Energy needs... suppose they're fusion-powered. Then sucking hydrogen or deuterium from our oceans might be a lot quicker than other sources in the region. But I guess they'll need a transparent aluminum tank. Might as well stock it with a whale or two for entertainment.
OK. We put a man on the bottom of the deepest point in the ocean before we put the man on the moon. Why can't we find the airplane down there? J/K, but if we hope to find life on Titan or Europa we'd better figure out how to work in a liquid environment.
Rather than bureaucracy, I think it's greed and lack of leadership. When the greedy scrape 50, 75, or 90% off the funds available to build something, that's a problem, but when they take 99% and avoid paying taxes, the populace doesn't want to do it any more. Plus when an elected top dog doesn't appear to be solidly behind something, others don't tend to follow. There's a limit to how many people will work their fingers to nubs not knowing if their project will be funded at all next year.
Having more experience & knowledge of economics, I tend to think that of cosmologists. In fact, for different reasons, neither can really perform experiments on a grand scale.
Perhaps stars are the life we're not understanding. We're just parasites. Just a hot ball of gas? There's a lot of very complicated stuff going on inside of stars. Can we know they're not engaged in processing information in a meaningful way? Also, the type of star and the way it dies affects the types of its children. Just not the way we think about biology—"offspring are similar to their parents".
Yeah, even before I got through yours, I was thinking that maybe religion is involved. Most assume that another few centuries of advancement will spell the end of proselytizing. I'm not so sure. Maybe aliens will come to save us from our wrong-to-them religions. Of course, those that can't be converted must be eliminated.
I'm influenced by Arthur C. Clarke's 3001, I admit. I can imagine there being other reasons besides preemptive self-defense that another civilization might want to terminate an apparently belligerent one. Maybe to keep us from causing problems with other similar-to-our-level-of-advancement civilizations.
Whew. I generally agree that instances where people have learned to be happy are quashed pretty quickly. And certainly what happened in the Americas was physical and cultural genocide. But although many of the perps have been "white", I suspect it's more about greed and addiction to power than ethnicity. My understanding of your underlying premise, that cultures where people are happy and some aren't downtrodden must be exterminated, rings true.
Thinking about it from the aliens' point of view, there might be some contingent that seeks Earthlings just out of curiosity and scientific yearning. But coming here is likely to involve a significant effort, one which might only occur if there's something material to be taken from Earth. Am I anthropomorphizing ET? Yep. Why? I have no other model, except perhaps for settlers looking to escape their greed-ridden world. In which case you and I should be adding to the Nazca lines a symbol the hobos used to mean "don't stop here" or "leave quickly". Notice that films, E.T., 8mm, etc. often have ET trying to escape rather than get to Earth? Hmmmm.
Let me add a couple of examples that to me fit in with your list... 1) Burning Man, an experiment known for its gift economy (among many other things, not all good). It's become too popular and isn't based on scarcity, greed, and power, therefore something must be done. It's increasingly being demonized, even here on/. (comments in a recent item). The biggest change has been that the number of participants has now hit the limit. What limit? A limit artificially imposed by BLM. Why? Because it's no longer under the radar and there's pressure to quash it (yes, I've heard the "reasons", and those "problems" can be readily solved). I'd like to see some leaked memos from within BLM or between legislative staffers and the executive branch concerning the event (anyone know of any?). 2) Bonobos. I'll let those with a lot more knowledge compare Bonobos & Chimps to differing humans' cultures. AFAIK, Bonobos are much more endangered than Chimpanzees. 3) Any number of South Pacific island cultures before 17th-20th century invasions. Some suffered from true scarcity (Rapa Nui, yikes), but on many people were happily sharing nature's abundance right up until foreign sailors landed.
Yep. Many other species have means of survival of their species other than "intelligence", and many with impressive intelligence create organizations but don't build things or leave much around for their descendants, information-wise, other than what's slowly coded in genes. Most assume that enough intelligence results in beings "striving for the stars". I know a lot of humans about which that's not true.
