What I mean is, it's not special in terms of physical law. It's certainly unique and useful, but there is nothing in physics that makes that frame of reference fundamentally different than any other. It's merely convenient.
General relativity tells us that the passage of time depends on your movements in space, but it doesn't forbit the presence of some 'special' reference frame in which one can consistently give an age on events that happen in the universe. That special reference frame would be the one based on the center of the universe - in effect, the center of mass frame. Actually, that's exactly what it forbids. There are no privilaged frames of reference. It is often convenient to use as a baseline the reference frame which is stationary with respect to the cosmic microwave background (the co-moving frame), but this is merely a useful convention. It has no special physical significance.
Given the first elevator, new ones can be put up much more cheaply. That in turn will allow a much larger volume of cargo, allowing the costs to be amortized. If lifters go up as often as commercial airlines, they won't be much more expensive.
There's also the benefit that unlike a rocket, an elevator absolutely won't explode, which is a great comfort to anyone skittish about sending up fragile or expensive cargo (such as humans).
So design things to have lengths in multiples of 60cm or 60mm. Problem solved. That's a much simpler solution than using a whole different set of measurements.
Not so. The disclaimer linked to after that phrase makes it clear that it means exchange rates, e.g. converting from US to Canadian dollars. This particular calculation performs no currency conversions, so the disclaimer does not apply.
One of the paragraphs at the end of the essay hints at the true answer:
Inevitably, you are going to think of a long list of intelligent, defensible reasons why each of these options is absolutely, positively essential. Don't bother. I know. Each additional choice makes complete sense until you find yourself explaining to your uncle that he has to choose between 15 different ways to turn off a laptop.
So if my (presumably technology-ignorant) uncle is using a laptop, a single "off" button may be appropriate. But I know the difference between sleep, hibernation and full shutdown, and I want to be able to choose between them as appropriate. Like a friend of mine said, I don't want to hit the "general turn-off" button and put my laptop in its bag, only to have it whir back into life as it tries to commit a gig of RAM to the hard drive.
As much as I typically despise Microsoft and all of its doings, the screenshot in the article looks like exactly the right design decision: two simple buttons, and a menu to get more options if you want them. The new user can just hit the power button, and I can go into the popup menu for a more specific choice. Everyone wins. The Mac OS X strategy of having an "Easy Mode" for menus would work too.
The idea of everyone having an IQ of 300, being able to sleep 4 hours a week, and never getting sick may sound great to some, but where does it stop? After we've reached the point of greatly diminishing returns from drugs, do we turn to machines for enhancment? Do we augment ourselves with embedded computer chips, use genetic engineering to enhance our characteristics, or completely tailor our bodies and minds into something we can't even imagine today?
I certainly hope so! The drive to improve ourselves is part of what makes us who we are. We cannot deny that impulse without betraying our own natures, even if it means leaving behind our current arbitraty genome. Homo sapiens is a good starting point, but we can do far better.
Ahh, but to the materialist, the physical laws in the end control your thought process do they not? BTW, this is an internal critique of the materialist worldview.
How is it relevant? Physical law governs everything else we do, from walking to talking to eating. You have given no reason to believe that thinking should be any different. If it's free will you're worried about, the laws of physics aren't deterministic, so there's some philosophical wiggle room there.
It is the only rational worldview I have found. It can account for laws of logic, morality, human dignity, and the inductive principle. Materialism does not. I ask you, why should men be rational in your worldview? In the Christian worldview, God is a logical being, He created laws of logic and made us in His image. We are to be consistent and abide by these laws. In the Christian worldview, laws of logic exist.
How does the atheist account for laws of logic? How can abstract universal absolutes exist in a world where only matter exists? Why should men be rational in your worldview?
Because rationality works. To an extremely high degree of confidence, the universe behaves according to a self-consistent set of rules. It is the basis of all science and technology. Your car, your television, the computer on your desk work because the laws of physics can be expected to behave in a predictable way. While abstractions like mathematics don't exist independently of their own accord, like physics they follow certain rules - self-consistent rules which we define, for we created mathematics and its relatives. Formal logic is a subbranch of mathematics.
I've heard that theory before. Frankly, I don't give it much credence. If the US educational system was designed with some overarching motive in mind, we would expect it to be highly uniform across the country and tightly controlled by the federal government. This prediction does not agree with observation, which shows a loosely organized system in which states and local school boards have a great deal of leeway. Obviously school board members don't want to see their kids turned into mindless automatons. No, they're definitely trying to set up a good educational system. They're just failing.
Paul Graham's essay Why Nerds are Unpopular posits that part of the problem is that there's very little competitive pressure for schools to be good at their stated purpose of educating. If schools competed academically as fiercely as their football teams do, we might get a better overall system out of the deal. Sounds good to me.
The definition of irony: having a conversation with other people on the Internet about how technology isolates people.
