acord

Do we have the 'right to insult'? If I say to a Jew that the holocaust hasn't happened, or to a person of a certain colour that he looks like a particular animal, or say to gays that I don't like them, why will I be in trouble?

You are referring to this paper:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25544329.

It depends what kind or arrhythmia it is, and are we talking about a condition which produces altered state of consciousness affecting creativity, or something that *somehow* harmonises with the heart frequency and is reflected in the music?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25207803.

Seems far fetched to me.

 

You can still estimate it though, and do better than assuming that the number is zero.

The number is unlikely to be zero, but the matter is more complicated because some people will be working part time, whilst retired from their ordinary job, others may have two or three different jobs (like my plumber who is also working as a biochemist -true story!). And, because we are talking about the future, we should also take into account novel ways of market and job development, such as some futuristic suggestions that societies can exist without money: http://hplusmagazine.com/2014/03/26/beyond-money/

With regards to Interstellar (which as enjoyable as it was, induced in this viewer some time-dilation issues of its own, given its length) I found this interview in a recent Scientific American article, in which Kip Thorne explores some of the physics contained in the film.

 

PS. I'm not sure if this link functions properly, but it's worth a try.

 

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2014/11/28/parsing-the-science-of-interstellar-with-physicist-kip-thorne/

Yes, the link is OK, thanks. Very informative and enjoyable

Right - you need to look at the population of people who would potentially be working. If the population went up by ~130 million, but a quarter are kids+retirees, then the worker population only went up by ~97 million. Compare that number with the 82 million new jobs, and you would see the employment fraction has increased.

Only that it would be difficult to calculate how many retirees would be in the mid-term future. This is because work practices are changing and people may decide to work, at least part time, well past the 'normal' retirement age.

As usual, the issue is moderation. Freedom of speech, yes, but up to a certain (ill-defined) point. Otherwise it becomes annoyance, insult or anything else.