient power to do as you please.
That is indeed the case today; power is the ability to do as one pleases. Morality, however, is inescapable, in the sense that actions have consequences upon our values. Those consequences will occur whether or not we have recognized an objective standard or authority.
This is a distinction that I don't think you are seeing yet. Morality is about how an action will affect our values in the future. It doesn't require an authority, a judgment, or even a consensus.
I suggest that you aren't seeing this yet because you said "anything goes" if there are no objective standards. Can I eat rocks if nobody has identified my body's nutritional requirements?
Are you suggesting that the ends justify the means?
That's a false-alternative, because our long-term interests are affected by both the means and the ends. For example, consider a profitable mafia boss who reinvests all of his take back into the community. The means he used to obtain the money will ruin his community faster than his reinvestment can repair it.
Beneficence has often been used to justify colonialism and imperialism in the past. When such an argument is made, one would do well to ask "beneficial" to whom?
Too true. And, too complex a question to explore in a sidebar here.
I think you are over-stating things. How does crossing the street simply because I would like to get to the other side affect my moral standing versus not crossing the street?
It depends on what your goal is that day. If you are due at a job interview on the other side of the street, then (all else being equal) it would be damaging to fail to cross it. Since you would presumably understand that consequence, it would therefore be immoral to not cross.
If your point is that most trivial situations do not cast a moral shadow, then I agree.
Clearly some actions have moral and ethical consequences, but not all do.
Clearly. But why do you mention 'ethics' separately from 'morality'? Is there more than one ultimate standard of value that we should hold ourselves to?
Because those affected are people like ourselves, and we have obligations to them - regardless of profitability or geopolitical influence.
It is only an accident of birth that any of us were born where we were. We in the West have already won the only lottery that matters, and we should help those less fortunate than ourselves.
Why?
I understand that some of the beneficiaries might eventually become profitable trading partners (e.g. Japan after WWII)... but your moral pronouncement doesn't mention such payback. If I read you correctly, you posit an obligation to rescue whomever from whatever, even at no forseeable profit to self. What is the basis of this obligation?
Is birth in a decent society the neuveau Original Sin, for which we owe penance?
I think you are getting lost in semantics.
Being able to do something is clearly different from having the right to do something. There are several nations that would be able to overthrown the Sudanese government. It is another matter to suggest that any have the right to do so.
Yes it is. I am suggesting it, insofar as the Sudanese culture is anti-reason anti-individual anti-modern anti-commercial anti-mind etc. I'll reiterate the rest in a bit...
I do not know what you mean with regard to the Dafur culture having no objective justification. What is taking place there is terrible, but there are reasons why those events are happening.
You are thinking of explanation, and of course there is one.
Who has the right to say whether a target culture is broken? Assuming that point can be adequately answered, is being broken enough?
It doesn't need to be answered in order for morality to operate. Actions have consequences, even if no final authority exists to deliver a verdict upon them. I am asking you to assess the consequences of a "beneficient invasion".
IMHO, nations invade other nations if and only if it is their best interests to do so.
As well they should. Why should they do otherwise? For example, it is against the interests of a free culture to invade another, partly due the loss of trade and goodwill, and partly due to the internal loss of freedom that necessarily happens when a free country switches over to predation.
Ethics and morality play no part in the decision making calculus.
Whether or not that is the case, does not change the fact that every action has a moral standing. By "moral standing" I mean that every action (and every inaction) has consequences that affect the actor's values.
Take Dafur for example. I think we can all agree that Dafur qualifies as being unfit for human survival, and has been for a few years now. Yet we in the West are/have been totally apathetic about the tragedy that has been unfolding there.
Why?
Because it doesn't affect us, and we have no vested interest in anything that happens there. Same thing with Rwanda a few years before.
Our inaction is utterly shameful.
If it doesn't affect us, then why should we expend resources and risk our lives to rescue it?
The primary point I am trying to make is that any free society has the right to violently liberate Darfur, because the Darfur culture has no objective justification. Yet... and this is the secondary point... the right to liberate Darfur is not automatically the obligation to liberate Darfur.
The needs of the Darfurians are not a claim against our own safety and comfort. Indeed, insofar as Darfur is simultaneously perilous and unrewarding, our inaction is moral -- even though action is morally justified.
Do you follow? Or am I bonkers?
