Gian

15 minutes ago, iNow said:

Perhaps a better question is why are so many insecure people worried about other people and how they define themselves? Why not just acknowledge their view is different from yours and go on with your day?

Agreed, and the numbers we're talking about are very small. I believe the incidence of gender dysphoria is about 1 in 10,000.

The purported objection is about self-defined women using single sex environments like toilets and changing rooms, or participating in women's sports.

But I wonder if those reasons are genuine, or just an excuse to raise objections

I've just heard Richard Dawkins saying that one individual (a zillion years ago) had 2 children. One is the ancestor of baboons, the other the ancestor of humans.

Would all the subsequent evolution of the 2 species have to be descended from literally that one single creature? Or could it have been several such creatures, even hundreds, who all had 2 such children each?

Cheerz

GIAN🙂XXX

On 9/6/2023 at 1:29 AM, mistermack said:

Nazi Germany grew out of desperate times. People act differently under pressure... 

The common factor is human nature, it hasn't gone away, and it's not just Nazis on Jews. 

Agreed. Germany was hit by the 29 Crash and slump vastly more than other countries including the US.

Plus, everyone was terrified of communism, with good reason. When people are frightened, especially when frightened for their children, they can do some very strange things, including electing Hitler to the chancellorship.

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."

But what does she mean by taken? My ethical question is... who owns words? Who decides what they mean?

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.

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

Who owns words?

Cheerz

GIAN🙂XXX

There seems to be a drift at the moment towards ai and machines taking over people's jobs.

I'm sure no robot would be stupid enough to want to be president or prime minister, but suppose for the sake of argument, ALL paid employment became automated, so no more paid employment for any human beings whatsoever.

I suppose all money in the economy would eventually flow to the owners of the means of production that is the human proprietors of the robots and ai.

So the proletariat would be left with nothing. The robot-owning aristocracy could buy and sell from each other, and the proles being penniless would have to go back to medieval self-sufficiency working the soil by hand.

Is this accurate?

Cheerz

GIAN🙂x

Is there any such thing as a totally free market worldwide?

For it to be totally free, surely there would have to be no import or export restrictions anywhere, and no immigration or emigration controls.

If so, what would such a world look like?

Sounds like the employees of the world would be constantly moving around following the highest wages/ lowest living costs, and corporations would be constantly migrating to where there's the highest profits/ lowest outgoings.

There would be no community and no more nation states. Is this accurate? 🤔 🥴🤯

Cheerz

GIAN🙂x

41 minutes ago, Janus said:

The issue would be how would you make that bomb focus all it's released energy towards accelerating the probe?

The closest example we have in this respect is an underground nuclear bomb test from 1957.  The bomb was placed at the bottom of a shaft with a iron cap. When the bomb was detonated, it blew the cap off.  Estimates have put the speed of the cap at 5 times the escape velocity from the Earth.

Now, given the size of the cap and the density of Iron, you can get an estimate of how much KE it had.  If you then take that KE and apply it to something with the mass of a cellphone, you can get its equivalent speed. It works out to ~ 2% of light speed.  And this was using a nuclear devise many times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb.

To reach 50% of c, it would have had to had more than 625 times more energy than that (At this velocity you'd need to use the relativistic KE formula to get an accurate value)

Thanks Janus!

Well that sounds a bit more hopeful, especially if launched from the moon with its gravity of 16%G.

If a nuke 100x Hiroshima were exploded at the bottom of a shaft on the moon, I reckon that could get my cellphone past 50%c?

Cheerz

GIAN🙂x

On 9/16/2023 at 4:25 PM, Janus said:

Nuclear fission converts ~ 0.1% of the mass into energy.  If all of that energy was convert into KE for the remaining mass (acting as the reaction mass), then you might get a exhaust velocity of ~.045c...

Thanks! So would nuclear be a practical possibility for a tiny space probe? Eg a camera and the computing ability of my cellphone? 

I would imagine a single cellphone could gather quite alot of data and then send it home? Or if you got it upto say 50%c turn around and bring it home?

Would it be possible to use the Hiroshima bomb or bombs to send a projectile upto speed say 50%c from earth or from the moon without it having to power itself?