'Even a 3000 meter diameter radio telescope could not
detect the "I Love Lucy"...'
Good. Less reason for ET to want to terminate us. If they're advanced enough to be able to wipe us out, they're certainly advanced enough to not tolerate laugh tracks.
RMS, I appreciate the time you spent organizing your responses.
To others... I see a lot of "he's a jerk" and "...his selfish agenda" comments. Exchanging a few emails with RMS years ago and reading/listening to his writings and public speeches isn't sufficient for me to know whether I'd want to maintain a personal friendship with him, given the opportunity, but it is sufficient to see how he respects others. "Selfish agenda?" Looks like one of the least selfish agendas ever to me. Short, frank, blunt, terse? You bet. We asked questions, we got answers. "Changes the questions?" Some people, consciously or not, try to shape conversations with the terminology they use. He refuses to play along. Uncompromising? Apparently. Who better to defend Free Software from all threats and publicly identify those threats? One other thing I noticed: he readily admits to having changed his views based on experience and new information. I can think of a lot of folks that either 1) don't change their minds no matter what and/or 2) won't admit they did even if they did.
Disarmament and reducing CO2 are just about as different as possible. People have never been inconvenienced by disarmament, in fact they have more cash than they would otherwise if the nuclear warhead race was still on. On the other hand, reducing CO2 threatens to inconvenience people and might even cost a few bucks. These two things are not comparable, though thinking about them this way might be useful.
Nope. 60-odd times the area, not 6. People throw around mirror diameters, but suggesting a comparison of light-gathering power between two telescopes implies comparing their mirrors' area.
I'd have to modify that a bit. "Technology advances the fastest when a few people with vision and LOTS of money have their way". Like them or not, imperfect that they are, people like Elon Musk push us forward. People who only milk cash cows hold us back.
BUT... boiling is not required. If the pressure is zero, the liquid can break apart, leaving voids filled with... nothing. I'm also not convinced that siphoning at pressure zero can never work. Mercury, for example, has a lot stronger bond between molecules than water. Maybe some liquid could pull through a tube, even without filling it, like a string. Can anyone provide such an example, or a good reason that no substance will work that way?
So it took only a few million years for creatures that can build on ancestors' knowledge to emerge on Earth. The assumption seems to be that as soon as there's some complexity in animals' information processing, we're on our way to a civilization capable of reaching the stars. Maybe this last step is wrong. I don't think we'd have made it off the planet at all without a sound system of written accumulated knowledge and systematic application of the scientific method. Are other intelligent animals building lasting legacies? Will porpoises or chimps be building rockets? Perhaps the development of creatures that can accumulate and use ancestors' knowledge is the bottleneck. Did humans evolve these capabilities so we could look outward and travel to other celestial bodies? Nope. It was a side effect. Did other types of animals evolve with information-hoarding tendencies? So far we only know of others closely related to us that might have, and there's little evidence they did.
The US government (stupid to lump it together, but saves me from having to list all the names of individuals) claims to have made communications between agencies a top priority and that it functions well. If we assume that's 90% wrong, then that leaves 10%, plenty, of cases where NSA passes stuff on to assorted agencies under the Justice or Treasury or State or Interior or Defense or Homeland Security Departments (which did I miss that should be included? Labor? Agriculture?). So, maybe splitting hairs, but NSA may very well be the one spotting your dope deal on the tubes, while some TLA agency actually knocks your door down. Sure, all the TLAs have their own monitoring, but probably none are nearly as sophisticated as NSAs, so they might accept tips from NSA occasionally, even if reluctantly. Of course, parallel construction, to hide the primary information source, may be required.
Slashdot Mirror
Is your candidate expected to offer them something? What if it doesn't work on aliens?
You laugh.
Energy needs... suppose they're fusion-powered. Then sucking hydrogen or deuterium from our oceans might be a lot quicker than other sources in the region. But I guess they'll need a transparent aluminum tank. Might as well stock it with a whale or two for entertainment.
