TheVat

Reality is not denied so much as it is fragmented. Every small chip, even if it poorly reflects the larger reality from which it flew off, is seized by some "influencer" on social media and treated as if it can holographically reproduce the entire world. The science deniers, for example, grabbed up chips of genuinely bad science and decided that these chips were valid cross-sections of the entirety of science. Sketchy information processing was something we could get away with as hunter-gatherers. You only need one sip from a rotten coconut to know the rest of the juice is bad, too. You may just skip the whole tree, if there are others. If you see one tiger in a bush, you can have everyone in the tribe cut a wide path around the bush - even if the tiger was a fluke and the bush will be totally safe, there's no harm in taking the caution.

Isn't there another thread started on these series? And, yes, tv has produced several exciting space adventure shows, many of which suggest that, erm, boldly going forth into space (by means of science and technology) is something that we humans are destined to do. It's hard to see humanity becoming spacefaring without embracing science, unless it turns out that astral projection is really a thing. Or flying carpets.

Thanks for a clear exposition of trickle-up (and across) which I was also trying to articulate earlier. And yes, many moral failures happen simply because policies allow the temptation to be there. If you live someplace where predatory capitalism is harder to do, like Scandinavia, then those engaged in capitalism have less opportunity to slide into quick profit-taking and tax dodging. Of course, morals and policy are somewhat synergetic - Scandinavians foster policies of cooperation and strong social safety nets because their culture and morality has been very collectivist and egalitarian going back millennia.

@zapatos Lot of people out there with soiled pants courtesy of the rich. I had friends in Oregon who watched their surrounding forest destroyed by rich people who wanted to raise some fast capital to start up some entirely unrelated business venture. Fuck stewardship, we need a quick buck, sell the raw logs to Japan. Or... Reviewing the events of 2007-08 may be illuminating. "The Big Short" is a handy primer, too, on the rich playing fun games with money and ruining people's lives. Two edged sword indeed.

I think several are homing in on the idea that money does best when it circulates. The very wealthy often convert money into inert formats, like mansions that sit empty most of the year. The working class get money and they spend it, driving demand-side economics. If they have UBI type backup, that money goes right back into the economy. You can't stimulate production unless people want and can pay for whatever is produced. (leaving aside the question of why we have to have so. much. stuff.) The nitty gritty is that taxing the rich improves the flow of money. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/12/23/tax-cuts-rich-trickle-down/

If I may stick an oar in the water... I am guessing the distinction is being made between relatively rare luxury items and mass-produced items. Say that I, Joseph Moneybags, invest in a yacht, a small number of people are employed for a short time, and then an even smaller group crews it, when I take outings. However, if I invest in affordable housing units, a much vaster ripple can pass through the working class, as these units are built, maintained, repaired, and also many people can become housing secure and start to build what economists call "generational equity. " It's a vast, complex topic, so I'm necessarily simplifying and leaving things out. It's really the contrast between putting wealth into personal status and pleasure, and putting it directly into a better community. No reason one can't do both, but those who focus their wealth on enriching the community tend to, IMO, find more enduring satisfactions and value to their lives. So, l'm saying we should tax someone's yacht more than we tax their 60-unit affordable housing complex. IOW, incentivize social goods, and not personal luxury.

My position is simple and nonnegotiable: I want Sandra Bullock (as seen in the space adventure "Gravity") onboard with us, and I want her to hold my hand when I get scared. She must also be scared and then we will bond as we both bravely master our fears.

(with thanks to new member @Doogles31731 for sending this)

The endless drudgery of finding loopholes. Very taxing. Sometimes they need a long massage and a nap, after. Pretty much EVERYTHING that allowed you to amass a billion came from what taxes support -- roads, ports, railways, bridges, access to raw materials, skilled workers, healthy workers, military and police defense of lands and properties and supply chains, government organizations and councils that promote your country's products to the world, etc. CHIP IN, ASSHOLES. (excuse my French -- just really tired of all the entitled whining from rich people)

Odd survey results -- would seem to suggest that many rock stars would be seen as creepy. Unkempt, pale, oddly dressed. heheh.

Hi, Z. I agree on risk. I was really just saying that remote control (for non-drones, with humans aboard) has some challenges. Even planes cruising at a relative snails pace, at low altitudes, can lose radio contact. With projectiles shooting through the ionosphere at hypersonic speeds trailing ionized plumes, and problems that can get critical in a split second, there may be a ways to go. There could be some alternatives, though, that mitigated risk -- laser link, perhaps? I won't deny that for some of us there's a psychological component where we, right or wrongly, want that seat-of-the-pants person aboard who lives or dies with us.

FbW refers to avionics internal to the craft. It doesn't mean remote piloting is possible. It just means there's no hydraulic tubes or mechanical cabling in the airframe that's carrying a signal to control surfaces.

Hope for no radio interference, then.