Yes I know I'm ignorant but it's so important

GIAN🙂×

Since at least WW2, scientists and science fans have been speculating about how to accelerate a spaceship fast enough to reach other star systems. The most sought-after method seems to be nuclear fusion (I think,) currently out of reach.

But what’s wrong with nuclear fission? If the power of the Hiroshima bomb could be channelled, I would imagine that would get us to alpha centauri pretty damn swiftly.

I did hear once that governments will not allow the use of nuclear for space exploration. Anyone know if this is true?

Cheerz
GIAN🙂xx

PS As you've probably guessed I'm not a scientist but I hope to be one day

When I was a kid it was often suggested that the moon would be the place from which to launch interstellar starships, and using the moon's own mineral resources it would perhaps be the place where starship are constructed as well. 

4 hours ago, swansont said:

A PhD is not a guarantee of lots of money, or any specific job. The narrative of getting a degree and becoming a professor is not based on the reality of the job market, as CharonY notes.

To paraphrase a former boss of mine, a PhD in physics affords the opportunity to work on interesting problems.

 

I'm not interested in earning Shed loads. If I'm a scientist I want to be discovering stuff! Like John Zarnecki or Carolyn Porco, and I'm trying to find the best pathway to getting there.

Cheerz for the info.

GIANx 

11 hours ago, sethoflagos said:

How comfortable are you with poverty....

Mr Sethoflagus, thanks! That's exactly the sort of guidance I need.

Careers advisers just give the smiley official blurb ("Just go to university for 3y, and of course you will get a fulltime job straight away as an astronaut.")

I guess I'd like to have a career like planetary scientist Dr Carolyn Porco...

Thanks again, lots to think about!

GIAN🙂x

8 minutes ago, CharonY said:

Generally speaking, researcher positions are fairly limited, especially purely research ones (i.e. without teaching, for example). Also typically that requires a PhD in most disciplines. In experimental sciences, a Master's would be required for a research technician position. A BSc basically just indicates that you might be qualified to get more specialized (graduate) training. 

 

So do you think it's worth it?

I'd be gutted if I spent 7y getting to PhD, then finding I couldn't get a job at nasa, and have to settle for merely being prime minister

On 9/6/2023 at 2:19 AM, TheVat said:

Hannah Arendt nailed it with her phrase the banality of evil.

 

Im reading Hannah Arendt right now. The picture that's emerged so far is that for Adolf Eichmann and for Jews and many others in Germany at that time, it's, well... complicated.This is a surprise for me 🙄🙄🙂

I hear the proportion of science graduates to jobs is not good. What do people think my prospects would be if I study BA physics or astrophysics wanting to be a research scientist? I wouldn't want a job designing aeroplanes for Boeing, I'd wanna be discovering planets! Besides a degree what sort of work experience would potential research institutions want? Would I need MA/PhD? 

Cheerz

GIAN xx

I was about 8 when my mum and dad told me about the Shoah. My first critical thought was something like Even if everything the National Socialists said about those of the Jewish Faith was true, it would not in any way justify the Holocaust.

How does that strike people here as an approach?

We're Catholic btw

On 8/30/2023 at 1:49 PM, iNow said:

Not everything you read on the internet is true

What similarities do you see between fear of snakes and fear of who those snakes happen to love and find sexually appealing?

Phobias are irrational. There are no dangerous species of arachnid in the UK so arachnophobia is irrational.

Two gay men doing what they want with each other in their own home cannot possibly harm anyone else, thus homophobia is irrational.

22 hours ago, Genady said:

How did they (the observers) know that they observed a fear of heights and not something else? Especially, it is strange because cats do not fear heights.

What they did was something like this. They put the kittens on a walkway (catwalk!) which had 2 thick black lines painted along its length.

Then there was a gap several feet deep with the lines running down it, so the kittens could clearly see the lines appearing to go downwards.

