> So, it's not actually clear without hard numbers wether or not driving an electric car > 500 miles requires more fossil fuels than driving a gasoline car 500 miles.
Fortunately, folks have done those calculations, such as here and here and here (pdf) for IC efficiency confirmation from a not-anti-oil source. Here (pdf) is another overview (from the standpoint of CO2 emissions, so electric vehicles come out even better, due to nuclear power and the like).
The short version is that all-electric vehicles are about twice as efficient as gas-powered vehicles -- 28% vs. 14% -- when considered "well-to-wheel" (i.e., start with crude oil/coal and go from there). So if you had enough gas to take a car 500 miles, you could burn the crude oil for electricity instead and drive an electric version of that car 1,000 miles.
All-electric cars have some problems, but overall energy efficiency is not one of them.
> What's to discuss? You vote your way, I'll vote mine.
What if your way is wrong? Or my way is wrong?
If we discuss the issues we care about, you may raise points that I hadn't considered, and change my mind. Or I may do the same and change your mind. Either way, we both become more informed and more able to separate truth from bias.
If we don't discuss, then all we have to go on is whatever our favourite news sources tell us, which may not go as far as "propaganda", but certainly isn't as far the other way as "unbiased". The propaganda doesn't fool people because they discuss.
> You cite a report that summarizes "the first week" of inspection. That, fine Sir, is not the whole story.
Since cooperation from the Iraqi side improved over the course of the pre-war inspections, that effectively is the whole story.
Not to mention that you haven't given a shred of evidence to back up your bogus version of history. Can you provide any reputable report that supports what you claimed? Any?
> Knowing what we now know about how Eason Jordan's CNN played patty-cake w/ Saddam > in the run-up to the war, you have the gonads to cite them about that issue??? > Why don't you just cite a random Democratic Underground moonbat, they have > the same amount of credibility.
Fox News says the same thing as CNN, so you might want to take a look at the evidence instead of wrapping yourself in a coccoon of self-delusion.
> Actually, the Iranians are white, so I guess that answers your question.
They're white, but Brown - i.e., they're Caucasian, but have a little more pigmentation than most "White" Americans, so it's still possible for people to categorize them as Other. (Not that Brazilians are so different in that regard.)
> Even the Arabs are no darker than a lot of mediterranean Europeans, > if not too suntanned.
But they look enough different that they can be thought of as non-White. Even the Irish weren't considered White in the US about 150 years ago (see How The Irish Became White).
It's nonsensical, but since when has that stopped anyone?
> Australians are white Christians. Iranians are brown Muslims. > Therefore, Australian enriched uranium can only be used peacefully > for nuclear power generation, while Iranian enriched uranium can > only be used in nuclear weapons for terrorists. Hope this clears > things up.
Actually, it's a little more complicated than that. While Brazilians are brown enough to shoot, they're apparently Christian enough to enrich uranium, even after blocking the access of international inspectors.
Which makes one wonder - is being Muslim necessary or sufficient for blocking access to uranium enrichment? Would mostly-white Muslims, such as the Kazakhs be allowed to enrich uranium?
(Or is it the whole "Death to Israel! Death to America!" thing that does it? I suppose I can see how that might affect matters...)
> Former Iraqi officers speaking of the chemical weapons, and > their coverup over intercepted phone calls in Iraq prior to > the 2nd gulf war.
You might want to read the followup piece by the same author. Not to spoil the surprise, but the heading is "How Colin Powell Got So Much Wrong About Iraq".
Your evidence---all of it---is either old and discredited (like the above) or old and irrelevant (like the claim that presidential palaces were off-limits to inspectors, which was not true about the pre-war inspections). What you're doing isn't mental gymnastics; it's mental sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting "Lalala I can't hear you!1!"
>>> 1) HIGHLY doubt that at this point humans will become extinct. >>> It would take our entire planet blowing up.
I think you underestimate the potential advances in weapons technology. The whole discussion is about "eventually we'll be able to do just about anything"; that includes killing ourselves off. A few methods are already known in principle ("gray goo", runaway Venus-style atmospheric change, boosting planet-cracker asteroids), and it's highly likely that more will become conceivable---and even possible---as technology advances.
The original premise of this thread was "we can eventually master all aspects of the universe"; deorbiting the Earth, crushing it into a black hole, or snuffing out the Sun all fall under that knowledge.
>>> 2) Look at plagues. They never infected 100% of the population.
They were never designed and spread by malicious intelligence and modern or post-modern medical science.
Besides, you forget the original "if we can know it we will" premise; how to infect 100% of the population with a virus is a knowable thing.
>>> 3) We have never had a stabke structure, and had all sorts of scientific >>> advancement. Even in a "anti-science" stable social structure, you will >>> always have a few "rebels" that will continue on. Again, I claim "human >>> nature" for this (and have history to back it up.)
No, you don't.
For a start, you have at most 10,000 years of civilization to draw from, most of it basic agricultural; in the context of 1,000,000 or more years of more-advanced (and, hence, potentially more-rapidly-changing and more-sophisticated) societies, that's too small of a sample to be a good predictor that something cannot happen.