OK. We put a man on the bottom of the deepest point in the ocean before we put the man on the moon. Why can't we find the airplane down there? J/K, but if we hope to find life on Titan or Europa we'd better figure out how to work in a liquid environment.
Also the LHC.
Rather than bureaucracy, I think it's greed and lack of leadership. When the greedy scrape 50, 75, or 90% off the funds available to build something, that's a problem, but when they take 99% and avoid paying taxes, the populace doesn't want to do it any more. Plus when an elected top dog doesn't appear to be solidly behind something, others don't tend to follow. There's a limit to how many people will work their fingers to nubs not knowing if their project will be funded at all next year.
Having more experience & knowledge of economics, I tend to think that of cosmologists. In fact, for different reasons, neither can really perform experiments on a grand scale.
Nice sig. Us Greenertarians appreciate it.
Perhaps stars are the life we're not understanding. We're just parasites. Just a hot ball of gas? There's a lot of very complicated stuff going on inside of stars. Can we know they're not engaged in processing information in a meaningful way? Also, the type of star and the way it dies affects the types of its children. Just not the way we think about biology—"offspring are similar to their parents".
Or maybe alien men sent the women away, to Earth, and they're seriously mad about it. Guess who's handy to take it out on?
Earth girls are easy?
Yeah, even before I got through yours, I was thinking that maybe religion is involved. Most assume that another few centuries of advancement will spell the end of proselytizing. I'm not so sure. Maybe aliens will come to save us from our wrong-to-them religions. Of course, those that can't be converted must be eliminated.
I'm influenced by Arthur C. Clarke's 3001, I admit. I can imagine there being other reasons besides preemptive self-defense that another civilization might want to terminate an apparently belligerent one. Maybe to keep us from causing problems with other similar-to-our-level-of-advancement civilizations.
That made me think of ant farms.
Or on the other hand, that compared to them intellectually, we're similar to ants. Let's just hope they have a regional PETA chapter.
I like the Technology Ability Scale standardized on a standard poodle. It has that nice ring to it, like a "standard candle".
Whew. I generally agree that instances where people have learned to be happy are quashed pretty quickly. And certainly what happened in the Americas was physical and cultural genocide. But although many of the perps have been "white", I suspect it's more about greed and addiction to power than ethnicity. My understanding of your underlying premise, that cultures where people are happy and some aren't downtrodden must be exterminated, rings true.
Thinking about it from the aliens' point of view, there might be some contingent that seeks Earthlings just out of curiosity and scientific yearning. But coming here is likely to involve a significant effort, one which might only occur if there's something material to be taken from Earth. Am I anthropomorphizing ET? Yep. Why? I have no other model, except perhaps for settlers looking to escape their greed-ridden world. In which case you and I should be adding to the Nazca lines a symbol the hobos used to mean "don't stop here" or "leave quickly". Notice that films, E.T., 8mm, etc. often have ET trying to escape rather than get to Earth? Hmmmm.
Let me add a couple of examples that to me fit in with your list... 1) Burning Man, an experiment known for its gift economy (among many other things, not all good). It's become too popular and isn't based on scarcity, greed, and power, therefore something must be done. It's increasingly being demonized, even here on /. (comments in a recent item). The biggest change has been that the number of participants has now hit the limit. What limit? A limit artificially imposed by BLM. Why? Because it's no longer under the radar and there's pressure to quash it (yes, I've heard the "reasons", and those "problems" can be readily solved). I'd like to see some leaked memos from within BLM or between legislative staffers and the executive branch concerning the event (anyone know of any?). 2) Bonobos. I'll let those with a lot more knowledge compare Bonobos & Chimps to differing humans' cultures. AFAIK, Bonobos are much more endangered than Chimpanzees. 3) Any number of South Pacific island cultures before 17th-20th century invasions. Some suffered from true scarcity (Rapa Nui, yikes), but on many people were happily sharing nature's abundance right up until foreign sailors landed.
