Not really. Thats ambigenesis you are talking. Not evolution.
Once any life existed- then you are talking evolution and natural selection.
Science has strong evidence for evolution, the earth being 4 billion years old, humans being less than 500k years (actually less than that), etc.
It doesn't have a particularly strong theory for the first living being. It has a lot of exciting medium to weak strength theories.
A scientist would be fine with finding a provable testable falsifiable theory that showed life could only exist here on earth.
Again-- EVOLUTION - plenty of rock solid evidence (and really quite a lot of evidence that our type of intelligence may be rare since a lot of species came over hundreds of millions of years without a tool smart group dominating). But- Common ness of life- unknown. Still gathering *data*. You know- hard facts. Not "just so" stories.
And so by setting your rewards and punishments appropriately, you give complete control of your life over to others.
One step at a time.
No fire works. No racing. No new sports that don't have the legal immunities grandfathered to older sports.
And so on.
Until we are all really quite safe and able to do nothing.
It's like taking away the money from us and then only giving it back to us if we make driving faster than 55 illegal and make pot illegal and then make certain kinds of speech on campus illegal and so on.
I get your point- you prefer safety. And if you had to give up your transportation to get it, you probably would.
No. There were also the electrical shock psych tests and others where people ignored pleading by the victim to stop shocking them (and this was only within a period of a few hours).
No. Freedom means living in a society where you may suffer those kinds of consequences.
Red light cameras are yet another trade off between safety and freedom.
The utmost in safety would be NO private cars at all.
Your right to swing your fist ends at my nose... hmm. So those of us who want to get into fist fights have no freedom to do so? I was at a gaming convention at a con last week and two young pups had a real hard fist fight on purpose (not angry). Took off their shirts and went at it. Big red welts and I'm sure bruises the next day. Alive yes- free to some extent- yes.
Civilization is VERY relative. One man's reasonable safety is another's slavery.
When i consider it, machines seem the only likely real star travellers.
They "live" long enough, can eventually be repaired easier, they are likely to remain sane, and they can be safel shut off/stored so centuries of travel passes in an instant to them. They could probably travel to stars at.001C (4,000 years to alpha centauri) without major life support in fairly tiny packages.
I almost think if we are going to send humans, a first step would be breeding for 2' tall humans (there's no reason humans have to be big to be as smart as they are).
We are very close to a paradise or a hell on earth as things become too cheap for humans to be used to make them. We may have a large glut of population without the ability to do anything productive.
If we were in the right place culturally- it could be a paradise. But more likely, it leads to a bunch of people doing nothing productive at all (what's to incent them to enter science if they can have 3 squares a day, a family and a house without doing anything). I knew a guy who knew a guy that won a lottery and got 50 grand a year. As told by my friend, it basically ruined the guy- he played and worked as a bartender and never did anything to advance himself again. After 10 years or so, the money wasn't even that good any more (50 grand won't buy what it used to) but the guy couldn't break loose.
I no longer hope. I really think things will get extremely bad towards the end of my life. Strongly fascist governments (total surveillance) to stop the "bad" guys combined with ever cheaper methods to kill a lot of people.
Bin Laden & Co have apparently about 100 million to 200 million and would not hesitate to kill every non-believer (and that includes non-wahabi islamics). How much would it cost to develop a really lethal bio-weapon these days?
And really only 10 to 20 nukes would be enough to wreck the planet economically for a century.
However- I wish I could hope like you do! Who knows- folks often get darker as they get older.
I agree and disagree with you. They can be very brave with regard to criminals (possibly being killed) and then immediately turn around and be completely cowardly to a political threat (possibly "only" ending their career as a cop).
They get caught all the time covering up minor offenses by themselves and people with the right connections.
When the criminals get real power (ala mexico), the police back off. How does the old hack go-- "Cops got better things to do than get killed in Harlem". Same thing for many areas of New Orleans PRE Katrina.
They are peculiar heros, my nephew would put his life on the line to protect innocents from bad guys and then regale you with a tale about intimidating the same innocents himself. They do want to do good, but they are corrupted by the power given to them.
Actually, religion would probably be one of the only ways we get off this rock.
If you somehow made it a religious requirement to get to the mars and enough people bought it, they would get it done. A comparable number of independent thinkers would not be able to align themselves in a single direction to get it done. Religion does have a marvelous capacity to align the behavior of huge numbers of individuals.