In addition, cultures have suppressed advances, and have stagnated as a result, and this is apparently more possible in larger, more advanced, and more monolithic cultures---see China's abandonment of the Treasure Fleets for an example, and in general China's relative stagnation in comparison to Europe after being so far out in front technologically.
Finally, you are again forgetting the original point of discussion: the argument that we will eventually discover everything. A stable, anti-science culture is "something", so the original premise assumes one will be discovered.
>>> 4) There is no evidence of this. Archeologists would have found >>> signs of any past "advanced" age in history.
True, but irrelevant. That we're not in such a cycle does not in any way mean that such a cycle cannot occur.
>>>>>> (That being said, I think it's most likely that serious science will still be >>>>>> done in 100, 1,000, and 10,000 years. And I'm wildly curious what it will show. >>> >>> I think that you will find modern human civilization a lot more resilient than >>> you seem to believe that it is.
And I think you should read all the way to the end of a post before replying to it.
> When we are talking timelines of 1,000 or 1,000,000 years, any kind of "blip" that > happens in human advancement will be short term.
Not necessarily - I can think of four scenarios offhand that would prevent that:
1) Extinction Obvious.
2) Other permanent change For example, if a cult released a retroviral pandemic that altered everyone's DNA to make people (and their offspring) incurious, then people wouldn't want to question or to do science. If the changes became fully-established through the entire population, only random mutation would knock us out of that rut, and that's by no means a guarantee.
3) Stable social structure While we haven't yet come up with a society that's stable for millenia, that doesn't mean one doesn't exist, and that doesn't mean such a stable structure might not be anti-science.
4) Recurring pattern It may be that there is a cyclic or otherwise recurring pattern in human behaviour. If we keep blasting ourselves back to the stone age every 5,000 years, there may be no accumulation of progress.
(That being said, I think it's most likely that serious science will still be done in 100, 1,000, and 10,000 years. And I'm wildly curious what it will show.)
> Fact is we're bound to unlock the secrets of the universe, knowledge is exponential. > Control of matter will be a no brainer. Dare I say even altering physics and our own realities.
The laws of physics control behaviour of matter and energy in the universe. We are composed of matter and energy in the universe. Ergo, the laws of physics control what we can even theoretically accomplish.
If the laws of physics don't happen to be in a configuration which allows them to change themselves, then tough luck for us---it will never be possible for us to change them. The laws of arithmetic can't be used to change themselves; maybe the laws of physics can't be used to change themselves either.
(That's assuming a purely-naturalistic universe, of course; assuming supernatural effects complicates matters.)
> there's the possibility that the universe is spatially a hypersphere, which would appear to > have infinite volume to our puny 3-dimensional senses
Only if the reasoning behind Planck units doesn't apply to higher dimensions.
Or if there are infinite dimensions, but (a) current theory suggests otherwise, and (b) current theory suggests the higher dimensions are basically all scrunched up, and hence can't really provide much more in the way of volume anyway. (Of course, volume-per-se isn't exactly what we're talking about here; just thought I'd mention this as an interesting factoid.)
> Only if the universe is finite in spatial extent.
Hence "potentially".
It does, as others have pointed out, mean that only a finite set could have influenced any region at any given point in time, though, which is functionally the same thing. (Assuming information can only travel at a finite speed, such as light speed.)
> So the total number of states of any particular 13.7 billion-light-year-radius > sphere is indeed finite, and if there's an infinite number of them, then every possible state occurs.
Yes, but not for the reason I think you're thinking.
Just because something occurs an infinite number of times does not mean all possible states of the system must occur. There could well be states that are simply impossible to reach; for example, 0000 is a valid state for a 4-bit integer, but the bits will never reach that state if the controlling process is "add together two random integers between 1 and 3", even if you try an infinite number of times.
However---as I understand things, at least---the reason you would get all states is because of quantum effects. Basically, there's a tiny-but-finite probability of tunnelling into the state you're looking for, so---provided there is no interaction between spheres---you'll see each state represented an infinite number of times.
All that being said, though, there's little or no evidence of the universe being infinite, and no evidence at all that it makes a lick of difference one way or the other what's going on "outside" the observable universe, so it's pretty much moot at this point.
> I guess the set of possible relative positionning of particules(or basic elements) in the universe is infinite uncountable.
Not necessarily - Planck length may be a minimum unit of distance in the universe, making the set of possible states potentially not merely countable but (along with the other Planck units) finite.
> What possible reason could anybody have for defending Microsoft unless they're on the payroll?
Truth.
Period, full-stop, that's the reason for half the things I post on the Internet. Whether or not someone is on "my side"---in fact, especially if they're on "my side"---I very much expect people to tell the truth. If they don't, I consider it shameful, and will often make an effort to correct it. Whether the bogus assertion is anti-Microsoft or not is irrelevant.
Does that mean I agree with all of Microsoft's actions? Of course not. But it does mean that I will shoot down any false assertions that I see, regardless of whether those assertions agree with my own preferences.
