Phi for All

Right. Private corporations can't handle the R&D necessary. They're weak in that department, extremely weak. They need to show their stockholders that there will absolutely be a return on the investment, and they've almost always fallen down in efforts where they need to pioneer the knowledge and technology available. But look what the government did with the Postal Service! No private company was able to deliver letters to 50 states for the same rate, so the government made it happen. And now private interests want to swoop in and buy it all up for pennies so they can raise the rates like they did when they began taking over our utilities (oh gosh, I shouldn't get started on the stupidity of letting corporations manage our power structure). And NASA managed to take us offplanet in the ultimate pioneering effort. Personally, I think you read about the Challenger disaster and passed judgement on the whole program, which is very naive, imo. NASA has done more to fill in the gaps in our knowledge of space than any private company, and they did it without needing to make a profit. I'm very biased about the program. I'm friends with one of Buzz Aldrin's biographers, and the same guy made me aware of the problems with orbital debris, so I've studied quite a bit about how we deal with outer space as a country and a planet. I think what you're suggesting will be the downfall of our entire species if we don't stop trusting the private sector to regulate themselves. If we allow the private sector to have access to the resources available offplanet, we can expect every evil thing that's ever happened in science fiction. I don't think you understand how ruthless private interests can be if they aren't heavily regulated, and if you give them the ability to bring asteroids close enough to Earth to mine, you give them unfettered control over all of us.

I've asked you this question in two different threads, and twice in this one, and you keep doing a marvelous job of sidestepping it, like you refuse to understand what I'm asking. So here it is again: WHO GETS TO DECIDE WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A MAN FOR YOU? Is it you? Is it other men? Is it society in general? Or someone/thing else? I can't help what you think "my line" makes you sound like. Prejudice isn't the sole province of fascists, but I think anyone who defines how others should behave runs the risk of pre-judging them. And all I'm asking for is clarification. Who is the ultimate authority about how YOU define what being a man is for you?

"Empathy deficit" describes most of the big time CEOs I've ever heard of. Personally, I think the whole corporate structure is modeled after the same hierarchy the Abrahamic religions are modeled after. The CEO is God, and everyone else is below them. "Just good business" is synonymous with "empathy deficit". You aren't supposed to take people's feelings into consideration in business, even when it's a social media company. Can you name any other social media companies where the CEOs are empathetic and care about people's thinking more than profit?

Do you place the blame for Facebook on Zuckerberg's neurodivergence? I've seen other CEOs trying to downplay the gravity of their mistakes, so why is Z different? I also try to keep in mind that "normal" is decided by those who think they're normal, and also that our modern society (in the US at least) is ANYTHING but normal. There are so many mixed messages, hypocritical processes, laws that sound good but are horrible, so much deceit and lying, so many absolutely STUPID behaviors that people willingly embrace, and so much ennui in the same bodies as all our passions that it's a wonder more of us aren't diagnosed with a disorder. What if autism is an evolutionary attempt to save us from the dangers of being "typical"?

It happens less often than two tall people having a short child. Autism is 50-80% heritable, height is about 80%. It helps to take the perspective that autism isn't a disorder (like being tall). I know that's not the current thinking, but the behavior I've observed is more divergent than abnormal.

Why do we treat this particular group differently? Are we unhappy with their definition of man and woman? Again, I ask you who gets to define what being a man is FOR YOU? And if you get to decide, why isn't that courtesy extended to others?

! Moderator Note If you're basing this decision on the replies you quoted, they didn't come from this thread. Not sure where you got them.

Apparently it's not "so many" US universities that make it to the top ranks.

It could very well be that "men" and "women" are outdated terms wrt some modern societies. The categories are too broad and don't make enough meaningful distinctions, yet they're part of the fabric of our lives almost from birth. I can't appreciate JK Rowling's stance on shared history since it assumes everyone born with a vagina shares some kind of cultural constancy with every other vagina owner. It also assumes someone who chooses a vagina over their birth penis hasn't shared some of that cultural history, which I doubt anyone could support with evidence. So who defines what it means to be a man for you? Is it you, is it other men, or is it society in general? I think there's only one decent answer to that, only one that gives you the freedom and liberty to be who you think is best for you to be.

