Phi for All

11 hours ago, Photon Guy said:

Like it or not space exploration is going the way of the private sector. As it's been mentioned in this thread there's companies such as SpaceX and Bellend One and no doubt in the future there will be more private space companies still. That's how its always happened with travel and exploration throughout history, it starts out as something that is government funded and then goes the way of the private sector and more and more people are able to do it. 

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.

10 hours ago, MigL said:

If I get to decide what ?

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?

10 hours ago, MigL said:

Oh, and your line, which I quoted above, makes me sound like the 'fascist' INow accused me of being ( in jest, of course ), when all I'm asking for is clarification.

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?

Just now, StringJunky said:

A few things I've read about him over the years and his presentation suggests to me he probably has less than normal insight into other peoples thinking; empathy deficit. This guy's running a social media company, so it matters.

"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? 

44 minutes ago, StringJunky said:

Mark Zuckerberg is one. Look at the damage his efforts appear to be causing socially on a global scale. He controls Facebook.

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?

1 hour ago, TheVat said:

As  @Phi for All  notes, there is a high functioning end of the autism spectrum, often referred to as Asperger's (many argue that "syndrome" should be dropped), where it can be fairly argued that this is a different cognitive style rather than a disorder.   And that part of the spectrum may be less influenced by genotypic factors.

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"?

7 minutes ago, Otto Kretschmer said:

What's the genetic mechanism behind this? It happens quite often. 

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.

23 hours ago, MigL said:

And dwarfs used to get tossed ...  for sport.

Not disagreeing with your assessment; simply pointing out that we treat other groups differently.

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?

8 hours ago, Time Traveler said:

Maybe is good for me to stop posting on this topic . I apologize to those whom I have disturbed with my posts

1 hour ago, Otto Kretschmer said:

Why do you think so many US universities make it to top ranks?

Quote

 

https://www.bestcolleges.com/news/analysis/2021/10/27/is-us-higher-education-still-the-best-in-the-world/

In the 2023 edition [Shanghai Rankings], eight of the top 10 institutions are American, as are 15 of the top 20. This representation is exactly the same as it was in 2003, when the rankings debuted.

What does such dominance mean? It certainly means America's best are considered among the world's best, at least by STEM-related standards. But are we the world's best system?

Bentley MacLeod and Miguel Urquiola, writing in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, aren't convinced. They point out that although the U.S. accounts for 40 of the top 100 universities in the Shanghai rankings and Spain accounts for zero, 83% of public Spanish universities appear in the top 1,000, while only 23% of all American institutions do.

 

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

2 hours ago, MigL said:

The confusing part, for me, is that we choose to avoid offending people who want to identify as 'women' by not letting the group own their shared cultural history, and 'owning' the term, and continuing to be oppressed.

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.

14 minutes ago, Photon Guy said:

I agree on cutting back, the problem is getting enough people to agree so that it's done. 

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.

3 hours ago, Gian said:

There's been alot of talk over the last few years about "what is a woman?" and whether someone can just declare themselves to be another sex. "It's not that I don't empathise with transgenders" says mega-feminist Julie Bindel "but they can't use the term woman. That word is taken."

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.

3 hours ago, Gian said:

With personal names, other than certain specific legal contexts (eg passport, obtaining benefits) anyone is free to call themselves anything they like. I can call myself Queen Boadicea if I feel like it.

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.

3 hours ago, Gian said:

There are dictionaries, and scientific terms, but neither is enforceable by law. So what's to stop an individual saying "My personal definition of a woman is this;"etc etc

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.

3 minutes ago, CharonY said:

Or, you know, tax wealth or reduce subsidies for companies.

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.

5 hours ago, Photon Guy said:

State funded still means it's funded by tax dollars so to get more funding that would mean cutting back on other stuff or raising taxes. 

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.

Just now, Photon Guy said:

It's also important to have the astronauts best interests at heart, something NASA has sadly failed at in the past.

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.

