SunlitZelkova

I find trying to compare traditional development schemes with SpaceX kinda silly. One can point at Shuttle and say it was fraught with expense and inefficiency for not much, but Saturn V was similarly developed by government contractors and did fly fine on its first flight (albeit with teething issues) just like Shuttle did. I am obviously biased here but SpaceX’s development scheme isn’t really that new IMO. It is more or less the Soviet scheme, which was influenced by the Soviet space industry’s origins in artillery (as opposed to the American space industry’s origins in aviation). To put it simply: you build a lot of test articles and fire them off over and over again until it works. Like how you would develop a ballistic missile or artillery piece. Contrast with the (traditional) American approach: build the most flawless, fine-tuned prototype you can and make sure it works. This is what you do with aircraft because aircraft have test pilots flying them. American aircraft manufacturers developed American spacecraft, and therefore they continued this line of thinking. When I look at Starship I see Proton. Proton had the most terrible early flight record of perhaps any rocket; the amount of dreams killed and rubles wasted because of it exploding is perhaps unprecedented anywhere else in space exploration history. But it matured and became useful. Again, I’m biased here, but I’d argue the Soviet development scheme is perhaps better than the American one. Saturn IB, roughly analogous to Proton, flew perfectly on every flight. Yet it only flew nine times and was thrown away because of its high cost. Meanwhile Proton is still in service. The case is further hit home with crewed spacecraft. Apollo was delicately tested and developed; perfected so that there was never a repeat of Apollo 1. Again it was thrown away, meanwhile Soyuz, which took the lives of four cosmonauts and even more ground personnel during its early years, not only long outlasted Apollo but even outlived the Space Shuttle- the very vehicle that was supposed to make crewed capsules obsolete. SpaceX brings advantages to the table the Soviets didn’t have. They have much more advanced design and analysis tools, and being a private company can focus funding on Starship as needed in a way Soviet designers never could (they had other responsibilities, mainly related to weapons). SpaceX also can fire people who underperform (this was harder for the Soviets for a variety of reasons and contributed to delays and inefficiencies). Could Starship be built to fly perfectly on its first flight, like the Space Shuttle? Using the traditional American scheme of development? Yes, but it would either have to take massive hits to capability or wind up being so expensive it would be retired in a decade or two. SpaceX is not trying to develop a Space Shuttle for the 21st century. They are trying to develop a Soyuz, or a Proton for the 21st century. No American rocket developed in the 60s is still flying today. Soviet rockets are. SpaceX is trying to build something that will be economical and useful for the next 60 years, not something that will fly a number of perfect missions I can count on my fingers and then get retired.

Funny you should mention that… That’s NGI, the replacement for GMD. Built by Lockheed Martin (surprise surprise) and deployed in the same silos as GMD. Space-based takes out most of the stuff and NGI gets what survives… I guess? I wish the MDA would make some good graphics detailing how Golden Dome is supposed to work, like the Japanese MOD does. (It’s even an apolitical graphic lol. I don’t recall any tiny islands with ballistic missiles) Space-based is in theory supposed to be a big part of it but not the piece-de-resistance. For one reason or another (VLS-equipped SSNs or Burevestnik) cruise missiles are believed to be a big threat too. Believed to be. Whether they really are or not is a question. Comparing the actual size of the Long-Range Aviation in 1954-1964 with the scale of threats that stuff like the DEW Line was built to defend against I shall remain skeptical. My understanding of left-of-launch is that it is focused on “the smaller guy” but… according to a well read (if very partial) guy on Bluesky who enjoys pouring through DOD and Congressional documents, the B-21 is explicitly intended to play the TEL-hunting role the B-2 was proposed to serve in. This is supposedly only in relation to hunting conventional SRBM TELs only, but realistically there are so many dual-capable missiles out there that whether intentionally or unintentionally an anti-nuclear left-of-launch capability will wind up being available as a complement to Golden Dome. I’ve never understood how aircraft-based left-of-launch was supposed to work in the nuclear context. Unless an extraordinary scale of time-on-target strikes can be achieved simultaneously, it seems like the moment one battery of TELs gets taken out the cat will be out of the bag and everything else will launch. And then there’s the problem of making sure an actual TEL is being hit. The PLARF has an entire institute dedicated to camouflage and decoys because mass deception is an integral part of their doctrine.

We're only a few weeks into Star Wars 2: Electric Boogaloo and Lockheed Martin has already begun pitching ideas. No link because some language they use on their website crosses forum lines. The key points (emphasis mine): Begin delivering the first elements of Golden Dome by the end of next year (!!!). Build a National Team to develop Golden Dome, led by Lockheed Martin (lololololololo). Build off the existing BMD network whose software and many elements are currently entirely built by teams led by or involving Lockheed Martin, rather than starting from scratch. Looking at point 1: This isn't actually that silly because Golden Dome is supposed to encompass cruise missile defense too, which would come in the form of the PAC-3 MSE missile built by LM. On the space front though... color me skeptical. I doubt they actually were talking about space-based assets in relation to this goal. Looking at point 2: It sounds really really dumb given the HLS debacle, but LM rightly points out that Golden Dome is a Manhattan Project-scale endeavour (they do not point out, but it is obvious to myself that a continent-wide BMD network is very different than a lunar lander). Lockheed going for leadership is not that big of an alarm bell either. They already do a myriad of BMD-related work. In contrast, Boeing plays a limited role* in systems developed jointly with LM and other contractors, while SpaceX has no experience designing weapons whatsoever. Looking at point 3: This is a no-brainer given the types of targets involved. It's another reason in favor of LM having a big role in the project. Lockheed does not name anyone to the National Team; despite the same name it is not identical to the HLS National Team. Thus theoretically SpaceX could be involved in this new National Team. I could see SpaceX building the bus for the space-based interceptor using Starlink, and SpaceX and BO jointly sharing a big portion of launch responsibility for the constellation (this goes for tracking sats too). This would involve BO getting nitty gritty details about some technical aspects of Starlink though. For sure all traditional space contractors are going to be involved in this but it will be interesting to see the role commercial providers play. Honestly I can't see a 50-60,000 satellite constellation being built without SpaceX. I would assume this would involve building new factories given the sensitive nature of the weapon compared to the civilian Starlink sat, as well as Starlink having its own priority due to its potential use in military communications. *Boeing does notably lead the team for the GMD ground-based interceptors. If statistics are deliberately skewed, the system has a 97% target destruction probability with a salvo of four missiles, but realistically each interceptor has something more on the order of a 25%-50% hit probability every time regardless of how many are launched at one target. Take that for what you will about Boeing's qualifications for the job.

