SunlitZelkova

I think the issue here is characterizing what constitutes "advanced." Is a 1300s Tualatin Kalapuya man who lives until 40 but is happy and roams free and contributes to the community throughout his life more "advanced" than the 80 year old from 2024 who has been on anti-depressants half his life and sits in a retirement home watching TV? The problem is there are people well off in every era of history and people worse off. It's hard to gauge what really constitutes more advanced or not if every generation has its own problems. I'm unaware of the extent to which early scientific innovations were driven by religious people, although I can list examples (but they may be anecdotal). Newton and Copernicus were Christians, Pythagoras and his followers were Pythagoreans. Tsiolkovsky believed in ethereal beings that transferred knowledge to humans, while a lot of the impetus for the Space Race came from communism vs. capitalism, which entailed atheism vs. religion in the eyes of the American politicians who funded NASA. Perhaps these achievements wouldn't have happened without the religious backgrounds involved (although IMO, the type of "religiousness" present in the four I namedropped is more akin to some sort of spiritualism: being touched by mystical curiosity almost constantly throughout daily life, than the average "religiousness": go to the place of worship once every week but otherwise not think about it too much). Now of course there are atheists and agnostics who make discoveries too. I think I would guess that the answer to the question "was religion required to get science going" is more likely to be revealed by statistical analysis as being that there is no apparent prerequisite of either atheism or religiosity to be capable of making scientific discoveries. If that is the case I would say that the current world we live in was not precipitated by tales of gods but would look like this either way. I also think there is a degree of "temporal entrapment" one has to examine when asking that question. People may appear to be worse off in all sorts of ways, but what about 200 or 400 years from now? If it's all peachy, won't that make the problems we sometimes wish never got brought up (like nuclear weapons and the Internet) worth it? I was gonna say "Russia is ahead of the US in that regard" but it seems 1 in 3 households grow their own produce in the US. I guess it just wasn't/isn't that popular in the two communities I've lived in (one cookie cutter neighborhood full of Intel employees, one an upscale neighborhood in the shadow of Microsoft HQ with a lot of rich, old retirees).

So TIL about Edgar Mitchell’s interest in consciousness studies, quantum theory, and… UFOs. It really has me wondering if science can truly be called “science” or if it is just an extension of human reasoning and senses, which, perhaps inevitably, will lead to non-impartial interpretations of observations, perhaps leading to new systems of belief. And systems of belief are vulnerable to abuse, and thus science may end up destroying itself. The way Mitchell talks of the universe being made out of information is jarringly similar to Philip K. Dick’s Gnostic inspired ruminations, in which he arrived at the same conclusion independently, without scientific observation, after having a mystical experience in 1974. Mitchell claims all six lunar module pilots had the same mystical experience he did at some point during their flight, and were changed by it in their own unique way. It makes me wonder what sorts of wild ideas might be birthed from more regular flights to the Moon in the coming years, especially due to the heavy influence of pop culture involving aliens and mystical forces (like the sorcerers in Doctor Strange) compared to the types of media Mitchell and his fellow Apollo astronauts consumed as kids. Everybody knew lightning existed, just one day someone came along and claimed it came from Zeus’ fingers. Charles Fort was on to something when he felt that science was just as vulnerable to dogmas as systems of belief, IMO. Quantum physicists may be on the forefront of creative theorization right now, but will they be in 1000 or 2000 years? I’d hate to see a time come when people are burned at the stake for daring to question the sacredness of the Quantum One. Ironically I think the solution to this is to let people come to their own conclusions. It’s okay to think the universe is cold and unthinking or that intelligent chi/ki surrounds us in the form of the energies that make up the universe. But let people decide that for themselves. Mitchell is wrong, when in the NASA oral history in which he is interviewed he states that science needs to help craft “a new story” to help “have a better value system that’s in tune with the processes of the universe.” Arthur C. Clarke’s quote… “Any technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic,” has some disturbing consequences. If one day all of the problems are solved, and ideas become more and more complex, and sufficient time passes that the early discoveries become almost mythical in nature, that history will be easily distortable. Just look at how more or less… human… humans of 10000 years ago were recast as dumb savages by Thomas Hobbes. I guess what I’m saying is… humans gradually learned through experimentation how to cultivate crops. But the memory of exactly when a certain group first did it was so distant no one remembered. So it was mythologized. The lesson of agriculture was given by gods. Today, very few people know how to grow food on a scale necessary to sustain a decent population. It’s a relatively rare art. So what if we forget who the Wright Brothers were, and who Einstein was, and we attribute these successes to supernatural forces. Not in the same way the first farmers were forgotten and replaced by gods, but rather by turning them into “supermen” and assuming they had “help” from… oh, I don’t know, Martians. That idea already exists now. But then the names of the people get less important. Because all technology was given by the Martians, so it doesn’t matter what the humans’ names were. Eventually they are then forgotten. And then we have a sort of zombie civilization, which doesn’t remember where it came from and likely doesn’t have much of an idea of where it wants to go- not unlike how the majority of people in the 21st century are focused on the present rather than future. Maybe people aren’t interested in making new things because they’re infatuated with existing technology. Or maybe those who claim to have their own ideas without the help of Martians are accused of blasphemy and burned at the stake. Science becomes a lost art, practiced by a few or none at all. Doctors become indistinguishable from medicine men. Quantum physicists become virtually identical to shamans. People start talking of “bad” and “good” magic. There are good sorcerers and evil sorcerers. To some extent this conflict already exists in the form of debate on ethical and unethical science experiments. Science and philosophy complement each other in some ways, but trying to integrate them is flawed, IMO. The police and fire department are more effective as independent branches than a single institution. But I wonder… is science truly unique? The present is the past and also the future. But it’s only the present until it’s history. Today’s objective truth and facts may be the myths of tomorrow. I think that’s alright, but I just really wish for people to decide what they think on their own. Not have the meaning of life shoved down their throats through indoctrination into the dogma. It would be a terrible mistake to utilize science to try to answer those sorts of questions.