Yep. Many other species have means of survival of their species other than "intelligence", and many with impressive intelligence create organizations but don't build things or leave much around for their descendants, information-wise, other than what's slowly coded in genes. Most assume that enough intelligence results in beings "striving for the stars". I know a lot of humans about which that's not true.
'Even a 3000 meter diameter radio telescope could not detect the "I Love Lucy"...'
Good. Less reason for ET to want to terminate us. If they're advanced enough to be able to wipe us out, they're certainly advanced enough to not tolerate laugh tracks.
RMS, I appreciate the time you spent organizing your responses.
To others... I see a lot of "he's a jerk" and "...his selfish agenda" comments. Exchanging a few emails with RMS years ago and reading/listening to his writings and public speeches isn't sufficient for me to know whether I'd want to maintain a personal friendship with him, given the opportunity, but it is sufficient to see how he respects others. "Selfish agenda?" Looks like one of the least selfish agendas ever to me. Short, frank, blunt, terse? You bet. We asked questions, we got answers. "Changes the questions?" Some people, consciously or not, try to shape conversations with the terminology they use. He refuses to play along. Uncompromising? Apparently. Who better to defend Free Software from all threats and publicly identify those threats? One other thing I noticed: he readily admits to having changed his views based on experience and new information. I can think of a lot of folks that either 1) don't change their minds no matter what and/or 2) won't admit they did even if they did.
Disarmament and reducing CO2 are just about as different as possible. People have never been inconvenienced by disarmament, in fact they have more cash than they would otherwise if the nuclear warhead race was still on. On the other hand, reducing CO2 threatens to inconvenience people and might even cost a few bucks. These two things are not comparable, though thinking about them this way might be useful.
Nope. 60-odd times the area, not 6. People throw around mirror diameters, but suggesting a comparison of light-gathering power between two telescopes implies comparing their mirrors' area.
I'd have to modify that a bit. "Technology advances the fastest when a few people with vision and LOTS of money have their way". Like them or not, imperfect that they are, people like Elon Musk push us forward. People who only milk cash cows hold us back.
BUT... boiling is not required. If the pressure is zero, the liquid can break apart, leaving voids filled with... nothing. I'm also not convinced that siphoning at pressure zero can never work. Mercury, for example, has a lot stronger bond between molecules than water. Maybe some liquid could pull through a tube, even without filling it, like a string. Can anyone provide such an example, or a good reason that no substance will work that way?
So it took only a few million years for creatures that can build on ancestors' knowledge to emerge on Earth. The assumption seems to be that as soon as there's some complexity in animals' information processing, we're on our way to a civilization capable of reaching the stars. Maybe this last step is wrong. I don't think we'd have made it off the planet at all without a sound system of written accumulated knowledge and systematic application of the scientific method. Are other intelligent animals building lasting legacies? Will porpoises or chimps be building rockets? Perhaps the development of creatures that can accumulate and use ancestors' knowledge is the bottleneck. Did humans evolve these capabilities so we could look outward and travel to other celestial bodies? Nope. It was a side effect. Did other types of animals evolve with information-hoarding tendencies? So far we only know of others closely related to us that might have, and there's little evidence they did.
The US government (stupid to lump it together, but saves me from having to list all the names of individuals) claims to have made communications between agencies a top priority and that it functions well. If we assume that's 90% wrong, then that leaves 10%, plenty, of cases where NSA passes stuff on to assorted agencies under the Justice or Treasury or State or Interior or Defense or Homeland Security Departments (which did I miss that should be included? Labor? Agriculture?). So, maybe splitting hairs, but NSA may very well be the one spotting your dope deal on the tubes, while some TLA agency actually knocks your door down. Sure, all the TLAs have their own monitoring, but probably none are nearly as sophisticated as NSAs, so they might accept tips from NSA occasionally, even if reluctantly. Of course, parallel construction, to hide the primary information source, may be required.