Think of it in personal terms. At this moment, a woman on the other side of the world from you is being raped. You have the right to travel to her and violently subdue her attacker... but you do not have the obligation to spend your time and money doing so, nor do you owe it to her to risk your life to save hers.
Look, the almighty dollar will not make verything better. I'll agree it smooths things over, but International free trade is not going to save the world.
It will in one sense:
People who are wealthy enough to live in safety and comfort will develop an aversion to violence, all else being equal. It's the guy who's got nothing to lose who is the most dangerous.
I must tactfully disagree. The only wars I believe have moral justification were nations coming to the defense of another nation being invaded.
The implication, then, is that any culture can claim sovereignty for itself... and therefore, immorality consists of violating that sovereignty. Fair enough.
What if the target culture is completely broken? What if it is a fenced-in hellhole, woefully unfit for human survival? And what if it is caught in a social pattern (e.g. North Korea under Kim) that is so strong it can't break loose from within?
Would it be moral for a pro-human culture to bust in, dismantle the state while taking care to spare civilians, and reboot the place? Why or why not? (Here I am assuming that the invading culture does so with a volunteer military.)
What, in order words, can an anti-freedom anti-thought anti-human culture claim as its justification for existence?
Now I'm not saying that Iraq qualifies here. It might, or might not. I promise I won't interpret your answer as a sanction for that mess.
Sure, Chavez's the one with a mega army going around invading countries and killing people. Oh, wait...nevermind
True enough. Perhaps the original poster's point was that Chavez would go around invading countries and killing people, if he only had access to a mega army. He and Bush being kindred spirits and all.
In any case, take care not to equate 'invasion' with 'immoral'. An invasion can be moral, depending on who the target is and what the invader's goals and methods are.
One of my dance partners works fairly high up in NASA, and he said that this morning's announcement is actually telegraphing NASA's intention to cancel the Webb space telescope. Its funding is expected to go instead to the Mars missions... indeed, Mars is going to suck up the funding of practically everything else.
Recall that this thread started when you praised the moon as "a fine location" for experiments in space travel. I pointed out that you were not aware of the dust problem, which is severe and possibly unsolvable. There followed your raspberries and my production of references.
I don't dispute your final "We need to do more testing with an appropriate test bed". Nobody would dispute that straw-man of yours. I only disputed your initial, casual assessment that the moon is an obviously better first destination than Mars.
NASA also seems to disagree with you, if their actions are any guide. Ironic that you would complain about slashdotters who are too quick to discard the best-laid plans of seasoned engineers, seeing as how Mars is already where they are headed. Tell us -- do you project often?:)
Yeah, I'm glad that Wired has insight into issues that NASA hasn't considered. Thanks for the info.
I did a quick search on nasa.gov for 'lunar dust' and got a whole page of hits. As you would've too, if you'd cared to investigate before posting yet another hollow, shoot-from-the-hip reply.
Although simple dust mitigation measures were sufficient to mitigate some of the problems (i.e., loss of traction), it was found that these measures were ineffective to mitigate many of the more serious problems (i.e., clogging, abrasion, dimished heat rejection). The severity of the dust problems were consistently underestimated by ground tests, indicating a need to develop better simulation facitilities and procedures.
That's fairly bold; you don't even know what regolith is and you're suggesting I should read up on it? LOL! In any case, if you really think this is less of a problem on Mars where they have known windstorms that make hurricans seem like a summer breeze than I'm sorry but you're out of your mind.
Full information about the hazard of lunar dust is here.
The windstorms on Mars are what make its dust less of a problem. Lunar dust is abrasive because there isn't any weather to wear down the particles' sharp edges.
The moon is a better test bed; less gravity, faster travel time from earth to target, easier to get there if there would happen to be a systems failure and we needed to rescue... We need to learn a bit more about remote lift offs and terrestrial bases on foreign bodies. The moon is a fine location.
The moon has a severe problem with abrasive microdust. The problem may be completely insurmountable. I think it's called lunar regolith. Read up on it before you suggest that the moon is a good place to do anything.
The purpose of the diamond ritual is to require the male (or whoever) to put his money where his mouth is, to prove that he is sincere about the relationship. And what's the old saying? "Money has a truthfulness. If a man speaks of his honor, make him pay in cash."
The diamond is idea for this purpose because it has almost no resale value. It's a way for the male to make a demonstratively extravagant purchase, one which the female (or whoever) is not able to whip back around for a cash refund.