This is literally just any liquid food. The ingredients and methods of preparation you are describing are so generic this could literally be anything. I guess I’ll start posting about how much I love my cheese soup with macaroni in it, my egg-cream soup with spaghetti in it, and my pork soup with noodles in it. For the purposes of this thread it doesn’t matter that these things are actually called “Mac & Cheese,” “Carbonara,” and “Tonkotsu Ramen.” Because they are liquid-based dishes (the pasta carries no flavor), fluid serves as the primary medium for distributing flavor, and all have “meat, vegetables, fungi, legumes, grains, dairy, or emulsified ingredients” achieving varying consistencies.

https://ask.usda.gov/s/article/Why-does-the-ChooseMyPlate-gov-website-include-tomatoes-and-avocados-in-the-Vegetable-Group-instead Your definition does not say "vegetables defined as vegetables eaten as vegetables" but nor does it say "vegetables defined botanically as vegetables." If you think any food that has a vegetable as an ingredient counts as a vegetable, including cornflakes, I must ask... what do people around you think when you come back from the movies and say "I had a large bag of vegetables while at the theater?" Cornflakes are only vegetables if popcorn is a vegetable. No one seriously thinks popcorn is a vegetable and neither have I ever heard anyone seriously say "cornflakes are a vegetable." They are not vegetables, but not "absolutely not" vegetables. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7869438/ It does indeed create outliers because the English definition provided by Scarecrow71 does not align with the definition of the word that is translated as "soup" in Sinosphere languages like Japanese. Let's examine a source other than Wikipedia: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/soup A second definition of the word is provided stating that soup is "something (such as a heavy fog or nitroglycerine) having or suggesting the consistency or nutrient qualities of soup." So literally anything can be called soup if it is soup-like, but it is not a true soup because it simply "has the qualities of soup." Cereal is only soup insofar as heavy fog is soup. True soup indeed requires meat or vegetables (or fish according to this source). As I said before, no one has to follow the existing conventions on "soup-like" things vs. true soups. In the same way a person can call a submarine a ship or a smilodon a "sabre-toothed cat." But this is entirely their own perogative and has nothing to do with the actual definition of things, which has already been decided by the powers at be.

The definition you posted stated soup uses meat or vegetables, so no. Noodles are not what make fideo soup soup, otherwise any noodle dish served in liquid (like ramen or soba) becomes a soup. Fideo soup uses a stock or broth. Because the stock/broth is created using meat and/or the bones of the meat as is, stock could be defined as a soup ingredient. This is probably what makes it a soup. However, because fideo soup is a foreign dish it is possible it is defined using a different definition from Spanish. Egg drop soup is a foreign dish and is difficult to quantify because the common definition used across the Sinosphere for “soup” is actually defined as any liquid made using an ingredient that was once solid. Consommé also uses stock or broth, which are each made using meat or vegetables. Mushrooms are considered vegetables under the same guideline that considers corn a vegetable, so it is a soup insofar as tomato soup is a soup. Likewise for legumes. They are considered vegetables using the same guideline that makes corn and tomatoes vegetables. The line is pretty clear. If it is eaten as a vegetable or meat and is used in the soup it becomes soup. If it isn’t something you would call a vegetable or meat, it isn’t soup. Noodles aren’t vegetables and cornflakes aren’t vegetables. Just like how popcorn isn’t a vegetable. So the presence of a noodle or processed food created using vegetables does not make it a soup. Mushrooms are vegetables, tomatoes are vegetables, chicken is a meat. Using these ingredients in a liquid dish qualifies it as soup, including using them to create stock or broth (the liquid). Where the line isn’t clear is with foreign dishes, because these come from cultures with different definitions of soup. In fact they arguably don’t actually have “soup,” they have their own thing that is more broad. Calling their dishes soup is a trash translation because even if the word sounds similar the definition in the other language may be different. The line will always be arbitrary because language is a human creation. One can’t draw a literally permanent line in the same way you can say that this thing is hydrogen and this thing is oxygen. But words can still be defined that separate cats and dogs clearly, and so too can soup and other foods featuring liquid. One doesn’t have to follow that convention… but should be aware they might end up joining the ranks of people who call submarines “ships” one day.

No, because tomato is taken as is and then made into soup. Corn goes through a process to become a flake before being added as part of cereal. Thus cereal is not a soup because the "corn" used in it is no longer in vegetable form. Corn is only a vegetable if eaten as corn. Turning it into popcorn, or a flake, makes it no longer a vegetable.

My understanding is that SLS could have been used for Europa Clipper but it would have required extensive bracing to handle the forces involved. That extensive bracing would have added a couple billion to the price tag of the mission so they went with FH. I feel like SLS Blk 1B Cargo could have been useful, considering it was basically an Ares V, but at this late in the game there is no reason to build a cargo launcher using Shuttle parts because Starship is coming soon. Anything Shuttle-derived made (at least some) sense and should have happened in the 90s or 2000s. Constellation was the last stand for something useful using Shuttle hardware (part of why I love it). But even if SLS had flown in 2016 or 2018, it still would have no real goal attached to it and in any case, Starship would be launching several years later. Assuming all the hardware gets delivered on time but the same teething issues still occur, that would put “EM-1” in 2018, and then “EM-2” in 2022 or so- if even then. SS/SH would be having its first integrated flight a few months later, and SLS Cargo would still be a long ways off. I can’t see SLS ever having the opportunity to be useful because in the same way Energia was born right at a time when Soviet/Russian space priorities radically changed, so too was SLS born right when American spaceflight was beginning to shift to privatization across the board. If SLS was all the US had, it would certainly find some way to use it, but it isn’t the only kid on the block anymore.

@Fizzlebop Smith @Scarecrow71 Corn is a fruit, or at most a grain. If we are using the guideline that does make corn a vegetable, cornflakes and other cereal would not count as vegetables because they are not eaten “like vegetables.”

Doesn't have meat or vegetables so no.

I would honestly vote in favor of just scrapping it, or cleaning it out of all the sensitive stuff and trying to give it to JSC or wherever for sideways display. Not only is the cost of launching any remaining rockets going to be too high to attract any commercial interest, keeping all the hardware in a ready state would eat up a lot of money in the meantime until any probe or commercial interest could come to fruition. Given SLS was passed over in favor of FH for Europa Clipper, as a probe designer/design organization I'd be wary of choosing it when it would make so much more sense to use FH or wait on Starship. Sometimes a rocket just comes along at the wrong time. To draw on another Soviet example, if Energia had come along a decade before it did it would have had plenty more mission opportunities and done lots of interesting stuff. But it came at a time when it didn't align with the USSR (and then Russia's) space priorities, so it was thrown away despite all of the investment in it. SLS just doesn't align with US space priorities anymore and ought to be thrown away.

The exact ROI I was describing was basically the effect on hearts and minds and that thing is hard to measure. I concede it could easily go the other way, but I think a positive appraisal of the idea is a possibility too. Note that by some accounts the Moon landing itself had little to no effect on hearts and minds. By the time it happened most were itching to shut the whole thing down, and to some it was a symbol of the country doing something useless instead of choosing to use money on something more worthwhile. Other accounts put it differently, of course.