Well, no, that's not the problem. We already have enough people who agree that Congress giving the DoD more than they ask for is wasteful and needs cutting back. The problem is that Congress hasn't represented what The People want since the 80s. Corporations lobby for pork spending, and that's who Congress represents. To fix the problem, we need to change how politicians receive campaign funding. Block the corporate money so representation goes back to The People.

Even science can't force people to restrict their use of certain terms. I really wish we could tell people "Stop using the word 'theory' in that context, that word is taken", but we can't because that's not how words work. No disrespect, but I think this attitude is part of the problem. You come up with a flippant, non-serious example that seems ridiculous, as if that's what people who want to change their names are after. You're making a ludicrous equivalence that undermines the real objective. Are the individuals actually saying that though? Are they defining what a woman is for everyone, or are they trying to include themselves in a definition previously denied to them? People in general are finding out, through better education, that many of our old definitions were too broad or confining, and now we want better clarification and classification.

Those too, but I was thinking specifically about stuff like the F-35 JSF earmarks. We spent an extra US$1.5B so they can give the DoD 18 more planes than they asked for. Military overspending isn't necessarily done by the military. This is enough on its own to fund a LOT of dinosaur research, and apparently the DoD wouldn't even miss the planes.

! Moderator Note Please don't post a long video and nothing else as a response in discussion. If the video comments on a particular point you wish to make, please let us know about where it is without requiring an hour and forty-seven minute viewing to figure out what you mean. Thank you!

I vote "cutting back on other stuff". Have you seen some of the ridiculous pork included in the average spending bill? There are ways to make tax funding work for everyone.

I really object to this statement. I think it's narrow in vision, cherry-picks a few incidents while ignoring overall protocols, and also ignores all the redundant systems crafted and the success ratio in the harshest environment known. I think this statement sadly fails. I don't object to private companies, but I think the laws regulating them have eroded too badly in the last several decades, and space is something we need to be absolutely sure about. We can't afford to let Jeff Bezos complete the transformation into Lex Luthor without some stiff rules about human behavior and rights while off our home planet.

Another option available is neither private nor public. We could make this type of research state funded, based on a percentage of GDP, the direction of which is decided by a council focused on the science rather than the profit. Such a system wouldn't change depending on whoever is in office.

SpaceX is funding AstroForge, which is interested in asteroid mining. The plan is to buy the company up if it proves successful. Blue Origin is doing the same with Honeybee Robotics. I'm not linking to any of these companies since I think it's very dangerous having anyone out there who doesn't have our planet's overall best interests at heart. There are many efforts at trying to come up with protocols for working in space so we don't fuck it up like so many things we've commercialized, but it's difficult enough working with countries without having private groups throwing their need for more money into the mix.

! Moderator Note Considering that "this new approach" hasn't been described by the OP, it's safe to assume you've either made up this post or generated it using crappy AI. This is both spamming and posting bad faith arguments, which are against our rules. Please stop.

Here's the thing about private ownership: it's all profit driven, and that's rarely the best basis for doing anything. Scientists can focus on the science involving paleontology and all the things it teaches us about ourselves, other animals, and how the world used to be. Private companies need that profit, and might well ignore certain avenues of research simply because they don't show profit potential (but might be incredibly useful as knowledge). Right now in the US, the "powers that be (?)" seem to want us all afraid and frustrated because we consume more when we're stressed out. What would those folks want to do with information like Jane Goodall discovered, that the true signs of civilization in early humans was a healed femur, demonstrating that early humans cared enough for each other to take care of someone and feed them long enough for a bone to heal? I sincerely doubt information like this would be imparted by a private company dedicated to keeping us isolated, fearful, and desperate. I also wholeheartedly disagree with the premise that space exploration "works best if it's done by private companies". The farce that is our outer space policy is going to end up making all the most horrible movie scenarios come true. Allowing private concerns to "compete" for all the resources available offplanet is cultural suicide imo, especially when we can't regulate even terrestrial greed with any degree of certainty. Why on Earth should we feel good about letting greed loose in NEO so it can trap some asteroids to first mine for metals and then send the debris streaking down upon our heads? Anyone who can develop successful manufacturing offplanet is going to write their own rules for humanity unless we write them first. Personally, I think we've let Musk and other private concerns do too much without enough oversight and compliance. At teh very least, we risk letting them paint their mistakes in our atmosphere to orbit with the debris for generations to come. Is that the question? I'm in my mid 60s, and I've seen capitalism ruin most of the best things in my life. I was lucky enough to prosper in a system that removed most of the public support along the way, but young people now have very little chance at that kind of prosperity, mostly because of this mentality of first figuring out how to make the most profit from something before assessing its real value to our society. And I think there is a huge contingent of Christian Nationalists who want archeology and paleontology to be a questionable practice. They don't believe in evolution, much less the theory behind it, and so they want to disparage the sciences at every opportunity. One of the best ways to discredit something is to point to the monetary motivations.