Of course, it didn't have to be diamonds. Were it not for the DeBeers' marketing savvy, any arbitrary rare object could've sufficed. If technology had evolved differently, women might now be wearing tiny LCD displays on their fingers which play a video loop of their husbands throwing a bundle of cash into the ocean.
In the modern age a war against them would be over fairly soon, and invaders, while winning fast, would then have a massive humanitarian disaster on their hands. China is particulerly worried about this aspect.
Plus, NK has nothing of value to be despoiled. Their culture is completely broken, which means that every adult North Korean has an irretrievably broken mindset as well. There are no industries to speak of, and even if there were, they are of no significant value because they are next door to the manufacturing capitol of the world. What, in order words, would any invader desire NK for?
I suppose SK could quickly make good use of the real estate... but that would require swallowing NK's population first, which (as you mentioned) is prohibitively expensive.
Slashdot Mirror
No, I meant 'zygote'. It's a cell. It has no desires or feelings, has need of thought or freedom or property, feels no pleasure or pain, possesses no information or ideas or principles or goals. It operates on the level of any other cellular-level parasite. It has a long way to move along the aforementioned continuum before it will have more in common with us people than it does with (say) E. coli.
If you call a zygote a 'human' in the sense that you and I are humans, then you've sacrificed meaningful distinctions (mind versus non-mind) for meaningless ones (e.g. similar genetics). And that will prevent you from making a defensible case against abortion.
Pro-abortion advocates make the exact same mistake in reverse, erroneously defining humanity as the moment of birth or whatever.
Only when we realize that we are trying to impose a binary distinction atop a continuum, will we see why the issue is still unresolved and apparently unsolvable.
Oh you have got to be kidding. They run an OS called 'HALS' on the space shuttle?!
Cmdr. Ride: "Open the cargo bay doors, HALS."
HALS: "I'm sorry, Sally, I can't let you do that."
You'll never solve the abortion problem by seeking a "bright line" of when a thing suddenly becomes human.
The same difficulty occurs when we try to define 'adult'. The difficulty is in drawing a line somewhere upon what is actually a continuum.
A continuum runs from zygote to newborn. A newborn is obviously human, whereas a zygote is obviously not. In between is the continuum, a progression of increasing humanity.
Any pro- or anti-abortion cause that fails to recognize this, will fail to establish a defensible ideology, simply because there is no way to defend the location of an arbitrary line on a continuum.
1. Pointing out alleged hypocrisy, does not a rebuttal make.
2. Just because it is already possible to obtain that information about the poster, does not mean the poster wishes to make it easy. The present hurdle is adequate to deter 99% of people who might wish to annoy or harm the poster.
3. Indeed, the government is also subject to said hurdle. And so the present hurdle is also adequate to deter the government from anything short of a serious, focused investigation. This translates to the very justifiable feeling that one can express oneself freely on the net, because keyword-scanning data-mining oppression is still too expensive.
Why do you assume that other intelligent lifeforms operate on our timescale?
We are on a short timescale. To us, a month is quite a while, and so a hundred years' wait for a reply is unthinkable. But what if the other critters were on a much longer timescale?
That's exactly the sort of critters you'd see evolving out of a cold world, as opposed to a warm lively one such as our own.
Indeed, if mankind becomes spacefaring, the very first order of business will be to convert our metabolism over to a longer timescale. At that time, the speed of light (or even 0.1c) will seem plenty quick.
Yes. In order to make choices, one must have expectations about how actions will affect one's values. A person can dispense with the idea of morality, but he must still make choices and try to maximize his outcomes based on limited knowledge... and so he will still live submerged in the morality he denies.
I understand what you were getting at. I am proposing a whole different dimension for the concept 'morality'.
It doesn't matter if anyone else agrees with a group's beliefs: those beliefs will still have positive and negative consequences. When those consequences are forseeable to the actors, we can issue moral judgments about their choices... but still, it doesn't matter what our judgments are, not in any primary way.
Consider this. You are alone on a desert island. There are no humans for 1000 miles, and none are ever going to show up. You will live out your life alone. What, then, is morality?
I have been speaking of morality as the system of choosing actions based on one's rational understanding of long-term future consequences upon one's goals. Morality, therefore, is at its strongest when one is alone, when there are no others around to rescue a person from his errors.
This is what I mean when I say that morality is not about consensus or judgment. While consensus and judgment certainly play a constant secondary role (because we have to deal with others and their opinions of us), morality at its core is personal: it is the optimal knowable route to obtaining and protecting one's values.