Example: More katrina repair work has been done by religious organizations even tho the have less government money. I have religious friends who have spent a couple weeks now going and building houses. If I want to help, the only avenue I have is to join a religious group going to help. Government work is restricted to contractors and non-believers are too disorganized.
Example: Millions of people make it to mecca and the ganges river independently every year without any central organization other than their religion.
Religion allows people to do things that would otherwise be insane. So the right religion might get us to the stars.
I disagree. I've seen to many examples of "nice" cops (and the courts who support them) who turn ruthless if confronted with evidence that they are breaking the rules.
Even "nice" cops are fundamentally in love with their power over others. And this includes some of my relatives in law enforcement. They just love the fact that they can make your life hell if you are just an average joe.
Like most bullies, they are abject cowards when it comes to people with real power (and rightfully so since the cops get the same treatment when they try to enforce real rules on people in power). You cross the wrong person- your career is over. You might as well leave law enforcement and go be a milk maid.
Implicit in your argument is the presumption that with a population in the billions, they will not have politics.
Even given a one-world government, I do not think you could pull of the political will to do half the things you propose. 99.9% of people want cheap food, entertainment over anything theoretical as this. Then on top of that- you lay over any kind of religious or philosophical debate and you have a lot of folks fighting against such a notion.
There are things scientifically possible today that are impossible politically.
Even better, if it detects a series of copyrighted notes being played by the user, it automatically charges them the appropriate liscensing fee. So now they can fiddle around, secure in the knowledge that they are legal!
But what if it just doesn't get any cheaper? If star travel remains a trillion dollar effort regardless of how far you advanced technologically.
I agree we have a lot of people that would jump at a chance to leave. Life on a star ship would be infinately better than many areas on earth. For one thing, you'd have a great deal of security about your life. No worries about layoffs and stuff. Basic medical would be fine. Probably cancer- you'd be toast.
I don't see any way to get near the 4.6 year (nearly) constant thrust at 1g currently. You'd have to have a huge ship to have a stable ecology for 3.7 years (internal time). How would you accellerate something that big that fast. When we can do that - power on earth will basically be unlimited.
I agree that red light cameras are effective. I have no problem with red light cameras.
However, you'd be even safer if your right to drive was completely taken away and you had to use public transportation. How safe do we want to be? How free do we want to be? Bad things happen to people who are free- they make stupid decisions- they LIVE (and as a result sometimes they die early). We could live a life time of completely safe dull grey existence.
I get your irony. However currently our government and society is very anti-procreation. That could change in a heartbeat. I mean only 100 years ago we were routinely having large families.
You are correct... some interesting comments here
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/S R/rocket.html
From the article, for 1g acceleration:
Distance Location On Ship Time.
4.3 ly nearest star 3.6 years
27 ly Vega 6.6 years
30,000 ly Center of our galaxy 20 years
2,000,000 ly Andromeda galaxy 28 years
Given unlimited resources, growth is exponential. It is very easy for humans to ramp up to 10 offspring for 2 parents. So every 20 years, the population is (roughly) 8x larger.
Even at the current trivial rates of population growth, the weight of humans would equal the earth in 500 years (so the rate must drop to zero at some point). Exponential growth would fill the universe with a mass of human flesh given a chance.
Oh for the love of god this is slashdot- nitpicking on casually slung out ideas is really stupid and pointless.
If you want to discuss and explore my assertion then hit the meat of my point-
Regardless of how advanced ANY civilization gets, it will be limited by POLITICS and the SPEED of LIGHT from ever colonizing outside it's native star system.
I picked 4 or 5 LY because we have exactly one star system in that range and last I heard, it is probably not habitable.
I was attacking two underlying assumption: That all cultures will be prevented by politics from doing really big projects. That it is absolutely impossible to break the speed of light (despite a lot of wishful thinking).
Slashdot Mirror
Not really. Thats ambigenesis you are talking. Not evolution.
Once any life existed- then you are talking evolution and natural selection.
Science has strong evidence for evolution, the earth being 4 billion years old, humans being less than 500k years (actually less than that), etc.
It doesn't have a particularly strong theory for the first living being. It has a lot of exciting medium to weak strength theories.
A scientist would be fine with finding a provable testable falsifiable theory that showed life could only exist here on earth.
Again-- EVOLUTION - plenty of rock solid evidence (and really quite a lot of evidence that our type of intelligence may be rare since a lot of species came over hundreds of millions of years without a tool smart group dominating).
But- Common ness of life- unknown. Still gathering *data*. You know- hard facts. Not "just so" stories.