Very curious comment about a Mars flyby being possible within the next five years. Honestly, given that Artemis will be thrown into so much chaos by SLS being cancelled (what do we do with Orion? how are we going to employ HLS? etc.) I would not be surprised if a crewed Mars flyby appeared as a "cheap and easy" option for the current administration to score some "ooh ah space is cool" points of itself (I get the vibe POTUS might be the kind of guy to actually throw resources at something for that reason). Yes, it is disappointing compared to a landing. But a flyby would allow the gathering of data on humans in deep space for a prolonged period of time. It would be a way to send humans out there without having to deal with all of the complex landing stuff. A historical case illustrates how easy a flyby can be: the Soviets got very close to being able to flying cosmonauts on their 7K-L1 spacecraft, but were never anywhere near landing cosmonauts on the Moon with the N1 (the command ship hadn't even been flown or certified by 1974 when the last launch occurred). Accomplishing such a mission would require some really "cowboy"-type, gung ho attitude to engineering and mission planning not seen since the 1960s. If the mission is intended to happen during the current administration, Q4 2028 would be the transfer window opportunity. That puts 31 months or so between now and launch. That may sound like not a lot, but it is important to remember that Skylab was actually envisioned launching as early as 1969 (!!!) after having been approved in 1967 but was delayed due to the Apollo 1 fire. The decision to switch from wet workshop to dry workshop caused further delays. Arguably, bureaucracy, NASA's cautionary mood, and regulations would be an even bigger challenge than engineering... but there's an organization that's been created to help cut that stuff away, isn't there? I know the Boeing proposal for a flyby was ridiculed in the SLS thread just a week ago or so, but from SpaceX's POV, a Mars flyby would not only help provide funding for the real crewed Starship (all-up and capable of landing on Mars, not HLS) but could also be used in the future as ammo in an argument in favor of establishing a proper crewed Mars exploration program. And finally, a crewed Mars flyby would be a major victory in the supposedly ongoing Second Space Race. Quite frankly, the US is probably going to lose the race to put people on the Moon (again). If SLS is really going to be thrown out, that could create a myriad of delays and problems: A new launch vehicle will need to be found for Orion. Redesigning an existing vehicle and crew-rating it will take time. If Orion is cancelled too, a replacement will need to be created. It can be assumed the new vehicle will be a commercial one. If NASA insists on having two providers for redundancy, the agency will be awarding smaller amounts of money to two different companies trying to do the same thing, making the process slower. If instead of directly replacing Orion, the entire architecture is redesigned to use EOR with Crew Dragon (or, just to be nice, let's say Starliner), this will still take time to run through NASA approval and so forth (because I haven't seen that idea seriously considered by anyone besides people on this forum). It would also probably involve mangling with ISS program officials, because there are a limited number of Crew Dragons now that production has ended and that may result in Artemis and ISS having to share. As much as people like to say that a Second Space Race is going on, the US is doing a horrible job of competing in it. In fact, it is behaving in a manner very similar to the Soviets. The reason why the US won the last space race is because it stuck with one goal and really ran for it. But beneath the Second Space Race is what was supposed to be a sustainable lunar architecture. And sustainability and racing don't mix. An athlete doesn't pace himself during a race so he can run it again immediately afterwards... he just runs a full at full speed to the goal. Moreover, the US stuck with one design and ran for it. A big part of why the Soviets never sent people beyond LEO is because they split their funds between two engineering organizations in the name of "socialist competition" (a real thing created by Khrushchev for dealing with the weapons industry). You can still try to build two spacecraft at the same time and get good things out of it, but it just isn't going to be as fast as if you focused on one thing. (I'm basically saying that if properly funded, Ares I + original Orion would have entered service sooner than Crew Dragon, and obviously Starliner, did in real life. I'm aware it is a questionable notion. But I am also saying that trying to build "Commercial Lunar Crew" now is for sure going to put an American landing on the Moon behind the first Chinese, even if the Chinese don't land until 2032 or 2033). Worse, a candidate vehicle for the lunar architecture (Crew Dragon) is being hogged by the space station program. This is exactly the same problem the Soviets faced; part of why the command ship for their lunar rocket never flew was because LEO Soyuz was constantly hogging the funds. In contrast, the Chinese are aiming for one thing and gunning for it: a landing and nothing more. They are throwing in partial-reusability into it, but it is entirely optional (it really doesn't matter if they lose first stages after the rest of the stack is on its way). In contrast, Artemis is entirely dependent on not only an entirely new technology (large scale in-orbit refueling) but cannot afford to ignore this technology in the same way the Chinese can ignore their reusability attempt, because if the lander doesn't have fuel... it won't get there. I am NOT saying in-orbit refueling is so risky it should be abandoned like Exoscientist loves to, I am simply saying that in-orbit refueling is an awful design choice for something intended to win a race. All of this is why I liked the 45th administration's insistence that there was no race and hated when Ballast Bill started talking about one. If you are in a race, the entire philosophy of your program has to change. Because if you just do your own thing at your own pace, you are going to lose because you aren't focusing on where your competitors are on the leaderboard. This is why China, in the context of not only space exploration but other things as well, constantly insists it has no intention to compete with any country and is taking its "own path" for development. So long as we are in race, with a program that was not designed for a race (much in the same way the Soviet N1 was never intended to be a direct competitor to Saturn V and Apollo!!!), we might as well take a que from the Soviets: for as much as two years after Apollo 11, they considered attempting a crewed Mars landing by 1980 as a means of "leapfrogging" the US. The Soviets just didn't have the money or political interest. But today, the US a) has the money and b) has the political interest. But instead of promising a crewed Mars landing in 2029, which has about as much realism in it as Artemis III in 2024, why not at least cook up something at least slightly more realistic? The alternative is potentially losing the Second Space Race. If the powers at be are okay with yet again being bested by their main competitor, so be it. But are they really?

"All that silly talk about the advance of science and such leaves me cold. Give me peace and a [backwards] science."- Thomas J. Dodd, prosecutor at the Nuremburg Trials (the word backwards has been substituted for a word that begins with R that might violate forum rules). One of my favorite quotes.

Space-based interceptors can't be assigned to protect certain targets. They attack missiles during their boost-phase, at a point in their flight before it is possible to ascertain what the target might be. The sucky thing about missile defense from the USSF's point of view is that The Other Two Big Guys, as I have called them, might have a much easier time building new missiles because they have expansive wilderness to base mobile ICBMs nearby. They thus can bypass the hard limitations that prevent anyone from building more silos than they already have. In contrast, the US just doesn't have that kind of environment. A mobile basing option was examined for MX (Peacekeeper) but it would have required buying an enormous amount of land near the Rockies and building race tracks that the missiles would drive around on, because both due to Opsec and terrain reasons it wasn't feasible to just let them go out into the wilderness. Of course, if the Canadian tundra was readily available to the US military... The economics don't work out in favor for the interceptors, especially if they have to be replaced every five years. A missile might be kept in service for much longer, IIRC some R-36 variants entered service in the mid 70s and didn't get retired until the 90s or early 2000s. But even if the number of interceptors could match the missiles, there are still a number of counters to interceptors as @DDE mentioned. One notable example is Skif-DM (Polyus), the payload carried by the first Energia. It had a laser specifically for destroying space-based interceptors: I must say this whole thing fascinates me though. There was a book in my classroom library in 4th grade, and among other 2000s-quality CGI-generated images in it that amazed me like a Progress smashing into the ISS (captioned "Nightmare on the ISS") there was a manned space-based laser platform shown firing at a wave of ICBMs. I never dreamed that sort of thing would actually be on the table for discussion some day and when I found a DefenseOne article from 2021 indicating the MDA wanted to look into a space-based BMD test, I actually thought it was fake news because I thought people knew space-based BMD was an impossibility. Based on reporting about the new initiative, that 2021 request was indeed real. Together with the debut of a certain Hazel Tree, it's like living in the 80s lol.