It has to be, because values are still required when alone on a desert island. Rightness is still necessary, because otherwise you'll die.
I don't understand what "highly relative" means. If it's meant as a criticism, it seems to apply more strongly to a "authority and consensus" view of morality.
For the record, here is the derivation to morality:
That's morality. Rightness is selecting the choice that is rationally expected to maximize goodness (i.e. maximize values). With me so far?
The argument, then, is: what is the standard of value? How do we judge 'goodness'? In other words: to what ultimate end should a rational creature toil?
Is it the self? Or is it something else?
Because there can be only one ultimate end, to which all other ends are subservient.
If it is
The Russian landers were built with insulating systems designed to buy them a couple of hours before being overwhelmed. That is indeed a Hard Problem.
Maybe we need to just buy a flare-riding ship, which carries a small black hole onboard that functions as a billion-ton heatsink. Anybody got the number for the Daedalus Club?
I know that they say they want freedom. But when any question of policy comes up, are their actions consistent with their professed desire?
To my eye, we still have the vestiges of our 18th-century freedom memes, enough to make us talk about freedom and feel guilty when we fail to fight for it... but it's just vestiges. As the grandparent comment said, freedom is mentally and emotionally taxing. Games and black bread require less CPU power.
...what if they'd offshored WOPR?
"How about a nice game of Chinese Checkers?"
By the way, you're very witty. Do you live in Houston? If so, we should get together for caffeine.
And how do you suppose it GOT IN THERE?
But seriously. Didn't you see the Star Trek episode where they explained all this? :)
That is indeed the case today; power is the ability to do as one pleases. Morality, however, is inescapable, in the sense that actions have consequences upon our values. Those consequences will occur whether or not we have recognized an objective standard or authority.
This is a distinction that I don't think you are seeing yet. Morality is about how an action will affect our values in the future. It doesn't require an authority, a judgment, or even a consensus.
I suggest that you aren't seeing this yet because you said "anything goes" if there are no objective standards. Can I eat rocks if nobody has identified my body's nutritional requirements?
That's a false-alternative, because our long-term interests are affected by both the means and the ends. For example, consider a profitable mafia boss who reinvests all of his take back into the community. The means he used to obtain the money will ruin his community faster than his reinvestment can repair it.
Too true. And, too complex a question to explore in a sidebar here.
It depends on what your goal is that day. If you are due at a job interview on the other side of the street, then (all else being equal) it would be damaging to fail to cross it. Since you would presumably understand that consequence, it would therefore be immoral to not cross.
If your point is that most trivial situations do not cast a moral shadow, then I agree.
Clearly. But why do you mention 'ethics' separately from 'morality'? Is there more than one ultimate standard of value that we should hold ourselves to?
Why?
I understand that some of the beneficiaries might eventually become profitable trading partners (e.g. Japan after WWII)... but your moral pronouncement doesn't mention such payback. If I read you correctly, you posit an obligation to rescue whomever from whatever, even at no forseeable profit to self. What is the basis of this obligation?
Is birth in a decent society the neuveau Original Sin, for which we owe penance?
Yes it is. I am suggesting it, insofar as the Sudanese culture is anti-reason anti-individual anti-modern anti-commercial anti-mind etc. I'll reiterate the rest in a bit...
You are thinking of explanation, and of course there is one.
It doesn't need to be answered in order for morality to operate. Actions have consequences, even if no final authority exists to deliver a verdict upon them. I am asking you to assess the consequences of a "beneficient invasion".
As well they should. Why should they do otherwise? For example, it is against the interests of a free culture to invade another, partly due the loss of trade and goodwill, and partly due to the internal loss of freedom that necessarily happens when a free country switches over to predation.
Whether or not that is the case, does not change the fact that every action has a moral standing. By "moral standing" I mean that every action (and every inaction) has consequences that affect the actor's values.
If it doesn't affect us, then why should we expend resources and risk our lives to rescue it?
The primary point I am trying to make is that any free society has the right to violently liberate Darfur, because the Darfur culture has no objective justification. Yet... and this is the secondary point... the right to liberate Darfur is not automatically the obligation to liberate Darfur.
The needs of the Darfurians are not a claim against our own safety and comfort. Indeed, insofar as Darfur is simultaneously perilous and unrewarding, our inaction is moral -- even though action is morally justified.
Do you follow? Or am I bonkers?