Private funding is only interested in researching areas of known investment returns, simply because it's too big a risk for the payoff in many cases, at least to the number crunchers. But that doesn't necessarily mean there's not much demand, only that the returns on their investments aren't big enough for the risks. The government is exactly who funds mundane and obscure research. Museums are often publicly owned, and they fund the majority of "dinosaur research". The National Science Foundation is big in this area. Public funding is needed since we can't force private companies to do something that's not profitable, and this research has proven to be extremely necessary. If we didn't have places like the National Institute of Health to do obscure research, we'd only have the research big pharmaceutical companies wanted to do. It's like investments in space exploration. Lots of folks think it's a waste of money, but we learn startling things almost every time we attempt it. Paleontology is the same way. We fill the gaps in our knowledge a piece at a time, and not always to make a profit.

"Arms" in the constitutional sense were never supposed to be handguns. Militias and armies don't rely on them, they rely on rifles (you get in big trouble calling your rifle a "gun" in the army, I'm told). We could follow the letter of the law and issue a government-manufactured carbine (something like the M1) to every citizen over a certain age. That's all you're allowed to own (unless you have a special permit for collecting, hunting, or other hobbying), and you're not allowed to modify it in any way (15 round clip only). It's to fulfill your duty as part of a well-regulated militia. Maybe, just maybe, we could start to defund some military/police/prison operations and put those funds to work helping people avoid a life of crime and guns. Imagine if our society openly showed it cares more about our freedoms than it cares about putting us in jail!

From the Wikipedia article (bolding done by me): So even Hawking radiation doesn't escape once it's past the EH.

Right?! And while the hobbyists are usually more responsible people, they still vote with/are members of/add their voice to groups that are defending the use of bump stocks, silencers, extended clips, printed firearms, and military-grade assault rifles, claiming the 2A is what keeps people off their hair triggers. You can't get any progress when so many are against ANY progress. It doesn't seem that difficult to me. There is clearly an interpretation of the 2A that takes into account that we were a fledgling nation that took control away from a colonizing force, that private ownership of "arms" included even things like cannons so we could protect what we had accomplished. We needed a citizen militia in the early days because the whole country was too porous and indefensible otherwise. Since that time, citizen militias have become unable to handle modern threats. All they've given us are civil wars, compound mentality, far right manifestos, and wastes of life like Ruby Ridge and Waco. Many modern militias are actively trying to overthrow our democracy. We should use this opportunity to rewrite the 2A and stop the erosion of our real rights, like voting, equality, clean air/water, and all the liberties that make life a pursuit of happiness.

Last year in Colorado, our state passed a law banning "ghost guns" that are 3D printed or sold as kits, which are untraceable. There's only one main reason somebody would want to own one of these: they don't want the gun traced back to them, so you'd think it's a no-brainer to ban them, right? Lawsuits have been filed against the state by gun lobbyists and shooting clubs who want the law struck down on principle. It's another "If we give you an inch, you'll take a mile" argument from inhumans who don't much care about mass murder and children dying in school. What kind of responsible gun owner would want unregulated, untraceable firearms being manufactured by anyone with an inexpensive printer?

! Moderator Note Can you give us an overview on the idea, please? It's against the rules to require anyone to watch a video before discussing something.