And so by setting your rewards and punishments appropriately, you give complete control of your life over to others.
One step at a time.
No fire works.
No racing.
No new sports that don't have the legal immunities grandfathered to older sports.
And so on.
Until we are all really quite safe and able to do nothing.
It's like taking away the money from us and then only giving it back to us if we make driving faster than 55 illegal and make pot illegal and then make certain kinds of speech on campus illegal and so on.
I get your point- you prefer safety. And if you had to give up your transportation to get it, you probably would.
But a lot to do with abusing showing how easily someone will abuse a helpless person.
No. There were also the electrical shock psych tests and others where people ignored pleading by the victim to stop shocking them (and this was only within a period of a few hours).
No. Freedom means living in a society where you may suffer those kinds of consequences.
Red light cameras are yet another trade off between safety and freedom.
The utmost in safety would be NO private cars at all.
Your right to swing your fist ends at my nose... hmm. So those of us who want to get into fist fights have no freedom to do so? I was at a gaming convention at a con last week and two young pups had a real hard fist fight on purpose (not angry). Took off their shirts and went at it. Big red welts and I'm sure bruises the next day. Alive yes- free to some extent- yes.
Civilization is VERY relative. One man's reasonable safety is another's slavery.
I loved reading the text.
They mostly went like this...
Picture of an incredibly bloody finger
"I needed 4 stitches and now i'm on the road to recovery to playing again!"
Despite injuring themselves, their furniture, breaking windows, etc. it's just so damn fun the main consideration is how soon they can play again.
I drop by the stores convenient to my work and house and I'm greeted with empty shelves.
I have absolutely no interest in the other systems (too expensive).
Apparently, every time a shipment arrives it is sucked up immediately ("We got in 30 last saturday but they were all gone in an hour".)
Hmmm. I'd say the magic is still there.
When i consider it, machines seem the only likely real star travellers.
.001C (4,000 years to alpha centauri) without major life support in fairly tiny packages.
They "live" long enough, can eventually be repaired easier, they are likely to remain sane, and they can be safel shut off/stored so centuries of travel passes in an instant to them. They could probably travel to stars at
I almost think if we are going to send humans, a first step would be breeding for 2' tall humans (there's no reason humans have to be big to be as smart as they are).
There is also an underlying assumption that space is really fairly empty.
.25c, an object the size of a dime would do enormous damage.
What if it is not and there are random bits of debris out there?
At
That actually feeds into my other "nightmare".
We are very close to a paradise or a hell on earth as things become too cheap for humans to be used to make them. We may have a large glut of population without the ability to do anything productive.
If we were in the right place culturally- it could be a paradise.
But more likely, it leads to a bunch of people doing nothing productive at all (what's to incent them to enter science if they can have 3 squares a day, a family and a house without doing anything). I knew a guy who knew a guy that won a lottery and got 50 grand a year. As told by my friend, it basically ruined the guy- he played and worked as a bartender and never did anything to advance himself again. After 10 years or so, the money wasn't even that good any more (50 grand won't buy what it used to) but the guy couldn't break loose.
I no longer hope. I really think things will get extremely bad towards the end of my life. Strongly fascist governments (total surveillance) to stop the "bad" guys combined with ever cheaper methods to kill a lot of people.
Bin Laden & Co have apparently about 100 million to 200 million and would not hesitate to kill every non-believer (and that includes non-wahabi islamics). How much would it cost to develop a really lethal bio-weapon these days?
And really only 10 to 20 nukes would be enough to wreck the planet economically for a century.
However- I wish I could hope like you do! Who knows- folks often get darker as they get older.
I agree and disagree with you. They can be very brave with regard to criminals (possibly being killed) and then immediately turn around and be completely cowardly to a political threat (possibly "only" ending their career as a cop).
They get caught all the time covering up minor offenses by themselves and people with the right connections.
When the criminals get real power (ala mexico), the police back off. How does the old hack go-- "Cops got better things to do than get killed in Harlem". Same thing for many areas of New Orleans PRE Katrina.
They are peculiar heros, my nephew would put his life on the line to protect innocents from bad guys and then regale you with a tale about intimidating the same innocents himself. They do want to do good, but they are corrupted by the power given to them.
As we develop the power to do that, it becomes easy for smaller and smaller numbers of nutjobs to kill the rest of us.
If you can move an asteroid to earth orbit, you can just as easily move it the other 200 miles.
Actually, religion would probably be one of the only ways we get off this rock.