Depending on how much the government and CNSA management is willing to really push hard for the 2030 date, I think it is much more likely they would do something akin to what was planned for the Soviet lunar program: an all-up complete run to the lunar surface and back with no crew, followed immediately by the actual crewed lunar landing. Rather than an Apollo 8 style test, the first test of Mengzhou (the capsule) will probably be closer to Apollo 7. A single-stick version of the Long March 10 lunar rocket + Mengzhou is planned to replace the Long March 2F and Shenzhou. Long March 10 is still planned to be partially reliable and utilize a wire catch system analogous to SpaceX's chopsticks. It would make sense to test this using the LEO version first. Personally, I think a 2030 landing is unlikely. This date comes from years ago, and was part of a plan developed by Chinese engineers that envisioned actually doing an Apollo 8-style mission in 2025. 2030 should be treated as an idealized internal guideline rather than a real schedule, similar to how the first crewed flight of Shenzhou was originally ordered to take place in 1999 in time for the 50th anniversary of the PRC but didn't end up actually happening until 2003. A more important goal that is likely to be achieved by 2030 is China becoming the second nation to have semi-reusable rockets in regular service. Run down from spacenews of newcomers this year: https://spacenews.com/china-to-debut-new-long-march-and-commercial-rockets-in-2025/ Among many new launch vehicles, reusable ones include: Long March 12A, which conducted a VTVL test on January 20th. Ascent was successful, descent not so much. This is only the second test of the vehicle. Zhuque-3, a commercial Chinese rocket bearing superficial resemblance to Falcon 9 but uses methalox. They conducted a successful hopper test last year and are planning to launch the actual thing this year. Tianlong-3, another commercial Chinese rocket bearing superficial resemblance to Falcon 9 that actually uses kerolox. The first stage of this vehicle famously accidentally lifted off during a static fire test last year. The actual, all-up rocket is planned to test fly this year despite the accident. Nebula-1, another commercial Chinese rocket yet again bearing superficial resemblance to Falcon 9 but much more loosely, having a smaller upper stage and different looking fairing. Hopper tests for this rocket have been repeatedly conducted over the last few years; I think this one may have a shot at coming very close to successful recovery on its first flight (although I'm not optimistic enough to say any of them will fully succeed). It notably uses 3D-printed engines. Hyperbola-3, another commercial Chinese rocket that (you guessed it) bears superficial resemblance to Falcon 9. The company that makes this one has suffered a lot of failures with earlier rockets. It uses kerolox and attracted attention due to the company's plans for both a Falcon Heavy-style three-stick version and a two-stick version that has a configuration analogous to Atlas V 411. In addition to all of these, yet another commercial Chinese rocket bearing superficial resemblance to Falcon 9 called Kinetica-2 is due to launch this year. It will be expendable and won't receive modifications for reusability until later though. So that is 5 Falcon 9 pseudo-clones and one original hopper being tested this year. Meanwhile, Long March 9 seems to be in a big state of limbo as the configuration keeps changing when presented at aerospace conferences, going from F9-style partial reusability to Starship-like configurations and back again. It is possible this rocket is in the sort of development hell that plagued the Soviet N1 between 1962-1965, in which the designers couldn't figure out what configuration to settle on because it had no assigned mission.

If there is a place in education where people are taught not to reason, it is college. "Composition II" course. I try to write about affordable housing for the final essay, but the proposal is returned with advice to "support my own argument with sources" (original plan was to play two arguments off each other and argue that both are bunk). In other words, my argument must align with that of others so that it may be supported by evidence. I respond to the teacher stating that it is impossible to create an evidence-based argument in anything except classical physical sciences. I get told I am wrong, and indeed I was. I conclude my topic was just too broad. So I narrow it to rent control. Should be easy, right? If the assignment is to basically just parrot existing discussions and "change it up so my position looks like it is original" there have to be a million papers out there I can cite. A thousand arguments to choose from, all I have to do is say I agree with one side and describe to the reader things that other people have said. Nope! Rent control is just as subjective as "affordable housing." I cannot make a serious, evidence-based argument for or against it without falling back on subjective values, which will invalidate my argument. So here goes nothing with a paper criticizing legal arguments made in the USA in favor of criminalization of incest. Upping the ante all the way to core American legal concepts was the only way I could think of to find a non-physical sciences subject within which an evidence-based argument could be made within a certain context. Going for subjects related to basic human activites, like subsistence, is a major no-no because that stuff is wildly subjective. I'm worried it will be rejected though, because the structure isn't perfect on account of the eccentricity and obscure nature of the subject. When the guidelines for college composition are to make an argument and then support it with evidence in the form of sources, in a manner in which the argument entirely hinges on other people validating one's own view about the subject, it's no wonder kids are so tempted to use ChatGPT. A paper will be rejected if the argument hasn't already been made by someone else, so why not ask the LLM to not only find those arguments, but also piece them together and pick what argument is best? I won't give into that though. Rage will be the best fuel for another all nighter though, so my next topic will argue against the entire structure of Western curriculum and thinking in favor of Eastern examples. I blame institutionally-backed scientism for all of it by the way. Academics wonder why there is so much disdain for themselves among the common folk, but their insistence on finding evidence to support any argument leaves most people unable to make their own arguments because finding evidence (research) either requires enormous amounts of time, enormous amounts of money, or both. So academics are seen as "gatekeepers," and this assertion evolves into academics being seen as tyrants. And all of a sudden the most random, normal things become "heinous instruments of control." Thus perfectly valid and interesting ideas get thrown into the burn pile. Of course, this backlash is wholly rage-induced and without any underlying theory to guide it. Perhaps the "experiment" in the West that started with the Enlightenment might end. Blatantly subjective beliefs would once again guide society. It wouldn't be the end of the world though, because currently many subjective beliefs still guide society but are dressed up in scientific/logical sounding language to make them seem objective. The verdict of the founders of this new epoch would be written as follows: No, there was no objective way of looking at the world. /end venting

I find it strange they made Energia-Buran look like it was once a scale model made of beautiful white plastic, but then got left in the sunlight for a decade.

One thing I can see the whole space-based BMD thing being used for is to just get regulations out of the way to enable SpaceX's rapid reuse plans. If SpaceX says they can build the interceptor sat (lol at the idea of them building weapons) and they will need rapid reuse to build the constellation, it looks like the Missile Defense Agency will push for the abolition or rewriting of any regulations that contribute to long times between launches. Even if the space-based BMD winds up being cancelled (which it probably will), SpaceX will have cleared regulatory obstacles to rapid reuse of Starship. Leaving them more ready to do their whole "1,000 ships to Mars every transfer window to build a city on Mars" thing (which I have noted is just as preposterous as space-based BMD in a post in another thread).