Spouting lies to "fight the good fight" doesn't make you noble; it just makes you a liar. If reality doesn't agree with your beliefs, it ain't reality that's due for a change.
Excel could open a file in 2 seconds while Calc would take almost 3 minutes
It's not "a few milliseconds" - it's a factor of a hundred that turns a nearly-instant operation into a go-get-coffee one.
Now, don't get me wrong - I realize that the study compares OO/MSW and not ODF/MSXML, and I know that there are definite benefits to having an open document format being adapted (especially for public data), but this is not a small difference. Your post makes pro-open-format people look like shrill, clueless zealots who can be safely ignored, and that is potentially as damaging as the sheer lack of performance shown in the study.
So, please, RTFA. Or at least STFU if you can't be bothered - you're generating your own damn FUD.
>>> The correct choice would be to find someone who has some respect from the 3 factions and dump >>> the job on him. Bonus points if he's moderately anti-US- it makes it look more realistic. > > Hey! I've found the perfect candidate. > > Mr Saddam Hussein, this is your big chance!
I've heard that suggested, and only half-jokingly.
The thing is, we could do rather worse than having someone like Saddam Hussein in power in Iraq. If nothing else, he was rational---he was interested in maintaining his own power---and hence was easy to deal with in the traditional "mess with us and we'll stomp you" way. Sure, he was cranky at the US, but he knew he'd lose his power if he ever did anything serious to the outside world---and he actually cared about that---so he was pretty well contained.
Contrast that kind of rational behavior with the kind of irrational fervor we see from al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or even some members of Iran's government. If people like that come to power in a post-US Iraq, we've traded ourselves a toothless tiger for one maddened by rabies. There are people who don't consider the prospect of losing power---or life---in a way we would consider rational, and hence we have much less leverage against them, and vastly more reason to be concerned that they might actually launch some kind of serious---even WMD---strike against us.
Do you really think Hussein would have used WMD against us if he'd had them and we'd left him alone? Not a chance - he knew he'd be signing his own death warrant, and was rational enough to not want that.
But Zarqawi? Or bin Laden? Or even Ahmadinejad? I'm a whole lot less sure about that, and hence a whole lot more worried.
Forget that we've made Iraq a terrorist training ground that's even better for that than Afghanistan was. Forget that we've shown the US army can be practically stalemated by determined jihadists with smallarms and IEDs. Forget that we've tied our hands if a real threat comes along that actually requires military attention.
We may have provided the opportunity to turn a non-threatening nation that could be reasoned with into a violent, irrational one that we cannot predict. With radioactive materials that vanished in the wake of the invasion.
You don't have to be a Democrat or a peacenik to be disgusted with the way this Iraq mess has been handled.
> There's an interesting article ("The Real Iraq") I was reading today by Amir Taheri, about how the > realities he finds in Iraq are different from what the media portrays. He also discusses a number > of signs which cause him to believe conditions in Iraq are getting progressively better > (especially compared to what they were pre-war).
This article indeed paints a very different picture of Iraq than the one we usually hear about, but some of its claims cite little or no corroborating evidence. It motivated me to a little digging on my own, though, to see what the situation is. Unfortunately, the reports I could find often contradict the article. For example, the article asserts:
"To the contrary, Iraqis, far from fleeing, have been returning home. By the end of 2005, in the most conservative estimate, the number of returnees topped the 1.2-million mark."
By contrast, in December 2005 the UN Refugee Agency noted:
"Some 20,500 refugees returned from Iran and Saudi Arabia with the support of UNHCR. Parallel to the organized return movements, the Iraqi Ministry of Trade recorded the spontaneous return of some 270,000 refugees to Iraq after May 2003."
That's only about 300,000 rather than 1,200,000. In fact, that same UN article states:
"UNHCR estimates that nearly one million Iraqis (of whom some 98,000 are registered refugees) are living in the countries immediately surrounding Iraq, and a further 350,000 Iraqis (of whom 166,000 are registered refugees) are living further afield."
Even assuming that doesn't count the 300,000 already returned, that's only a total of 1.65 million Iraqis residing or formerly residing abroad, of whom the article asserts 75% have returned to Iraq by "the most conservative estimate".
More importantly, though, that doesn't even take into account the reportedly-vast numbers of Iraqis fleeing Iraq. From a report entitled "Iraqi Refugees Overwhelm Syria":
"Syrian officials say 700,000 Iraqis from various ethnic, religious and economic backgrounds have arrived since the U.S.-led invasion, far more than in any other country in the region."
There are several other highly-questionable assertions in the article (e.g., Iraq is again a major oil exporter that will fulfill its OPEC quota of 2.8Mbpd by the end of 2006; the US Department of Energy reports that Iraq doesn't even have an OPEC quota, and is producing at best 2.0Mbpd as of May 2006) and enough politicization and bias that, much as I'd like to believe what the author is saying, "The Real Iraq" is not a credible piece.
i.e., spending on reconstruction represents only 7.4% of US spending on Iraq, and even a quarter of that is security costs.