I remember seeing this in a book from my elementary school’s library. Thanks for the dose of nostalgia!

Today (and yesterday) I attended the 2024 UFO Fest in McMinnville, Oregon. It was my first time going and being around any adults remotely interested in UFOs outside of my family. There were a number of speaker events. I and my mother attended one with Ryan Graves, Lieutenant USN (ret), and one with Garrett M. Graff, journalist. I chose these two over the others specifically because they are outsiders to the usual Roswell crowd, and represent a neutral ground between denialists and true believers. Graves' presentation was yesterday, and it was interesting. He runs a non-profit dedicated to gathering UFO/UAP data called Americans For Safe Aerospace. He encountered UAP himself and claims they were commonly seen in the military at least a few years before the 2017 video release. He shared some interesting data, mainly in that none of the UFOs/UAPs appear to have pilots, only coming in the form of geometric shapes or points of light, sometimes surrounded by what looks like a plasma field, much to the disappointment of some in the audience. The number of military reports his organization collects is actually low due to new reporting procedures, with the next biggest categories being commercial and general aviation. Some are corroborated with ground reports. The details behind some of the sightings are weird, to say the least. His experience with it started during his time with VFA-11 during training off Virginia Beach. They were testing the AN/APG-79 AESA radar upgrade for the F/A-18F and would pick up swarms of odd objects. They thought it was a bug in the system, but continually found targets that weren't supposed to be in the restricted airspace. When they would go to look at them the AIM-9s would detect an IR signature and get a lock, but nothing would appear to be there. Eventually a visual sighting did occur in which a black sphere surrounded by glass buzzed two F-18s within 500 feet. Idk if anyone remembers, but there have been "UAP" sightings underwater. I always thought that a little silly, and Graves shared what that was, because the incident was registered in his data. Basically a submarine was in the Atlantic and picked up what appeared to be a torpedo moving at 100 knots and tracking them. The captain ordered it to dive, and the target followed them down. The captain actually took it below the safe depth, and the target then approached within 100 yards of the sub before diving further. Graves says he doesn't know whether such incidents are common or not because the submarine community is tight lipped for obvious reasons, and also, he shared that there are operational considerations in why most of the UAP videos come from Navy aircraft rather than Air Force: the Air Force is often actually doing stuff during its missions over the US, while the Navy is simply training. Graff's presentation was interesting too, but mainly talked about broad concepts of why the UAP is being taken seriously yet again. The gist of it is that after a certain event in 2001, the US became more interested in what was happening in its skies regardless of its affiliation, whereas as the military shrugged once it was obvious the craft weren't Soviet recon vehicles back in the 60s. The other reason he states is that the idea of there being life out there is taken a little more seriously now that we know exoplanets exist. Neither of these speakers claimed to have definitive answers for what they are, and believed there is not a single answer but many. Graves simply said he did not have the credentials to ascertain what they are; his mission is to collect data and deal with the stigma around reporting. He did address how Starlink can cause sightings, and described how many "point of light" sightings defy the behavior of a satellite. When asked if the famous video was of a bird (a hypothesis proposed by the members of this forum too), he said he didn't know, but he thought it unlikely due to pilots seeing birds everyday and being unlikely to mistake one for a UAP. He also mentioned that in that specific video the target appeared to come from the east, from the direction of the middle of the Atlantic, while in his experience birds mostly stay around the carrier or near land. Graff categorized the explanations into four possible categories: Starlink/Venus, experimental drones from the usual suspects*, unknown atmospheric phenomena, and then the "really weird" aliens/interdimensional/time travel whatever. I listed the categories in order of most common to very rare if at all (according to him). *He cites an alleged incident in which a UAP emerged from the water and then went airborne, which helped the US intelligence community to identify a new Chinese drone. It's another reason why the government is interested again. While the speakers I listened to were pleasant, the rest of the people were... meh. Between the people soliciting festival attendees for off-topic propaganda purposes or the man who got up to ask Graff a question, only to question him about the "relevancy" of David Icke when it comes to the 2001 event (completely off topic in regard to the presentation, but Graff is an author of an oral history of that event), it's not a crowd I'd like to hang around. Oh, and unfortunately much of the audience (including my mother) were and remain convinced the government is hiding something, despite Graff's attempts to explain at how bad the US government is at keeping secrets (he's been reporting on national security matters for 20 years). It was fun though. I got a lot of UFO goodies, had some good food and a UFO themed coffee, and attended a parade involving a number of local organizations dressing up as aliens or scifi characters. I think a person's opinion about UFOs exists on a spectrum. On one end there is Carl Sagan, in the middle there is Jacques Vallee, and at the other end there is Eric Von Daniken (of course outliers in further directions beyond the ends exist too). I like to think I'm firmly in the middle, in that something is happening but it doesn't necessarily fall under the domain of science to investigate. It's more of a psychological and religious phenomena with philosophical implications, IMO. That's why I posted this here and don't plan to mention anything in the Tic-Tac UFO thread in the S&S section. I just don't find it worth discussing in a scientific context. I think I got lucky in having two normal speakers to choose this time around. The other three were Roswell fanatics. It was a fun event, and I find the topic really interesting, but I don't think I'd attend again unless someone from the outside presents. The work of people like Graves is purported by himself and Graff to be encouraging a more nuanced view of the topic though, so perhaps more like them will be available to visit some day. P.S. I'm sure some of you are giggling at me, a UFO believer, considering Roswell dudes to be the "insiders" corrupting the topic, and a former USN pilot and a journalist who contributes to big media to be the "outsiders" who can save it with wisdom. For the average UFO fan its no-name trailer park dudes who are the trustworthy outsiders and the government and media that are the swamp trying to keep people in the dark XD