7 minutes ago, Photon Guy said:

But we are going in that direction, of having space commercialized just like it always happens when new avenues of exploration open up to us. It happened with sea travel and exploration of the new world, at first it was just explorers such as Columbus and Cortez that would go on long ocean voyages to explore, and then after the Americas were discovered and settled by the white man, sea travel became very much commercialized with so many people wanting to travel over there. No doubt that will happen with space as well. 

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. 

1 hour ago, Photon Guy said:

If people want to stop archaeology or paleontology or any kind of study because of religious reasons than that's an even stronger case for such studies to be taken on by private companies because if such studies are paid for entirely by government funding then those who are against such stuff will vote against it.

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.

1 hour ago, Photon Guy said:

I've yet to hear about Space X or Blue Origin doing any space exploration of their own. 

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.

8 hours ago, Evalyra3 said:

The innovation involves harnessing wind energy in a novel way, revolutionizing traditional methods. This new approach maximizes efficiency, capturing wind power more effectively and producing clean energy on an unprecedented scale.

8 hours ago, Photon Guy said:

You will most likely always get less government funding for paleontology than you will for NASA and NASA doesn't get a whole lot of funding as it is so I'm thinking that just like with space exploration, the study of dinosaurs works best if its done by private companies that make their profit from consumers. 

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.

9 hours ago, Photon Guy said:

The question is, what can you get out of dinosaur research that you can provide to consumers that would have enough of a demand that they would pay good money for it?

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.

3 hours ago, Photon Guy said:

I don't really see much of a demand for such research so most research would not be consumer funded I take it,

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.

3 hours ago, Photon Guy said:

and to the best of my knowledge the government does not fund such research so Im wondering where the funding comes from. 

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.

5 minutes ago, Bufofrog said:

It doesn't seem difficult to me either, unfortunately the SC ruled in 2008 that the 2nd amendment says that gun ownership is the right of every citizen.  So now I hope I never accidently cut off someone in traffic or heaven forbid that I get lost and have to turn around in someone's driveway.

"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!

22 minutes ago, ovidiu t said:

I thought it was generally accepted that nothing escapes from black holes, except for Hawking radiation.

From the Wikipedia article (bolding done by me):

Quote

 

Physical insight into the process may be gained by imagining that particle-antiparticle radiation is emitted from just beyond the event horizon. This radiation does not come directly from the black hole itself, but rather is a result of virtual particles being "boosted" by the black hole's gravitation into becoming real particles.[10] As the particle-antiparticle pair was produced by the black hole's gravitational energy, the escape of one of the particles lowers the mass of the black hole.[11]

An alternative view of the process is that vacuum fluctuations cause a particle-antiparticle pair to appear close to the event horizon of a black hole. One of the pair falls into the black hole while the other escapes. In order to preserve total energy, the particle that fell into the black hole must have had a negative energy (with respect to an observer far away from the black hole). This causes the black hole to lose mass, and, to an outside observer, it would appear that the black hole has just emitted a particle. In another model, the process is a quantum tunnelling effect, whereby particle-antiparticle pairs will form from the vacuum, and one will tunnel outside the event horizon.

 

So even Hawking radiation doesn't escape once it's past the EH.

41 minutes ago, Janus said:

The argument you so often hear is that gun regulations won't stop gun violence.  It's the all or nothing approach; that if a regulation doesn't prevent all gun deaths of innocents, it shouldn't be enacted.  Saving 10 lives a year isn't worth it, nor is saving 100 or, 1000...

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.

48 minutes ago, Bufofrog said:

Every time gun laws are struck down or not passed the law makers or judges throw up their hands and say there is nothing we can do because it would violate the 2nd amendment.  Clearly the second amendment is in need of a rewrite.  How many needless gun deaths are going to happen before we change the amendment, I shudder to think.

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.

28 minutes ago, zapatos said:

I on the other hand become more and more convinced that we will never do anything about it. It's a bit depressing.

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?