Now, security is pretty obviously a serious problem in the region and requires serious spending, but it just seems wasteful and inefficient to be spending 1600% as much on security as on actual infrastructure-building. If doubling the reconstruction budget shaved even four months off the time required to stabilize Iraq, it would pay for itself in lower troop costs, to say nothing of the lives saved.
Perhaps I'm missing something, but the relatively low level of reconstruction funding compared to troop funding seems all too much like being penny-wise and pound-foolish.
> The problem is that the current generation knows that to survive at all you have to beg, borrow, steal > and kill for any advantage you can get. Its not the same as safe places like (say) Jordan. > > This strategy would work, but only on generations not yet born. None of the people currently > alive will believe you when you say "I'm from the Government and I'm here to help you". > They all know its bullshit.
Cite?
You speak as though all Iraqis are mindless automatons; it's very unlikely that is true. They're as smart as anyone else, even Americans - show 'em a government that they really can trust, and they'll start to do so. If we can start to stabilize much more chaotic states like Liberia or Sierra Leone, we can certainly do so in vastly-less-screwed-up Iraq.
> What progress can insurgents really say they have made since the start of the war?
Quite a bit, unfortunately.
For a start, they've successfully prevented much of our reconstruction efforts. The large majority of the funds set aside for reconstruction have been allocated, but oil production, electricity generation, water, sewer systems, road networks, security, and employment are all around or below pre-war levels. Security and employment troubles are especially bad - about 1,000 civilians and police/military are being violently killed per month now, as opposed to well under a tenth of that in the last years of Hussein's regime, and unemployment is running at about 40%, making insurgency or crime look tempting to large numbers of desperate young men with nothing else to occupy their time.
If the money runs out and Iraq still hasn't been effectively rebuilt, the insurgents have scored a major victory. Without that rebuilding, it's questionable whether the democratic reforms we've started in Iraq can really take root - without jobs, security, and infrastructure, the new society will remain extremely fragile. That fragility isn't so much of a problem at the moment, since it's widely known that a great deal of time, money, and effort is being spent to rebuild Iraq. If that effort fails to bear fruit, though, the insurgents will have successfully undercut our attempt to stabilize the situation, and it's not clear that we'll give it a second try.
That's the thing about asymmetric warfare like this: the status quo means the insurgents are winning. Our task is to create order; theirs is to maintain chaos.
We all know US troops won't be there forever, meaning every day that passes without enough order being created is a day the insurgents make progress. The greater the chaos in the country when US troops finally leave, the greater the opportunity for insurgents to move into the power vaccuum and exert greater control over the country. If this happens, they win.
Essentially, we're in a race against time - we need to make Iraq stable, safe, and prosperous before we leave - and "progress" for the insurgents is simply blocking our progress towards that goal. Every day Iraq doesn't get better fast enough - every time a pipeline is attacked, every time a hospital isn't built because security costs took up the construction budget, every time a death squad murders civilians of the "wrong group" - the insurgents make progress.
The shorter our withdrawal timetable, the more progress we have to make each day, and hence the more progress the insurgents make when we fall behind. If we truly are willing to stick this out - and remember that the average counter-insurgency of this type lasts 9 years - they have almost no chance of winning. But they're betting we won't - or can't - and it's not clear they're wrong. It's an alarming situation. I hope this is a race we win, even if it means we have to eat crow to get the manpower it takes.
> Especially in regards to the Soviet space program, while I do want to give credit where > credit's due, I think it's also worth pointing out the number of Soviet failures and accidents
Yup, it's worth pointing out:
Number of Soviet/Russian failures resulting in fatalities: 7 Number of American failures resulting in fatalities: 13
Okay, how about before 1980 so we don't get the US Shuttles?
If you measure by total number killed, on the other hand, the USSR is worse. Due to that, claiming that the USSR's space successes were due in any way to a greater tolerance for failure and death than the USA's space program is simply in ignorance of the historical data. Neither space program has a clearly better safety record, and it's misleading at best to claim otherwise.
> That's just in the last YEAR! Now, say what again?
You want worldwide? Okay - 1.2 million people are killed every year by traffic accidents, and 3 million as a result of air pollution.
As compared to under 15,000 from terrorism.
Congratulations! You've just helped demonstrate that, even worldwide, the threat from terrorism is minimal. It's about 1% the risk of traffic accidents, and less than 1% the risk of pollution.
Check out the statistics and use a teeny bit of rational thought; terrorism just isn't all that dangerous.
3 billion miles driven per year in the US (2005) * 44 MJ per 300 miles = 4.4 x 10^14 Joules needed for electric cars.
4 trillion kWh electricity production in the US (2004, from CIA WFB) ==> 4,000,000,000,000 * 1000W*hr * 60 min/hr * 60 sec/min = 1.44 x 10^19 Joules.
Thus, powering all the US's cars would require 4.4 x 10^14 J for cars / 1.44 x 10^19 J per year * 31 557 600 seconds per year = 964.26 seconds of the US's yearly electricity production.
By your numbers, the US generates enough electricity in 16 minutes to run the nation's cars for the entire year.
Slashdot Mirror
> So, it's not actually clear without hard numbers wether or not driving an electric car
> 500 miles requires more fossil fuels than driving a gasoline car 500 miles.