I work at a software company. My friends and co-workers routinely go out to movies, dinner, etc together. We coordinate with cell phones and IMs, get directions from Google Maps, smooth over the process of deciding who gets the check with Billmonk. In off hours, I'm active on a community website whose members often hold real-world meetings. I have at least eight friends from there who I would likely never have met in meatspace first, and some I still haven't met in person yet consider good friends.
So you will excuse me if I don't exactly buy the "isolating influence of technology" line.
To quote Niven/Pournelle, "the air's already full of crap from fossil fuel plants and we're running out of fossil fuels, and damned fools keep delaying the nuclear plants that might get us out of that particular box."
Nuclear waste may be nasty stuff, but at least it stays in one place where you can keep an eye on it, rather than being thrown up into the atmosphere at large. And the byproducts of fusion are generally a lot less problematic than those of fission - from what I understand, mostly radioactivated metals from the reactor itself, not spent fuel.
Organic life is a proof-by-example that molecular nanotechnology is possible, so your statement is trivially incorrect (and, curiously, contracts your immediately preceding paragraph). It's generally considered courteous to have some knowledge of a subject before you try to comment on it. I recommend reading Engines of Creation or picking up a copy of Nanosystems at your local bookstore. Thanks.
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What I mean is, it's not special in terms of physical law. It's certainly unique and useful, but there is nothing in physics that makes that frame of reference fundamentally different than any other. It's merely convenient.
Given the first elevator, new ones can be put up much more cheaply. That in turn will allow a much larger volume of cargo, allowing the costs to be amortized. If lifters go up as often as commercial airlines, they won't be much more expensive.
There's also the benefit that unlike a rocket, an elevator absolutely won't explode, which is a great comfort to anyone skittish about sending up fragile or expensive cargo (such as humans).
So design things to have lengths in multiples of 60cm or 60mm. Problem solved. That's a much simpler solution than using a whole different set of measurements.
Not so. The disclaimer linked to after that phrase makes it clear that it means exchange rates, e.g. converting from US to Canadian dollars. This particular calculation performs no currency conversions, so the disclaimer does not apply.
So if my (presumably technology-ignorant) uncle is using a laptop, a single "off" button may be appropriate. But I know the difference between sleep, hibernation and full shutdown, and I want to be able to choose between them as appropriate. Like a friend of mine said, I don't want to hit the "general turn-off" button and put my laptop in its bag, only to have it whir back into life as it tries to commit a gig of RAM to the hard drive.
As much as I typically despise Microsoft and all of its doings, the screenshot in the article looks like exactly the right design decision: two simple buttons, and a menu to get more options if you want them. The new user can just hit the power button, and I can go into the popup menu for a more specific choice. Everyone wins. The Mac OS X strategy of having an "Easy Mode" for menus would work too.
Because rationality works. To an extremely high degree of confidence, the universe behaves according to a self-consistent set of rules. It is the basis of all science and technology. Your car, your television, the computer on your desk work because the laws of physics can be expected to behave in a predictable way. While abstractions like mathematics don't exist independently of their own accord, like physics they follow certain rules - self-consistent rules which we define, for we created mathematics and its relatives. Formal logic is a subbranch of mathematics.
I've heard that theory before. Frankly, I don't give it much credence. If the US educational system was designed with some overarching motive in mind, we would expect it to be highly uniform across the country and tightly controlled by the federal government. This prediction does not agree with observation, which shows a loosely organized system in which states and local school boards have a great deal of leeway. Obviously school board members don't want to see their kids turned into mindless automatons. No, they're definitely trying to set up a good educational system. They're just failing.
Paul Graham's essay Why Nerds are Unpopular posits that part of the problem is that there's very little competitive pressure for schools to be good at their stated purpose of educating. If schools competed academically as fiercely as their football teams do, we might get a better overall system out of the deal. Sounds good to me.
The definition of irony: having a conversation with other people on the Internet about how technology isolates people.
I work at a software company. My friends and co-workers routinely go out to movies, dinner, etc together. We coordinate with cell phones and IMs, get directions from Google Maps, smooth over the process of deciding who gets the check with Billmonk. In off hours, I'm active on a community website whose members often hold real-world meetings. I have at least eight friends from there who I would likely never have met in meatspace first, and some I still haven't met in person yet consider good friends.
So you will excuse me if I don't exactly buy the "isolating influence of technology" line.
To quote Niven/Pournelle, "the air's already full of crap from fossil fuel plants and we're running out of fossil fuels, and damned fools keep delaying the nuclear plants that might get us out of that particular box."
Nuclear waste may be nasty stuff, but at least it stays in one place where you can keep an eye on it, rather than being thrown up into the atmosphere at large. And the byproducts of fusion are generally a lot less problematic than those of fission - from what I understand, mostly radioactivated metals from the reactor itself, not spent fuel.
Organic life is a proof-by-example that molecular nanotechnology is possible, so your statement is trivially incorrect (and, curiously, contracts your immediately preceding paragraph). It's generally considered courteous to have some knowledge of a subject before you try to comment on it. I recommend reading Engines of Creation or picking up a copy of Nanosystems at your local bookstore. Thanks.