But the gap was covered in transparent Perspex, so the kittens could have walked across it. But they all shied away from the gap, so evidently they had an inborn sense that heights are dangerous because they could fall

22 hours ago, Sensei said:

I would not like to advertise/recommend a device that I have not checked myself. Here in a relatively large city there is a lot of dust, light pollution etc. We are lucky to see 1% of what a person in the countryside a few dozen kilometers away sees.

Ten+ years ago I bought a digital camera, and after the fact I noticed that it lacked a timelapse function (the device with the built-in function was twice as expensive as my device). This is an extremely useful thing for events that take a lot of time, such as astronomy. So I wrote a special app that sent 'take picture' commands to the device via a USB cable from my computer. I took nice timelapse transitions of the sun and moon in the sky during a trip across the sky over several hours. For real astronomy, you should have a device that tracks the rotation of the Earth during time-lapse sessions.

Photons from a distant object are needed to get a good quality image, but the Earth is rotating, so if the camera/telescope is not rotating properly, the image will be blurred. There are special applications to 'de-blur' images taken by home astronomers.

Thanks! that is useful info🙂

1 hour ago, Genady said:

Keep the expectations low. Stars will be just dots, anyway. You will see more of them, and they will be brighter. You will see some details of the Solar system objects, such as rings of Saturn and other planets' satellites. These will be exhausted soon. Nothing like crisp and spectacular images one finds online.

I would still like to be able to gaze at Saturn's Rings, and Jupiter directly

2 hours ago, Sensei said:

I would be looking for something that would allow me to plug in a USB cable and be able to record image..

 

Such as?🙂

1 hour ago, Genady said:

I think that such a distinction is undefined. Can you clarify what you mean by "inborn or not"?

Then why it's in the Ethics forum?

Well because homophobia seems to be an ethical issue, although perhaps I should have put it in one of the Science sections.

I read of an experiment once where newborn kittens were found to have a fear of heights, implying It's something they're born with.  I just wondered if it's true of homophobia

On 3/2/2023 at 5:09 PM, iNow said:

There is ambiguity in source of our own sexual preferences, but homophobia regarding the preferences and practices of others is decidedly not genetic. 

Because their local religious leader(s) said that God said it's bad. Because it makes Jesus cry or something. End program. 

I don't recall Jesus saying anything whatsoever about homosexuality. 

But to get back to why I started this topic, are phobias (arachnophobia, homophobia, claustrophobia etc) nature or nurture?

On 1/24/2023 at 9:37 AM, Markus Hanke said:

Well put +1

I think it is a crucially important life skill to - in some situations - be able to respect things that we don’t personally like. This isn’t always easy, since we generally tend to equate our own preferences, views, beliefs and opinions with some notion of “truth” about the world. It takes a certain amount of introspective awareness to recognise this dynamic and suspend it, if and when necessary; sadly, not everyone is able to do this.

Well yes, but my question is not about whether it is morally right or wrong to be homophobic, but whether phobias (arachnophobia, homophobia etc) are inborn or not. 

I always used to think phobias were socially constructed, but now I'm reading stuff which says they may be inbuilt

10 hours ago, Genady said:

What is the purpose?

Just getting started with astronomy, so I guess I just wanna be able to see the stars and planets as clearly as possible 

Can anyone recommend a telescope for astronomy for under about £200/ $US250?

Is there one, or do I need to go higher?

Thanks

GIAN x

On 1/24/2023 at 6:07 PM, swansont said:

Homophobia is a fear. Not just a lack of attraction towards those of the same sex, but fear of those who are gay, and/or (especially) that you might be gay. That sounds like learned behavior.

 

Well I used to read that phobias (eg arachnophobia claustrophobia etc) were socially constructed. But now I'm reading stuff that phobias may be inborn

On 1/24/2023 at 9:47 AM, exchemist said:

Exactly. But my problem with the term "homophobia" is that it may be closer to my own personal discomfort at the prospect of a sexual advance from another man than it is to any inability by some to respect the sexual preferences of others. So what we stigmatise in society as homophobia is actually not that, whereas a feeling of personal discomfort or distaste, which could perhaps be described as a mild kind of "phobia" (though overstating it), is a natural thing and not reprehensible at all!     

So is homophobia (along with arachnophobia etc) inborn or isn't it?