Fortunately, folks have done those calculations, such as here and here and here (pdf) for IC efficiency confirmation from a not-anti-oil source. Here (pdf) is another overview (from the standpoint of CO2 emissions, so electric vehicles come out even better, due to nuclear power and the like).
The short version is that all-electric vehicles are about twice as efficient as gas-powered vehicles -- 28% vs. 14% -- when considered "well-to-wheel" (i.e., start with crude oil/coal and go from there). So if you had enough gas to take a car 500 miles, you could burn the crude oil for electricity instead and drive an electric version of that car 1,000 miles.
All-electric cars have some problems, but overall energy efficiency is not one of them.
> What's to discuss? You vote your way, I'll vote mine.
What if your way is wrong? Or my way is wrong?
If we discuss the issues we care about, you may raise points that I hadn't considered, and change my mind. Or I may do the same and change your mind. Either way, we both become more informed and more able to separate truth from bias.
If we don't discuss, then all we have to go on is whatever our favourite news sources tell us, which may not go as far as "propaganda", but certainly isn't as far the other way as "unbiased". The propaganda doesn't fool people because they discuss.
> You cite a report that summarizes "the first week" of inspection. That, fine Sir, is not the whole story.
Since cooperation from the Iraqi side improved over the course of the pre-war inspections, that effectively is the whole story.
Not to mention that you haven't given a shred of evidence to back up your bogus version of history. Can you provide any reputable report that supports what you claimed? Any?
I didn't think so.
> Knowing what we now know about how Eason Jordan's CNN played patty-cake w/ Saddam
> in the run-up to the war, you have the gonads to cite them about that issue???
> Why don't you just cite a random Democratic Underground moonbat, they have
> the same amount of credibility.
Fox News says the same thing as CNN, so you might want to take a look at the evidence instead of wrapping yourself in a coccoon of self-delusion.
They're white, but Brown - i.e., they're Caucasian, but have a little more pigmentation than most "White" Americans, so it's still possible for people to categorize them as Other. (Not that Brazilians are so different in that regard.)
> Even the Arabs are no darker than a lot of mediterranean Europeans,
> if not too suntanned.
But they look enough different that they can be thought of as non-White. Even the Irish weren't considered White in the US about 150 years ago (see How The Irish Became White).
It's nonsensical, but since when has that stopped anyone?
> Therefore, Australian enriched uranium can only be used peacefully
> for nuclear power generation, while Iranian enriched uranium can
> only be used in nuclear weapons for terrorists. Hope this clears
> things up.
Actually, it's a little more complicated than that. While Brazilians are brown enough to shoot, they're apparently Christian enough to enrich uranium, even after blocking the access of international inspectors.
Which makes one wonder - is being Muslim necessary or sufficient for blocking access to uranium enrichment? Would mostly-white Muslims, such as the Kazakhs be allowed to enrich uranium?
(Or is it the whole "Death to Israel! Death to America!" thing that does it? I suppose I can see how that might affect matters...)
> their coverup over intercepted phone calls in Iraq prior to
> the 2nd gulf war.
You might want to read the followup piece by the same author. Not to spoil the surprise, but the heading is "How Colin Powell Got So Much Wrong About Iraq".
Your evidence---all of it---is either old and discredited (like the above) or old and irrelevant (like the claim that presidential palaces were off-limits to inspectors, which was not true about the pre-war inspections). What you're doing isn't mental gymnastics; it's mental sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting "Lalala I can't hear you!1!"
>>> It would take our entire planet blowing up.
I think you underestimate the potential advances in weapons technology. The whole discussion is about "eventually we'll be able to do just about anything"; that includes killing ourselves off. A few methods are already known in principle ("gray goo", runaway Venus-style atmospheric change, boosting planet-cracker asteroids), and it's highly likely that more will become conceivable---and even possible---as technology advances.
The original premise of this thread was "we can eventually master all aspects of the universe"; deorbiting the Earth, crushing it into a black hole, or snuffing out the Sun all fall under that knowledge.
>>> 2) Look at plagues. They never infected 100% of the population.
They were never designed and spread by malicious intelligence and modern or post-modern medical science.
Besides, you forget the original "if we can know it we will" premise; how to infect 100% of the population with a virus is a knowable thing.
>>> 3) We have never had a stabke structure, and had all sorts of scientific
>>> advancement. Even in a "anti-science" stable social structure, you will
>>> always have a few "rebels" that will continue on. Again, I claim "human
>>> nature" for this (and have history to back it up.)
No, you don't.
For a start, you have at most 10,000 years of civilization to draw from, most of it basic agricultural; in the context of 1,000,000 or more years of more-advanced (and, hence, potentially more-rapidly-changing and more-sophisticated) societies, that's too small of a sample to be a good predictor that something cannot happen.
In addition, cultures have suppressed advances, and have stagnated as a result, and this is apparently more possible in larger, more advanced, and more monolithic cultures---see China's abandonment of the Treasure Fleets for an example, and in general China's relative stagnation in comparison to Europe after being so far out in front technologically.