It's often talked about in the news how corporations like Boeing are "packing their paychecks" or whatever, but I haven't seen much evidence for that and data does seem to show that Boeing is probably so profit focused because airliners are just really complex and expensive to build. Expecting fiscal dynamics to forever remain like those of the 1930s or 40s is just absurd. Which leads me to a notion I have toyed with: that a lot of late 20th century technology is just too advanced to be sustainable, not in a physical sense but in an economic one. Building an airliner any more sophisticated than a DC-4 is like trying to replace minivans with Lamborghinis. It is unsustainable and will either drive a company into the ground (which is why so many legacy American aircraft manufacturers are gone, victims of mergers) or require government help. What is seen as "unfair tax breaks" for big corporations are probably what constitute the latter. In a world I have created, I've explored what would have happened if the government continued its early/mid-20th century adherence to anti-trust sentiments and never approved big corporate mergers starting in the late 70s. Air travel in the West simply collapses in the 2000s, because Boeing, which had pushed its competitors out of the civil market by the 1990s, also just can't make a buck building what amount to B-47s with passenger seats for a populace that gives so little in return compared to the Department of Defense. The military is forced to use big transport aircraft as emergency transport for businessmen with contacts overseas, but in time cruise companies begin ordering oceanliners again and passenger rail travel is re-privatized in the USA. A similar situation occurs in Europe, leaving the USSR as the sole country to have a modern airline (albeit always having been enormously smaller compared to its Western counterparts). I suspect this phenomena may apply to other advanced technologies, especially computers. This is why Big Tech firms are so obsessed with data gathering: not because they are turn-key-tyranny facilitators in waiting or evil masterminds from a James Bond novel, but because the technology they are trying to develop is horrendously expensive and they can't fund it without dramatically upping the ante in terms of "advertising:" literally selling data on people to advertisers so as to charge more for advertising on/with their products, perhaps the Holy Grail for retailers. This is also explored in my world, although from a different point of view: In 1981, the Defense Communications Agency is given a monopoly on ARPANET and associated technologies (driven in part in response to the Soviet Union building the first lunar base, after the USA failed to land on the Moon over a decade ago). Although personal computers are still developed, the non-existence of a civilian Internet means there is no growth opportunity for PC makers. PCs in this world are basically just glorified typewriters. PC makers aren't able to sustain themselves without releasing new products, and the situation is further worsened by the rise of third-party maintenance firms on account of the simplicity of PCs in this world. Because of this, civilian manufacturers like Apple and Microsoft close their PC divisions by 2011, and by 2020 and world has returned to paper. This has ripple effects on video games. Because PC technology doesn't develop, video games don't really evolve past the form they took in the 1990s. Console technology does not develop past the PlayStation 1, with this world's Xbox and Wii being more or less copies of the PS1. Because PC technology doesn't develop, no new profits are expected in the video game industry, compounded by a significant rise in the resale of video games in the early 2010s as children outgrew their games and sold or gave them to other people. Video game companies and divisions of electronics manufacturers close by 2014, and by 2030 the only place where video games could be played was at hotels, bowling alleys, and children's restaurants (arcades declined due to consoles and PCs in the 90s and 00s), albeit only legacy 1980s arcade games, with no new developments being worth the expense. In contrast, although mobile phone technology did not develop past 2G (on account of there being no Internet), its much more widespread adoption among businessmen (businessmen, this world has an interesting turn when it comes to societal roles...) and importance as a communications technology (especially for calling in emergencies) was noted. Because of this, the government colluded with electronics manufacturers to design phones to deliberately break in about 2 years so as to keep up profits. Despite being a real phenomena this amounts to a conspiracy theory among a few disgruntled mobile phone users. PDAs also remained popular to provide the functionality of smart phones in conjunction with the world's primitive mobile phones to businessmen. All this results in advances in other places. LCD televisions become popular in the 2000s, about a decade ahead of our world, because of there being no market for new PCs, allowing electronics manufacturers to pour capital into TV development. The Blu-Ray disc becomes massively popular as a replacement for the DVD, and because of there being no Internet, video rental stores continue to exist and remain profitable. If you're a film camera guy, this world is for you, because no advances in civilian computer technology mean digital cameras were not commercially viable, leaving people with film cameras until the Atomic Age Collapse. In contrast, development of technology proceeds apace with our world in the military sphere on account of this world's heightened Cold War. High-powered PCs, LCD displays, and digital cameras are all developed and widespread.

That has very little to do with Gen Z though, who make up 20% of people in the US including non-adults and could not swing an election. I won't go into politics but I would like to note that "dopamine delivered by machine tuned to greed" just sounds like the natural evolution of the American attitude to business since the 1920s and has nothing to do with the Internet or any single company. People with malign intent do not come out of nowhere. I think the whole phenomena is more natural and "normal" than people think.

I saw an interesting article about space-based missile defense. Because it includes some political stuff, I'm just copying over the engineering parts. That 2004 report also has some content that kinda pushes the boundaries of the forum rules, but if you're interested, just Google "Report of the American Physical Society Study Group on Boost-Phase Intercept Systems for National Missile Defense: Scientific and Technical Issues," and it pops up. So looking at the numbers here, USSF would have 780 ICBMs to intercept from... the other two big guys (326 + 454)... by roughly 2035 or so. That would require 741,000 satellites, and it requires the assumption that every single interceptor will work perfectly, because there are no backups. Curiously, that five-year lifespan is the same as a Starlink sat. But Starlink is planned to have 42,000 satellites at most. With... let's just say, the smaller guy... some estimates put the number of ICBMs he might build at maximum at roughly 60 or 100. Of course, who knows, he might build more. But if that is the maximum capacity he has, 95,000 satellites would be required at maximum, and 57,000 at minimum. That's actually not that bad at all, and might be doable. Still, it requires every satellite working perfectly. No "volleys" or "salvos." Ignoring the political aspects of the system, I'm very interested to see how advocates for this are going to approach the engineering and economical challenges. If it doesn't work out I'm hoping that "Iron Colander" catches on as a nickname for the system like "Star Wars" did for SDI