Think of it in personal terms. At this moment, a woman on the other side of the world from you is being raped. You have the right to travel to her and violently subdue her attacker... but you do not have the obligation to spend your time and money doing so, nor do you owe it to her to risk your life to save hers.
It will in one sense:
People who are wealthy enough to live in safety and comfort will develop an aversion to violence, all else being equal. It's the guy who's got nothing to lose who is the most dangerous.
The implication, then, is that any culture can claim sovereignty for itself... and therefore, immorality consists of violating that sovereignty. Fair enough.
What if the target culture is completely broken? What if it is a fenced-in hellhole, woefully unfit for human survival? And what if it is caught in a social pattern (e.g. North Korea under Kim) that is so strong it can't break loose from within?
Would it be moral for a pro-human culture to bust in, dismantle the state while taking care to spare civilians, and reboot the place? Why or why not? (Here I am assuming that the invading culture does so with a volunteer military.)
What, in order words, can an anti-freedom anti-thought anti-human culture claim as its justification for existence?
Now I'm not saying that Iraq qualifies here. It might, or might not. I promise I won't interpret your answer as a sanction for that mess.
True enough. Perhaps the original poster's point was that Chavez would go around invading countries and killing people, if he only had access to a mega army. He and Bush being kindred spirits and all.
In any case, take care not to equate 'invasion' with 'immoral'. An invasion can be moral, depending on who the target is and what the invader's goals and methods are.
One of my dance partners works fairly high up in NASA, and he said that this morning's announcement is actually telegraphing NASA's intention to cancel the Webb space telescope. Its funding is expected to go instead to the Mars missions... indeed, Mars is going to suck up the funding of practically everything else.
Recall that this thread started when you praised the moon as "a fine location" for experiments in space travel. I pointed out that you were not aware of the dust problem, which is severe and possibly unsolvable. There followed your raspberries and my production of references.
I don't dispute your final "We need to do more testing with an appropriate test bed". Nobody would dispute that straw-man of yours. I only disputed your initial, casual assessment that the moon is an obviously better first destination than Mars.
NASA also seems to disagree with you, if their actions are any guide. Ironic that you would complain about slashdotters who are too quick to discard the best-laid plans of seasoned engineers, seeing as how Mars is already where they are headed. Tell us -- do you project often? :)
I did a quick search on nasa.gov for 'lunar dust' and got a whole page of hits. As you would've too, if you'd cared to investigate before posting yet another hollow, shoot-from-the-hip reply.
It turns out that NASA has thought quite a lot about the problem.
From the latter:
Full information about the hazard of lunar dust is here.
The windstorms on Mars are what make its dust less of a problem. Lunar dust is abrasive because there isn't any weather to wear down the particles' sharp edges.
The moon has a severe problem with abrasive microdust. The problem may be completely insurmountable. I think it's called lunar regolith. Read up on it before you suggest that the moon is a good place to do anything.
And what, pray tell, do you think the policeman's brain is executing when he is deciding whether or not to accost you?
At least with a robotic police force, the algorithms can be standardized, QA'd, reviewed, perhaps even open-sourced.
primitive economy = hand-to-hand warfare
manufacturing economy = mechanized warfare
information economy = information warfare
This google-bombing competition is only the beginning.
Where are the Friends of Privacy when you need them? (I say 'where', but maybe I should say 'when'?)
The purpose of the diamond ritual is to require the male (or whoever) to put his money where his mouth is, to prove that he is sincere about the relationship. And what's the old saying? "Money has a truthfulness. If a man speaks of his honor, make him pay in cash."
The diamond is idea for this purpose because it has almost no resale value. It's a way for the male to make a demonstratively extravagant purchase, one which the female (or whoever) is not able to whip back around for a cash refund.
Of course, it didn't have to be diamonds. Were it not for the DeBeers' marketing savvy, any arbitrary rare object could've sufficed. If technology had evolved differently, women might now be wearing tiny LCD displays on their fingers which play a video loop of their husbands throwing a bundle of cash into the ocean.
Plus, NK has nothing of value to be despoiled. Their culture is completely broken, which means that every adult North Korean has an irretrievably broken mindset as well. There are no industries to speak of, and even if there were, they are of no significant value because they are next door to the manufacturing capitol of the world. What, in order words, would any invader desire NK for?
I suppose SK could quickly make good use of the real estate... but that would require swallowing NK's population first, which (as you mentioned) is prohibitively expensive.