Finally, you are again forgetting the original point of discussion: the argument that we will eventually discover everything. A stable, anti-science culture is "something", so the original premise assumes one will be discovered.
>>> 4) There is no evidence of this. Archeologists would have found
>>> signs of any past "advanced" age in history.
True, but irrelevant. That we're not in such a cycle does not in any way mean that such a cycle cannot occur.
>>>>>> (That being said, I think it's most likely that serious science will still be
>>>>>> done in 100, 1,000, and 10,000 years. And I'm wildly curious what it will show.
>>>
>>> I think that you will find modern human civilization a lot more resilient than
>>> you seem to believe that it is.
And I think you should read all the way to the end of a post before replying to it.
> happens in human advancement will be short term.
Not necessarily - I can think of four scenarios offhand that would prevent that:
1) Extinction
Obvious.
2) Other permanent change
For example, if a cult released a retroviral pandemic that altered everyone's DNA to make people (and their offspring) incurious, then people wouldn't want to question or to do science. If the changes became fully-established through the entire population, only random mutation would knock us out of that rut, and that's by no means a guarantee.
3) Stable social structure
While we haven't yet come up with a society that's stable for millenia, that doesn't mean one doesn't exist, and that doesn't mean such a stable structure might not be anti-science.
4) Recurring pattern
It may be that there is a cyclic or otherwise recurring pattern in human behaviour. If we keep blasting ourselves back to the stone age every 5,000 years, there may be no accumulation of progress.
(That being said, I think it's most likely that serious science will still be done in 100, 1,000, and 10,000 years. And I'm wildly curious what it will show.)
> Control of matter will be a no brainer. Dare I say even altering physics and our own realities.
The laws of physics control behaviour of matter and energy in the universe.
We are composed of matter and energy in the universe.
Ergo, the laws of physics control what we can even theoretically accomplish.
If the laws of physics don't happen to be in a configuration which allows them to change themselves, then tough luck for us---it will never be possible for us to change them. The laws of arithmetic can't be used to change themselves; maybe the laws of physics can't be used to change themselves either.
(That's assuming a purely-naturalistic universe, of course; assuming supernatural effects complicates matters.)
> there's the possibility that the universe is spatially a hypersphere, which would appear to
> have infinite volume to our puny 3-dimensional senses
Only if the reasoning behind Planck units doesn't apply to higher dimensions.
Or if there are infinite dimensions, but (a) current theory suggests otherwise, and (b) current theory suggests the higher dimensions are basically all scrunched up, and hence can't really provide much more in the way of volume anyway. (Of course, volume-per-se isn't exactly what we're talking about here; just thought I'd mention this as an interesting factoid.)
> Only if the universe is finite in spatial extent.
Hence "potentially".
It does, as others have pointed out, mean that only a finite set could have influenced any region at any given point in time, though, which is functionally the same thing. (Assuming information can only travel at a finite speed, such as light speed.)
> So the total number of states of any particular 13.7 billion-light-year-radius
> sphere is indeed finite, and if there's an infinite number of them, then every possible state occurs.
Yes, but not for the reason I think you're thinking.
Just because something occurs an infinite number of times does not mean all possible states of the system must occur. There could well be states that are simply impossible to reach; for example, 0000 is a valid state for a 4-bit integer, but the bits will never reach that state if the controlling process is "add together two random integers between 1 and 3", even if you try an infinite number of times.
However---as I understand things, at least---the reason you would get all states is because of quantum effects. Basically, there's a tiny-but-finite probability of tunnelling into the state you're looking for, so---provided there is no interaction between spheres---you'll see each state represented an infinite number of times.
All that being said, though, there's little or no evidence of the universe being infinite, and no evidence at all that it makes a lick of difference one way or the other what's going on "outside" the observable universe, so it's pretty much moot at this point.
> I guess the set of possible relative positionning of particules(or basic elements) in the universe is infinite uncountable.
Not necessarily - Planck length may be a minimum unit of distance in the universe, making the set of possible states potentially not merely countable but (along with the other Planck units) finite.
> What possible reason could anybody have for defending Microsoft unless they're on the payroll?
Truth.
Period, full-stop, that's the reason for half the things I post on the Internet. Whether or not someone is on "my side"---in fact, especially if they're on "my side"---I very much expect people to tell the truth. If they don't, I consider it shameful, and will often make an effort to correct it. Whether the bogus assertion is anti-Microsoft or not is irrelevant.
Does that mean I agree with all of Microsoft's actions? Of course not. But it does mean that I will shoot down any false assertions that I see, regardless of whether those assertions agree with my own preferences.
Spouting lies to "fight the good fight" doesn't make you noble; it just makes you a liar. If reality doesn't agree with your beliefs, it ain't reality that's due for a change.
> What difference does a few milliseconds here or there make?
Look at the study being referred to:
Excel could open a file in 2 seconds while Calc would take almost 3 minutes
It's not "a few milliseconds" - it's a factor of a hundred that turns a nearly-instant operation into a go-get-coffee one.