@ColdJ You are free to believe what you wish to believe, and free to think what you wish to think. I say that to reiterate my point in my post that you copied over that I am simply sharing my own views, not for the purpose of convincing others to begin espousing my views. There is one thing I feel a need to directly respond to in your reply. After that, I am going to expand on a subject you brought up in your reply, but not as a direct "counter" or "reply" to your own conceptions of the subject, but rather on the subject in general and how it relates to my views on violence, as an addendum to what I already wrote for the purpose of perhaps providing some understanding of how I was able to write a sentence comparing living things to basketball hoops, or rather, some understanding (even if there is still disagreement with) what a person who does write such a sentence thinks like. My own conception of violence leads me to a different conclusion. I feel that efforts to gauge the "prevalency" of violence tend to mischaracterize the problem. As much as the modern, data driven mentality of the average human being tends to prefer characterizing problems in the form of a number ("how much money do I have," "how many apples do I have," "what are the values on the stock market right now," etc.) I don't think this approach is desirable when talking about violence. "Violence" is not like "apples." If one transports apples in an open-top truck, one can lose a few a still say they got all the apples to the market. To say there is "less violence" and that is somehow good misses the point of what violence really is: a spacially miniscule event involving an interaction between a small number of people. "Less violence in the world" is not a good thing for someone actually encountering violence: because if that person is killed, their world is completely over (and in a metaphorical sense, so is the "world" over for anyone who loved that person). I don't look at my region, which was once the site of settlers attacking the indigenous people who lived in the area, and think "there's less violence, and that's great and is an improvement" because from the point of view of someone being murdered there has been no "improvement:" they are about to die. I'd also like to point out that ratios are a poor tool for gauging the "severity" of the problem of violence. One might argue that when compared to the ratio of those killed with the total human population 10,000 years ago compared to the ratio of those killed with the total human population in the present day, "less people are dying" but that's not the point. Not only are the hopes and dreams of scores of individuals still being snuffed out, technology has allowed it to occur on a massive scale unimaginable to people 10,000 years ago. The number compared to the total population is meaningless: larger numbers of people are dying than ever before, and therefore in my view, the world is a much more violent place today than it was before. ------ I will now turn to a subject raised in your reply, but try to deal with the subject in general rather than as a direct response to your reply. It may sound like I am responding to your reply, but the subject you have raised is used by many people when talking about the issue of violence, so if anything it is a reply to you as well as the tens of thousands, if not millions of people who think about violence in such a way, but I am commenting on the subject itself, not on the choice of others to think about the subject in a certain way. I'd like to reiterate: all are free to believe what they wish to believe, and free to think what they wish to think. A second disclaimer is that I am going to be talking about violence within the "explanation arena" that people spar in to try and figure out the causes of violence. Sometimes, I will deliberately forgo my own reductionist view about the cause of violence to examine other explanations and point out flaws in them (and to a lesser extent, merits). When talking about violence, there is a tendency to dehumanize those who commit it in a myriad of different ways. At its most extreme it can mean reducing people who commit violence to literal demons or monsters, and at the most casual level, it can take the form of deriding such people as "sick." To me, this is one of those explanations that is filled with pageantry and is quite satisfying from a personal point of view. It works well as a coping mechanism for dealing with living in a world where even when living in a peaceful area, images and reports of violence are transmitted via radiowave directly within earshot or "eyeshot" of an individual. What it does not work very well as is a method of thinking about violence for people who are actually charged with "stopping" violence. This can mean leaders, but also any concerned individual trying to help others in their community. For one thing, this type of thinking leads to an extremely narrow set of imagineable options for how to "stop" violence. If one declares the person they are dealing with to be "sick" or "have a disorder" (mental or genetic), there is only a limited set of actions that can be taken to stop them, because the person is inherently going to act in a certain way and "can't be changed." Second, this type of thinking exemplifies the person or persons trying to "stop" violence. If the person they are dealing with is "sick" or "is a monster," the people dealing with this person are automatically cast as "doctors" or "heroes." This type of self-glorification is not conducive to problem solving because it forms a major barrier to self-introspection if something doesn't work out, and at worst it can lead to the would be problem-solvers declaring that anything they do must be correct and cannot be wrong, because they are "sane" and "heroic." I am highly skeptical any attribute of human biology can be attributed as a cause of violence, because the average person indeed has a propensity for violence if pushed in such a direction. The common thought experiment used to think about this is the trolley problem. A trolley is approaching a rail junction, and in either branching line, a person is tied to the tracks. A third person does not have time to untie either of them, and so must switch the tracks either way. This is a good way of framing the issue, because while the third person makes the decision with the intention of saving a person, even if the third person does not consciously recognize it, he is simultaneously making a decision with the intent of killing a person. People hurt other people because they thought they were doing good by doing so. Obviously (although sometimes not to the perpetrator), they were not doing good for the person they were harming, but they were doing good for someone else or themself. At the highest level, this might mean a leader starting a foreign conflict or beginning an internal purge because the benefit to the nation and/or themself outweighs the value of human life, and at the lowest level, this might mean a person killing another one because whatever they feel will arise out of that for themself: self-gratification, the slain person's valuables, not having to deal with them, or whatever: outweighs the benefit of leaving them physically unharmed and trying to find another solution. Any person is capable of making such a calculation in favor of violence. If placed into my "mama wolf and cubs vs. bear" example I mentioned in my original post, I believe that virtually every single person, if placed into such a situation with human children, is going to make the decision to kill the bear (who would also be a human). That's still violence. It isn't anymore justifiable, excusable, or "right" just because the individual being slain is "sick" or "a monster" or "a sociopath," or a "psychopath." I feel that trying to fit those who commit violence and those who don't into different categories just creates cause for violence, as I said in my original post (this is why my explanation eliminates categories and boils the cause down to a simple, uniform choice for all individuals). This is because what defines a "sick" person or "a monster" is very relative, if not indefinable. Especially as it relates to killing, violence is violence. It isn't a problem that can be weighed in numbers, as I said in my direct reply to ColdJ. King A is no less monstrous than King B because even if one side's actions resulted in fewer casualties than the other, individual people on both sides of a conflict are dead. Their worlds are over, and so are the worlds of those who loved them. The effect is equal, no matter what scaffolding or pageantry is used by those outside of the act of violence (the king, or people who don't know and really care about the deceased individuals) to explain why it was "justifiable" or is "good." This is compounded by the fluidity an individual can ride when making these definitions. Arguments for attacking a specific group of people, when seriously examined, have just as much nuance and sophistication as arguments for categorizing "bad" people (like people who commit violence). In the former case it is just blatantly obvious that all of the logic and reasoning given as justification for violence against a specific group of people don't correspond to reality at all, even if the words are placed into grammatically correct sentences and the subjects are discussed in a logically coherent manner. The main reason that is so is because people who aren't involved in the drafting of such justifications obviously aren't going to agree with the views of those who did draft them. But when these people draft their own justifications for their own solutions to problems: like, say, defining violent people as "sick:" they are just as immersed in their own view as people who draft justifications for attacking specific groups of people. That is to say, it has no correspondence to reality. It simply corresponds to the way the people drafting it see the world: whether their way of seeing it is actually in line with reality or not. If the guideline people use for deciding whether something is "moral" or "ethical" is A) if it is written in a grammatically correct, official sounding way and B) if the proposed solution to the problem makes sense and sounds viable, virtually anything becomes acceptable because anything can be made to sound moral or ethical if given enough effort. A dramatized example of an extreme attempt at this can be seen in the film Conspiracy (2001), in which the word "evacuation" is used in place of killing. This can't be boiled down to genetics, upbringing, material wealth, or anything else. One can not explain a decision that doesn't make sense, because there is no sense in the decision. If there is no sense then, how was the decision made? It was a simple choice, regardless of the pageantry created after-the-fact to explain it. After-the-fact pageantry is perfectly fine as a personal coping method to explain violence. It is also the chosen method of the average present day human for thinking about those who commit violence. But it is important to note here that none of this plays any role in addressing violence before it happens. If the goal of an individual is to make themself feel better "about violence" then these "categorizing" methods of thinking are great. If the goal of an individual is to "stop" violence, I don't think they are useful, because such categorizing is the very method of thinking by which people often choose to commit violence. When such a method of thinking catastrophically escalates, it results in fighting violence with violence, which is nonsensical and if taken seriously results in the total failure of the individual to "stop" violence. "Categorizing" methods of thinking are useful, I would like to emphasize that. Individuals are sometimes more likely to cope better with a situation or event with their own personalized explanation for it. But "categorization" is basically just a scientific sounding alternative, or option, in a series of choices that includes blaming demons. All are equally divorced from reality and are not a reliable means of formulating solutions to "stop" violence; they are a reliable means of thinking about violence after it has happened but can not be counted on to prevent it.