I assume you all know what the Darien gap is. If I were going to drive to Panama, and then walk across the gap, arguably the world's most dangerous jungle, to Colombia, I would want an experienced guide with me, no matter how intrepid I was, no matter how well equipped and fluent with phrases to charm drug runners and guerillas. Side note: Arthur Clarke's space elevator is sorely needed. Conventional impulse rocketry to LEO is incredibly wasteful and expensive. Our approach to space is like having cellphones but still getting lunch with a bow and arrow.

That is a rather precocious child! There are many things children can do to learn about scientific activities and which don't require dangerous chemicals or tools. Microscope is a good start, for sure. (she sounds a lot like me at around age 7-8, mere words can barely describe my excitement looking at my first samples of pond water, and human blood) Ant farms are classic, and fun. At the other end of the scale, there's the telescope (though those can require a bit more parental participation if you live where there is a lot of urban light pollution and need to drive out into the countryside -- an older child can join an astronomy club and join group trips to "star parties"). There are also simple kits for making electrical circuits and which don't require household current, just batteries. There's also that classic naturalist's observational tool: binoculars. Some quality instruments are a bit heavy for a six year old to hold steady for prolonged periods, so a small tripod is handy. I love the idea of a miniature greenhouse kit - neither I, nor my kids, ever tried one of those. Damn, I want to be six all over again!

Algae are one thing (eukaryotes, and they provide food to zooplankton), cyanobacteria are another (prokaryotes) and far more threat to ecosystems with toxic blooms, as @CharonY notes. Algae are also a food source for humans now, as anyone who's ventured into a health food store may notice. Switching from DHA (the most bioavailable form of omega-3 FAs) rich fish to DHA from algal oil would also allow us to eat less fish and still get the primary health benefit, which would ease pressure on stressed fisheries. The best plan for oceans is not to use them for experiments, unless the experiment is "what happens if we decrease present pollution?" We want to save phytoplankton, which are producing 70% of oxygen, and restore them to their normal levels by decreasing pollutants and nanoparticles of plastic. I've heard that, in terms of planting things in the ocean and pulling carbon, one of the best approaches that wouldn't mess around with ecosystems would be establishing big underwater meadows of seagrass. Here's a quick read on that.... https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/underwater-meadows-seagrass-could-be-ideal-carbon-sinks-180970686/

There are a lot of subjects that many twenty year olds aren't looking for, but which would make them more well-rounded, smarter, and with better tools for critical thinking. Which is why I believe undergraduate education shouldn't be driven by a consumerist philosophy, i. e. by market demand. For that reason, I resist the notion of purely vocational tracks -- I think lack of cultural literacy and intellectual tools evident in diploma mill grads is what got us the abyss of the Trump years and the continuing fallout. The "liberal arts" education that was honored when I was young should be available to everyone and actively promoted as a public good.

This is soapboxing. Nothing Inbred says is supported by facts. And the constant application of "slavery" to people who live in developed countries is rather insensitive to people whose forebears were actually enslaved.

Yep. Having education be profit-centered has the same basic problem the USA has with medical care being profit-centered.

I didn't condone the sealioning, just meant I missed the Reg Prescott who brought a lot of interesting philosophy to his former haunt at my erstwhile website. When he's not playing the games, he can be quite the scholar and introduce a fascinating array of colorful characters in the philosophy of science and make them more understandable. Maybe I just don't understand the Scots.

@inbreeding -- what I fundamentally don't understand in your posts is how, if the web is stealing our minds and enslaving us, you seem to be so willing to use that web. If we were just talking about Twitter and FB, and all the clickbait "journalism," I might be inclined to agree with you on the potential for brain damage and meme enslavement. Your comments on Afghanistan are not well informed. I invite you to travel there, or to North Korea or Gaza or Zimbabwe or Russia or Cuba or Yemen or Syria or Venezuela (et al), and see how well you do there.

Another way to view scale dependence is to see some properties as emergent. If you have a couple water molecules, they aren't wet. Pull back to a macro scale, with billions of them, at the right temperature range, and you get wet. I have no problem with viewing the world as having all sorts of emergent properties, especially where you have a scale where tiny entities can be viewed in the aggregate. The way we get into trouble is when we start to assign causal powers to aggregates -- as in the case of a billion neurons giving rise to consciousness, and then we are tempted to say that consciousness itself has holistic causal powers that act on the whole aggregate. Downward causation is a challenge to the physicalist view of reality. PS - I really appreciate Reg/Davy raising issues about all this that get people thinking about how they use words to refer to large ungainly abstractions. So I'll miss him, warts and all.

@Davy_Jones, I'm fond of QBism, to get around the troubles of quantum realist interpretations. Limited time, so I'll leave it there. (Quantum Bayesianism is the longer original term. )

Thanks, didn't see that one. And reading the rest of that post, I'm seeing personal mental health needs that cannot really be met on the web. The family member getting typhoid suggests a challenging spot in a developing country. I hope there are people there working towards a more nurturing community -- sometimes it seems to me that America could, instead of trying to export our highly boasted values (often down the barrel of a gun), just send money and expertise for clean water, sustainable agriculture, green energy, and local entrepreneurship. When desperation drops, warlords and tyrants and religious zealots have less of a foothold.