Now, don't get me wrong - I realize that the study compares OO/MSW and not ODF/MSXML, and I know that there are definite benefits to having an open document format being adapted (especially for public data), but this is not a small difference. Your post makes pro-open-format people look like shrill, clueless zealots who can be safely ignored, and that is potentially as damaging as the sheer lack of performance shown in the study.
So, please, RTFA. Or at least STFU if you can't be bothered - you're generating your own damn FUD.
>>> the job on him. Bonus points if he's moderately anti-US- it makes it look more realistic.
>
> Hey! I've found the perfect candidate.
>
> Mr Saddam Hussein, this is your big chance!
I've heard that suggested, and only half-jokingly.
The thing is, we could do rather worse than having someone like Saddam Hussein in power in Iraq. If nothing else, he was rational---he was interested in maintaining his own power---and hence was easy to deal with in the traditional "mess with us and we'll stomp you" way. Sure, he was cranky at the US, but he knew he'd lose his power if he ever did anything serious to the outside world---and he actually cared about that---so he was pretty well contained.
Contrast that kind of rational behavior with the kind of irrational fervor we see from al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or even some members of Iran's government. If people like that come to power in a post-US Iraq, we've traded ourselves a toothless tiger for one maddened by rabies. There are people who don't consider the prospect of losing power---or life---in a way we would consider rational, and hence we have much less leverage against them, and vastly more reason to be concerned that they might actually launch some kind of serious---even WMD---strike against us.
Do you really think Hussein would have used WMD against us if he'd had them and we'd left him alone? Not a chance - he knew he'd be signing his own death warrant, and was rational enough to not want that.
But Zarqawi? Or bin Laden? Or even Ahmadinejad? I'm a whole lot less sure about that, and hence a whole lot more worried.
Forget that we've made Iraq a terrorist training ground that's even better for that than Afghanistan was. Forget that we've shown the US army can be practically stalemated by determined jihadists with smallarms and IEDs. Forget that we've tied our hands if a real threat comes along that actually requires military attention.
We may have provided the opportunity to turn a non-threatening nation that could be reasoned with into a violent, irrational one that we cannot predict. With radioactive materials that vanished in the wake of the invasion.
You don't have to be a Democrat or a peacenik to be disgusted with the way this Iraq mess has been handled.
> realities he finds in Iraq are different from what the media portrays. He also discusses a number
> of signs which cause him to believe conditions in Iraq are getting progressively better
> (especially compared to what they were pre-war).
This article indeed paints a very different picture of Iraq than the one we usually hear about, but some of its claims cite little or no corroborating evidence. It motivated me to a little digging on my own, though, to see what the situation is. Unfortunately, the reports I could find often contradict the article. For example, the article asserts:
"To the contrary, Iraqis, far from fleeing, have been returning home. By the end of 2005, in the most conservative estimate, the number of returnees topped the 1.2-million mark."
By contrast, in December 2005 the UN Refugee Agency noted:
"Some 20,500 refugees returned from Iran and Saudi Arabia with the support of UNHCR. Parallel to the organized return movements, the Iraqi Ministry of Trade recorded the spontaneous return of some 270,000 refugees to Iraq after May 2003."
That's only about 300,000 rather than 1,200,000. In fact, that same UN article states:
"UNHCR estimates that nearly one million Iraqis (of whom some 98,000 are registered refugees) are living in the countries immediately surrounding Iraq, and a further 350,000 Iraqis (of whom 166,000 are registered refugees) are living further afield."
Even assuming that doesn't count the 300,000 already returned, that's only a total of 1.65 million Iraqis residing or formerly residing abroad, of whom the article asserts 75% have returned to Iraq by "the most conservative estimate".
More importantly, though, that doesn't even take into account the reportedly-vast numbers of Iraqis fleeing Iraq. From a report entitled "Iraqi Refugees Overwhelm Syria":
"Syrian officials say 700,000 Iraqis from various ethnic, religious and economic backgrounds have arrived since the U.S.-led invasion, far more than in any other country in the region."
There are several other highly-questionable assertions in the article (e.g., Iraq is again a major oil exporter that will fulfill its OPEC quota of 2.8Mbpd by the end of 2006; the US Department of Energy reports that Iraq doesn't even have an OPEC quota, and is producing at best 2.0Mbpd as of May 2006) and enough politicization and bias that, much as I'd like to believe what the author is saying, "The Real Iraq" is not a credible piece.
> Take some of those billions we're spending on bombs and spend it on infrastructure
Some numbers on how Iraq spending has been allocated:
Total: $282B
Reconstruction: $21B
i.e., spending on reconstruction represents only 7.4% of US spending on Iraq, and even a quarter of that is security costs.
Now, security is pretty obviously a serious problem in the region and requires serious spending, but it just seems wasteful and inefficient to be spending 1600% as much on security as on actual infrastructure-building. If doubling the reconstruction budget shaved even four months off the time required to stabilize Iraq, it would pay for itself in lower troop costs, to say nothing of the lives saved.
Perhaps I'm missing something, but the relatively low level of reconstruction funding compared to troop funding seems all too much like being penny-wise and pound-foolish.