I think the issue at hand is why anyone would actually need to go back and forth between stars in the first place. Realistically there will be no resource worth transporting back to the Solar System. When creating worlds, I have begun to assume that any attempt at interstellar travel will be a one way affair. A despotic far future USA attempts to do this in one world I have made. They collide with a wormhole a couple hundred AU out and wind up at a different star... 500,000 years in the past. This causes shenanigans in the future when they find their way back to the Solar System, no longer human.

The number of countries that has nuclear weapons is so small that their actions can't be said to be representative of humanity, assuming humanity is defined as all human beings and not "this subset of human individuals arbitrarily designated as humanity." To make a statement in such a way is very inaccurate. Much in the same way that the behavior of countries with nuclear weapons is exaggerated to represent all of humanity, encapsulated in statements like "humanity points nukes at each other," one could also exaggerate the number of countries that have signed the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (a majority of them!) and say "humanity does not point nukes at each other." Neither statement is accurate, but the former is extremely common for some reason. It's very dramatic and not very observant, IMO. I have grappled with the issue of violence for a while. The second line in your quoted reply is correct. I never stated that lack of empathy for non-human animals is what made hunting a sport. The third line in your quoted reply is also correct, but confusing to me, as no one here has claimed that humans killing humans is a sport. The reason my example was so blunt is because in dealing with the issue of violence, specifically killing, I find that people tend to use too many euphemisms that hide what they are actually doing. Take nuclear war for instance. Both academic and layman's discussion of the subject is littered with words like "countervalue," "deterrence," "force multipliers," and "strikes." Only in very limited instances is the actual, specific concept of killing ever brought up. The attitude of people to nuclear weapons would be very different if people were to use different language. I prefer to talk about it in terms of toddler killing, as I was very affected by the story of Tetsutani Shinichi. Obviously, no nation is going to give its enemy a heads up it is going to massively use nuclear weapons and give them days or weeks to evacuate children. Because one of the subsets of targets for nuclear weapons referred to as "countervalue" involves bombing places where civilians live, using nuclear weapons inherently is going to involve killing "some" toddlers. There is no nuclear strategy that involves solely targeting remote areas and even then these areas aren't really that remote. Civilians will die. Taking into account that that is what "nuclear weapons use" really is, that anyone might go "but..." and still advocate for such weapons gives a much better idea of what kind of problem nuclear weapons are. It has nothing to do with the physical weapons, it has to do with people. An ICBM does not launch without someone (technically two someones) to turn the key(s). I'm going to set aside the issue of nuclear weapons because my method of thinking about them is so morbid it might violate forum rules if I expand on it in length. ------ I will instead turn to my own thoughts and beliefs about violence in general. I do so not to convince anyone to change their opinion, but simply to shed more light on why I was able to create the sentence "Like shooting hoops, but the basketball is a bullet and the hoop is the body of a different species." Violence is a very vague term. An action that might be violent in one context can be "peaceful" in another context. Take for instance pinning someone down and injecting them with a tranquilizer. A random person doing this against a random person would be regarded as violence, but a paramedic using specially designed techniques to do so on a person in danger of harming themself would be regarded as "peaceful" (or at least, beneficial to the "victim" in a way the former example does not possess). Violence is thus not really a specific set of physical actions but rather a conceptual action. This conceptual action is use of physical means to change the state in which someone else is in. At its most extreme, this means changing the state of a living person into that of death, but more commonly it involves attempting to inflict less-than-lethal pain on a person so that they will change their behavior in one way or another. People who commit violence and people who aim to stop violence have existed for thousands of years. They have come up with hundreds of thousands of explanations as to why either they themselves commit violence or, why those who do commit violence "actually" do so, as part of an explanation as to how violence can be stopped. Explaining violence in either way raises some issues. For one thing, it involves splitting the whole human population into "violent people" and "non-violent people." This is bound to make any explanation wildly inaccurate because it involves trying to simplify the behavior of billions of people. There is no "violent people club" or "non-violent people club" where everyone gets together and makes a final decision on whether to act in either way. Individuals are making their own decisions, using their own methods of calculation, weighing their own values, influenced by their own personal perception of the world, which is influenced by a myriad of varying factors. This of course just isn't satisfying. No one sees an act of violence and comes out of it unchanged, not now wondering about why such a thing would happen. Some might fall back on their preconceptions about violence and say something very simple like "Oh yeah, that's just the way the world is!" but on the other end of the spectrum people will be left spending their entire lives trying to decipher why such a thing happened. Trying to explain "bad" things and "good" things in the world is a massive subject that encompasses much of the intellectual heritage left behind by now deceased generations of humans. Some explanations catch on and spread around the world, in rarer cases people come up with their own explanations. There is no true, concrete explanation for such things. Although one can put much pageantry into their explanation, in reality it is all just individuals doing their own thinking about the question and then settling on one answer and declaring it to be true (although it may not be true, because they themselves made it up). I will share my explanation, or rather understanding, of the questions: Why do people commit violence and can it be stopped, and if so, how? I shall answer the first question first. I have spent much time racking myself over the question of why people commit violence. My understanding of various subjects does shift as I gain new information, but my current understanding is that violence is just a choice and nothing more. This is best explained using two examples. The most classical explanation of why the situation in Example 1 evolved the way it did is that "Person B is evil" or "Person B has no ethics," while the most classical explanation of why the situation in Example 2 evolved the way it did is that "Person D is good" or "Person D has ethics." Such classical explanations come with very, very dangerous implications. "Ethics" are implied to be the reason, or logic, that should govern an individual's thinking about things, including (and sometimes especially) violence. Ethics dictates that it is not right to kill someone to get their shiny rock. Seemingly unbeknownst to champions of ethics, this explanation just justifies violence. If the only reason someone should not kill someone is because "it violates ethics," that implies that it is okay to kill someone if it does not "violate ethics." Now let's illustrate how this is dangerous by putting our alphabetical characters into a single scenario, Example 3: Ethics, or rather, "reason" and "logic" are somewhat like violence in that they are concepts, with the sole difference being that violence reflects a concept put into physical action committed by an individual, while reason and logic don't automatically dictate the physical action an individual might commit. Reason and logic can be used to explain physical phenomena happening outside of the individual's control, or might dictate what an individual does not do. This can be as extreme as dictating that a person not think in a certain way, rejecting entire lines of thought (in fact it might be said this is a characteristic of "reason" and "logic," to sort out what should be thought about and what should not be). Although differing, "reason/logic" and "violence" are both alike in that they are simply ideas in the mind of the individual. On average, people will tend to think about these very basic concepts in a grandiose fashion. As I said earlier, people like to put a lot of pageantry into their explanations about the world. Even without this pageantry, in reality, "reason/logic" and "violence" are just thoughts in an individual's mind. Lack of reason/logic, or "ethics" in individuals is not a credible explanation for why people commit violence, because reason/logic, or "ethics" can be used as a justification to commit violence. Because of this, my understanding is that violence has nothing to do with what people