If you somehow made it a religious requirement to get to the mars and enough people bought it, they would get it done. A comparable number of independent thinkers would not be able to align themselves in a single direction to get it done. Religion does have a marvelous capacity to align the behavior of huge numbers of individuals.
Example: More katrina repair work has been done by religious organizations even tho the have less government money. I have religious friends who have spent a couple weeks now going and building houses. If I want to help, the only avenue I have is to join a religious group going to help. Government work is restricted to contractors and non-believers are too disorganized.
Example: Millions of people make it to mecca and the ganges river independently every year without any central organization other than their religion.
Religion allows people to do things that would otherwise be insane. So the right religion might get us to the stars.
I disagree. I've seen to many examples of "nice" cops (and the courts who support them) who turn ruthless if confronted with evidence that they are breaking the rules.
Even "nice" cops are fundamentally in love with their power over others. And this includes some of my relatives in law enforcement. They just love the fact that they can make your life hell if you are just an average joe.
Like most bullies, they are abject cowards when it comes to people with real power (and rightfully so since the cops get the same treatment when they try to enforce real rules on people in power). You cross the wrong person- your career is over. You might as well leave law enforcement and go be a milk maid.
Implicit in your argument is the presumption that with a population in the billions, they will not have politics.
Even given a one-world government, I do not think you could pull of the political will to do half the things you propose. 99.9% of people want cheap food, entertainment over anything theoretical as this. Then on top of that- you lay over any kind of religious or philosophical debate and you have a lot of folks fighting against such a notion.
There are things scientifically possible today that are impossible politically.
No no... exonerated, not exhumed.
It's an easy mixup to make.
Even better, if it detects a series of copyrighted notes being played by the user, it automatically charges them the appropriate liscensing fee. So now they can fiddle around, secure in the knowledge that they are legal!
You assume that things will get cheaper.
But what if it just doesn't get any cheaper? If star travel remains a trillion dollar effort regardless of how far you advanced technologically.
I agree we have a lot of people that would jump at a chance to leave. Life on a star ship would be infinately better than many areas on earth. For one thing, you'd have a great deal of security about your life. No worries about layoffs and stuff. Basic medical would be fine. Probably cancer- you'd be toast.
I don't see any way to get near the 4.6 year (nearly) constant thrust at 1g currently. You'd have to have a huge ship to have a stable ecology for 3.7 years (internal time). How would you accellerate something that big that fast. When we can do that - power on earth will basically be unlimited.
I agree that red light cameras are effective.
I have no problem with red light cameras.
However, you'd be even safer if your right to drive was completely taken away and you had to use public transportation. How safe do we want to be? How free do we want to be? Bad things happen to people who are free- they make stupid decisions- they LIVE (and as a result sometimes they die early). We could live a life time of completely safe dull grey existence.
Lol.
Oh but I do.
I get your irony. However currently our government and society is very anti-procreation. That could change in a heartbeat. I mean only 100 years ago we were routinely having large families.
You are correct... some interesting comments here http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/S R/rocket.html
From the article, for 1g acceleration:
Distance Location On Ship Time.
4.3 ly nearest star 3.6 years
27 ly Vega 6.6 years
30,000 ly Center of our galaxy 20 years
2,000,000 ly Andromeda galaxy 28 years
Odd. I don't consider it a troll so much as an instruction manual.
If only a few more britons think this way instead of bombs the camera thing will stop being an issue.
You only need to make it a gang ritual to disable one camera and you'd have no ground level cameras inside of a few years.
Given unlimited resources, growth is exponential. It is very easy for humans to ramp up to 10 offspring for 2 parents. So every 20 years, the population is (roughly) 8x larger.
Even at the current trivial rates of population growth, the weight of humans would equal the earth in 500 years (so the rate must drop to zero at some point). Exponential growth would fill the universe with a mass of human flesh given a chance.
Oh for the love of god this is slashdot- nitpicking on casually slung out ideas is really stupid and pointless.
If you want to discuss and explore my assertion then hit the meat of my point-
Regardless of how advanced ANY civilization gets, it will be limited by POLITICS and the SPEED of LIGHT from ever colonizing outside it's native star system.
I picked 4 or 5 LY because we have exactly one star system in that range and last I heard, it is probably not habitable.
I was attacking two underlying assumption:
That all cultures will be prevented by politics from doing really big projects.
That it is absolutely impossible to break the speed of light (despite a lot of wishful thinking).