> The problem is that the current generation knows that to survive at all you have to beg, borrow, steal
> and kill for any advantage you can get. Its not the same as safe places like (say) Jordan.
>
> This strategy would work, but only on generations not yet born. None of the people currently
> alive will believe you when you say "I'm from the Government and I'm here to help you".
> They all know its bullshit.
Cite?
You speak as though all Iraqis are mindless automatons; it's very unlikely that is true. They're as smart as anyone else, even Americans - show 'em a government that they really can trust, and they'll start to do so. If we can start to stabilize much more chaotic states like Liberia or Sierra Leone, we can certainly do so in vastly-less-screwed-up Iraq.
> What progress can insurgents really say they have made since the start of the war?
Quite a bit, unfortunately.
For a start, they've successfully prevented much of our reconstruction efforts. The large majority of the funds set aside for reconstruction have been allocated, but oil production, electricity generation, water, sewer systems, road networks, security, and employment are all around or below pre-war levels. Security and employment troubles are especially bad - about 1,000 civilians and police/military are being violently killed per month now, as opposed to well under a tenth of that in the last years of Hussein's regime, and unemployment is running at about 40%, making insurgency or crime look tempting to large numbers of desperate young men with nothing else to occupy their time.
If the money runs out and Iraq still hasn't been effectively rebuilt, the insurgents have scored a major victory. Without that rebuilding, it's questionable whether the democratic reforms we've started in Iraq can really take root - without jobs, security, and infrastructure, the new society will remain extremely fragile. That fragility isn't so much of a problem at the moment, since it's widely known that a great deal of time, money, and effort is being spent to rebuild Iraq. If that effort fails to bear fruit, though, the insurgents will have successfully undercut our attempt to stabilize the situation, and it's not clear that we'll give it a second try.
That's the thing about asymmetric warfare like this: the status quo means the insurgents are winning. Our task is to create order; theirs is to maintain chaos.
We all know US troops won't be there forever, meaning every day that passes without enough order being created is a day the insurgents make progress. The greater the chaos in the country when US troops finally leave, the greater the opportunity for insurgents to move into the power vaccuum and exert greater control over the country. If this happens, they win.
Essentially, we're in a race against time - we need to make Iraq stable, safe, and prosperous before we leave - and "progress" for the insurgents is simply blocking our progress towards that goal. Every day Iraq doesn't get better fast enough - every time a pipeline is attacked, every time a hospital isn't built because security costs took up the construction budget, every time a death squad murders civilians of the "wrong group" - the insurgents make progress.
The shorter our withdrawal timetable, the more progress we have to make each day, and hence the more progress the insurgents make when we fall behind. If we truly are willing to stick this out - and remember that the average counter-insurgency of this type lasts 9 years - they have almost no chance of winning. But they're betting we won't - or can't - and it's not clear they're wrong. It's an alarming situation. I hope this is a race we win, even if it means we have to eat crow to get the manpower it takes.
> Especially in regards to the Soviet space program, while I do want to give credit where
> credit's due, I think it's also worth pointing out the number of Soviet failures and accidents
Yup, it's worth pointing out:
Number of Soviet/Russian failures resulting in fatalities: 7
Number of American failures resulting in fatalities: 13
Okay, how about before 1980 so we don't get the US Shuttles?
USSR: 5
USA: 9
(link)
If you measure by total number killed, on the other hand, the USSR is worse. Due to that, claiming that the USSR's space successes were due in any way to a greater tolerance for failure and death than the USA's space program is simply in ignorance of the historical data. Neither space program has a clearly better safety record, and it's misleading at best to claim otherwise.
> There is no way other than the use of industrial espionage to explain the short amount
> of time China took in developing its space program
Sure there are. To name two obvious ones:
1) Learning from Russian technology
"Are Chinese engineers just copycats, blueprinting the Shenzhou after the Russian Soyuz spacecraft design?" (link)
2) Longer development than you think
"[China]'s first satellite...was launched in 1970" (link)
> That's just in the last YEAR! Now, say what again?
You want worldwide? Okay - 1.2 million people are killed every year by traffic accidents, and 3 million as a result of air pollution.
As compared to under 15,000 from terrorism.
Congratulations! You've just helped demonstrate that, even worldwide, the threat from terrorism is minimal. It's about 1% the risk of traffic accidents, and less than 1% the risk of pollution.
Check out the statistics and use a teeny bit of rational thought; terrorism just isn't all that dangerous.
Just for posterity...
3 billion miles driven per year in the US (2005) * 44 MJ per 300 miles = 4.4 x 10^14 Joules needed for electric cars.
4 trillion kWh electricity production in the US (2004, from CIA WFB) ==> 4,000,000,000,000 * 1000W*hr * 60 min/hr * 60 sec/min = 1.44 x 10^19 Joules.
Thus, powering all the US's cars would require 4.4 x 10^14 J for cars / 1.44 x 10^19 J per year * 31 557 600 seconds per year = 964.26 seconds of the US's yearly electricity production.
By your numbers, the US generates enough electricity in 16 minutes to run the nation's cars for the entire year.