think about it. It is simply a choice to move one's appendages about in a manner that can be causally connected to the death of another individual. Asking "why" people commit violence is not a question of what their "reasoning" was, or whether they had "reasoning" at all, but if it is even a question to be asked at all, it can really only be truly answered in terms of physical phenomena ("why is the duck not moving?" as a literal question of what is going on in the duck's body that is causing it not to move). Because any "reason" that one finds is completely made up by whatever individual being is examined. It doesn't have any correlation to reality. So now for the second question: Can violence be stopped, and if so, how? The answer to the first question is disheartening. If there is no true reason why people commit violence, if it is all in the heads of individuals, surely it can never be eliminated? "There will always be wars," "History is just a long saga of people knocking other people over the head," etc. etc. Is that all we are left with? No. I don't believe that. Violence can be stopped by interrupting the process that it is. What does that mean? Recall my definition of violence: Does anything in this definition lend credence to the conclusion that violence is "inevitable" or "can't be stopped?" "Use of physical means to change the state in which someone else is in" is essentially what violence is. That is two objects: 1) use of physical means 2) changing the state in which someone else is in. It should be obvious, but there is nothing "inevitable" or "unstoppable," or even "natural" (as many who try to downplay the problem of violence will claim violence is) about "changing the state in which someone else is in." This may seem hard to fathom. Isn't it natural for humans to try and control each other? Whether we do it out of hubris or for genuine protection, it is a human trait! Such an assumption does not lie within reality. Humans do not try and control each other as a matter of course. After all, rarely if ever does the guy over on the other end of the counter at the sandwich shop pester you to the point of inflicting violence on you so that you put ketchup on your sandwich. At a much more lofty scale, in the present day humans do try and control other things other humans do: how they go about getting food, how they go about thinking about the world, and so on and so on. But like the choice of condiment to put on a sandwich, these things are not "actually" important. They aren't real. Or rather, the idea that one person ought to decide how other people should engage with these topics is not real. It is simply something that someone thought of. This again, may seem hard to fathom. So much of the present day world is built on people trying to make everyone else think or do things a certain way. Looking back into history can help to understand how such a trend is not inherent to human behavior. Archaeological evidence has revealed that the "revolution" of agriculture did not consist of hunter-gatherers throwing down their bow-and-arrows and planting roots (literally and figuratively). In many cases, it involved people simply leaving these communities for different places where they could live the way they wanted to (that is, subsisting off agriculture instead of hunting and gathering). The first serious farmers did not feel the need to threaten their neighbors into also adopting the same way of life lest they kill them, and likewise hunter-gatherers did not feel a need to kill those who desired to go somewhere else and cease hunting. Early farmers and hunter-gatherers existed alongside each other in Europe for thousands of years. That's not to say the past was a utopia of respect and civility. Because hunter-gatherers occupied the most bountiful parts of the environment, in some cases farmers would inadverdantly settle in poorer areas that couldn't indefinitely sustain their communities, resulting in their collapse. Hunter-gatherers did sometimes raid farming communities. But this death and violence was not caused by people hurting each other specifically because some of them wouldn't act the way others wanted them to. Early farmers did not settle in bad places because hunter-gatherers literally forced them to (told them to or threatened them to do so), and neither did hunter-gatherers raid farming communities "because they were farmers." It should also be noted I am not talking about a universal "war" of farmers and hunter-gatherers, I'm just citing examples of how bad stuff still happened despite the main topic (physical coercion over thoughts and ideas) not being a factor in it. I'm not trying to paint a picture of a happy State of Nature. Anyways, how exactly does all that translate into stopping violence? What it means is that humans do have the capacity to not attempt to "change the state in which someone else is in." There is no "law" or "behavior" that dictates that humans must do that: it is an idea and a choice, and nothing more. Unfortunately, most people are completely unaware of this. They feel they "have" to do things, or they "have no choice." This is in fact a common explanation cited by those who do commit violence about why they did it. This goes both ways however: not only do those who might commit violence have a choice to "not change the state in which someone else is in," but so too do those who do not commit violence have a choice to "not change the state in which someone else is in." Wait, what? People who don't commit violence have that choice too? Yes, they do, particularly those who don't commit violence and also oppose others doing it. Because "opposing others doing something" is also an attempt to "change the state in which someone else is in." This goes back to what I said about trying to use "reason/logic" to justify non-violence or explain why people shouldn't commit violence. That is an example of trying to "change the state in which someone else is in." At best, further attempts to "change the state in which someone else is in," even when advocating for people to not do something like commit violence (which in theory should "give people the right to be in the state they want to be" and thus be good, right?) further propagates this "culture of control" that makes people think they must control others, and thus results in individuals thinking they "must" do things or "have no choice." At worst, it can escalate into trying to "change the state in which someone else is in" using physical means... maybe using restraints, but most catastrophically, using violence to "stop violence:" in which case people just end up committing violence and forfeit their original goal. All of this is not reason/logic explaining why one should not commit violence (and of course, also not explaining why they should commit violence!). Violence is a simple choice. The only way violence can be stopped is by individuals making the choice not to commit it. Nothing more, nothing less. Taking away a weapon and making up grand narratives about why violence should not be committed will not stop violence. Because human appendages are weapons and we can't ban arms (pun intended), and individuals have their own minds they can use to make up their own narratives. Prologue This all sounds very incredible (in the sense of "not credible") from a secular point of view. I'm basically saying that unless people who do commit violence choose not to do it, they can't be stopped, and that the "correct" way for anyone to stop violence is to not commit it. This implies sitting back and letting others commit violence. Using animals because I'm getting into territory that for the forum, is too morbid to talk about using humans... Should a mama wolf let her cubs be killed by a bear so that she can "stop violence?" is perhaps a question that might be posed to counter my understanding. I know because I posed myself this question. Personally, I still am not convinced that committing violence to stop violence is worth it. This just propagates the "culture of control" and obsession with "reason/logic." At the very worst, trying to categorize between "good violence" and "bad violence" can lead to all sorts of nasty ideas like dehumanizing categorizing between "valuable people" and "targets." I am aware this is simply viscerally unacceptable to the average person. I believe my conception of how violence ought to be stopped is not so much an obvious "fairytale for children" as a lot of moral arguments tend to go, but more so an enormous challenge for the individual. I myself can only take my own belief so seriously and sincerely because separately, my understanding of reality and the nature of life and death is radical and wildly incongrous with present day mainstream conceptions of these subjects. As I said, only individuals can make the decisions needed to stop violence. Not a subset of individuals making decisions for other people or ordering them about. The power to figure out one's own path to peace with all individuals, not just "nice guys" to the exclusion of "bad guys," only lies in their own minds. Not in someone else's "reasoning" or "logic." EDIT- And I'd like to share that for me, that means valuing and holding in high regard even the people who do fail to find that path or have already failed to find that path. EDIT 2- Just to reiterate, this is intended to shed light on how I was able to write the sentence "Like shooting hoops, but the basketball is a bullet and the hoop is the body of a different species." I hope it is of use in providing some understanding of my thought processes.