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We take morality exams every day, they're just not in written form. It's called life in a society. As @Ten oz and I elaborated in our previous posts, what makes us feel secure is relative, and there is also a personal moral relativism (not to be confused with moral relativism as a standalone concept). A free society has a greater bandwidth of morally acceptable behavior than a less free one, and I would spuriously claim at this point that this is a bijective relationship. From what you write it seems to me that your idea of Utopia is one of a moral quality, with a high standard for its citizens, but also a very narrow bandwidth of acceptable behavior. My idea of Utopia is one of a large bandwidth of acceptable behavior, limited only by the criterium of doing no harm by design of intention (which means to me that if someone explicitly asks to be harmed and someone is willing to oblige, there is no foul)

I am sure that eating intelligent aliens that come to earth would be a LAST resort for humans, only when all "Earthling-food" is gone! It would be a very low probability. Also remember "War of the Worlds" by Wells where the aliens were not immune to human microbes. Maybe we are not immune to theirs?

Eating Aliens isn't that far out there. If they're carbon based, there's a good chance that they store energy in a fashion that is compatible with our digestive system. If not ours, then some bacteria or funghi can certainly ferment it for us. Life has this incredible capacity of making use of chemical energy, and with photosynthesis also turn light into 'useful' chemical energy. Thing is, if we can eat them, they can eat us, too (maybe with some extra processing in case we/they are poisonous to them/us). The latter is the traditional scifi trope... I wouldn't however go around the galaxy eating alien intelligent life forms, of I had the means of travelling it decently fast. I would try and share in their cuisine if possible for cultural diplomacy reasons. But my basic assumption is that intelligence seeks out intelligence for the sake of communication and achieving even more fantastic intelligence

Thanks! Interesting thoughts. If answer A is indeed more plausible than answer B, I think I'll have to rearrange my brain a little bit. That's going to be a tough job, but I'll try.

*cough* religion *cough*

It has taken me from Santa Claus and other mythical nonsense, to reasonably logical evidenced based explanation of the universe around me........dude! Pot kettle black old fella! It is you who can't let go...It is you who sees the need to venture into a science forum and crusade your total nonsense....Science isn't afraid to say " We don't know...yet!' And that just about sums up the arrogance shown by those that believe we are special and privilaged always burdened by their religious nonsense.

No, relativity denotes an excellent verified observation. Scientific theory aint interested in your truths, reality, or myths.

I did give an explanation for what the Ground observer sees in my post. Perhaps a picture will help. To make it more amiable for an image, we'll use the following parameters. The relative velocity between ships and planets is 0.866c. The distance between the ships is 30 light sec as measured by the ships. The distance between the planets as measured by the ships is 32 light sec. Thus there will be a moment, according the ships, when each ship is 1 light sec from a planet like this: The black line is the distance between the ships, the blue line the distance between the planets and the red lines the distances between ships and planets. Here we will assume that clocks on the ships both read 0 at this moment according to the ships. However, in the "ground" frame, the distance between the ships will be 15 light sec and the distance between the planets will be 64 light sec. Thus in the ground frame there is no moment when the two ships are each 1 light sec from a planet. Neither do the clocks in the two ships every read the same time like it is shown in the above image. When the trailing ship's clock reads ) the trailing clock does not and when the leading ship's clock read zero, the trailing ship's clock doesn't. The following two image shows the moments when the trailing clock reads 0 and the when the leading clock reads zero. At the top we have the moment when the trailing clock reads 0. At this moment, the trailing ship is 2 light sec from planet A. the leading ship is 47 light sec from planet B at its clock reads ~26 sec before 0. ~52 sec later the ships the ship have moved some 45 light sec at 0.866c. Each clock will have advanced by ~26 sec ( they tick at half speed due to time dilation), and we end up with the lead ship 2 light sec from planet B with its clock reading 0, and the trailing clock is 47 light sec from planet A with its clock reading ~26 sec. In between these two moments there is a moment when the ground observer will say that the two ships are equal distances from a planet, this will occur 26 secs after the top image by the ground observer's clock. At this moment the trailing clock will read 13 sec, the leading clock will read -13 sec and the ships will each be ~24.5 light sec from a planet. There are three things you need to take into account, Length contraction, time dilation and the relativity of simultaneity, when dealing with a situation like this, where you start with what is measured in one frame, and then transform to what is measured in another frame.

In our evolutionary past we would have been better off finding cold water- it's less likely to be stagnant and less likely to have had a chance for pathogenic bacteria to grow in it.

Any time we move towards a more equal and peaceful society is the latest version of our best attempt; utopia is a society that feels so safe, it doesn't care who makes it work...

inept at technology? That's a pretty puny short list. how about inept at:- technology lawmaking politics economics public speaking/tweeting spelling ...

I think Conan said it best!

Obviously not. The whole reason that dark matter is proposed is to provide the missing mass in and around galaxies. This requires it to have normal (positive) mass. It causes gravitational lensing, which requires it to have normal (positive) mass. So your idea is dead in the water. Which is good because it means I don't have to wade through your incoherent and error filled nonsense.

Science can only get you so far my dude. I dont know strange or any of the other regular posters here but id fare a wager they were seduced by science at an early age, maybe the beauty of numbers or the fibonacci sequence and how it replicates itself so perfectly in nature. But that is the problem, people get to close to something and they just cant let go, it is now an all or nothing situation. I am odd bird in the sense that i am a true free thinker, and trust me when i say this has more negatives than positives. But what i does allow me to do is distance myself from any sort of bond or preconception i would have as a normal human being. Normal human beings are not intended to figure out the inner workings of the universe, only weirdos like myself are privy.

The only reason i originally posted on this forum was to see if i could find an intellectual equal, in that process ive found that its not about being smart its about figuring out who has the right questions. We are all semi on the same level, but what takes actual brain power is figuring out where to spend it on. I think science gets bogged down in the details a bit too much, important for somethings to be sure but others its a real hinderance.

Consider 2 spaceships going from planet A to planet B on the same path and with the same velocity very close to c. One is ahead of the other by several millions miles and is just a few 100 miles from planet B and the trailing one is a few 100 miles from planet A. Since they are going close to c an observer at rest watching them off to the side sees their separation actually appears very small. He adds their separation to the distances of each to the respective A and B planets and calculates the distance between the two planets and finds it now much smaller than he hnows it should be. How can this be? This same reasoning can be applied to Einstein's explanation of the electro-magnetic effect and it can be concluded his theory does not explain this either. Once I posted the spaceships example before on one of these sites and was told "This site is physics not math". I'm puzzled why I didn't counter this remark with, "This is science not religion". I will give details why relativity doesn't explain the magnetic effect of an electrical current through a wire later-its not complicated.

Strange just be assured you will be the first to figure out tygon b has a initial thrust of 3.4vectorpunch rendering the equation done at delta force maximous null, your name could be on that plaque.