For anyone who is confused, what he means by “hard” is an image that “goes hard.” “Goes hard” is slang for something cool or epic.

I watched 2012 for the first time. I found it to be a pretty entertaining movie, which asks some interesting questions about morality when comes to saving the world, albeit perhaps not so original ones. It was refreshing to watch in 2024 when all the movies seem to be about relatively normal life, while the end of the world talk comes from IRL stuff (barring superhero movies which require a perennial doomsday to defeat). I can’t decide between the oligarch calling an Antonov aircraft Russian or the Chinese Mi-26s airlifting giraffes and other animals as the most funny part. Interesting to note, while the Chinese do not possess Mi-26s, they do operate a number of Sikorsky S-70s, which are partially depicted by way of Blackhawks with PLA insignia also used by the Chinese in the film. Given the neutrino “mutation” nonsense in the beginning, I was thoroughly surprised that the arks ended up being ships instead of spaceships. Considering the shipbuilding giant it is today I’d say the premise of building a massive ark for 100,000 people isn’t too far fetched, although doing it in the Himalayas and in total secrecy might be. I also found it funny that Japan, Russia, and China got stuck on the same boat together. I’m a Japanese person who has an interest in the Russian (well, Soviet) and Chinese militaries. I have seen a loosely similar concept explored in Japan Sinks: 2020, in which many Japanese refugees end up in Russia, Japan Sinks: 2023, in which a good portion of the Japanese population is evacuated to China, and I myself considered exploring the concept with the idea to conduct an amateur study of what kind of resources would be needed to relocate the entire population of Japan to new-built cities in the Russian Far East in the event of either a fantasy Japan sinks scenario or a climate disaster which renders Japanese summers unlivable. The latter is an idea I did not pursue. I also considered looking at the cost of moving the entire country into balloons on Venus, but I didn’t look at it either. My Mars city calculations over in the S&S section have now dissuaded me from taking a look at any such situation in a capitalist context. But I digress. As far as apocalyptic stories or movies go, I like this one in that it has a relatively happy ending. I feel that “man just tears itself apart” type stories are too rooted in Hobbes’ view of man’s “true” nature without civilization, which was never meant to be an actual sociological or anthropological take on humanity and was simply a philosophical argument. The truth is that we are very kind animals. It’s wrong to think that every man and woman would become a murderer the moment the kings and their courts were toppled; I think this idea focuses too much on the way law is used to restrain people and not enough on how morals do too. Yes, we can be violent. But if we were not primarily an altruistic species, I don’t think we would have gotten this far at all. “Men” (I use men in the sense of man vs. savage) created civilization, not the other way around. IMO, of course. Oh, and by the way, I now really feel like Moonfall was just an attempt to emulate what 2012 did but in an over the top way. I think 2012 works because the social phenomena of belief in that doomsday was popular. The idea of the Moon being an alien ark and it crashing in to Earth? At best a few dark web conspiracy lunatics know about it, at worst Roland just made it up himself and hoped people would be interested.

Could it really ever collapse though? There’s always gonna be millions going out and watching movies just to kill time or spend the day, even if it doesn’t look like a triple Oscar winner. If there is something that’s going to die in the coming years, I’d expect it to be trilogies and reboots. The former due to the riskiness involved in committing to three movies in case one bombs, the latter because they have to run out of stuff to remake eventually, right? Honestly it’s hard to see any industry or nation for that matter “crashing and burning” unless a movie mogul (or whatever) Gorbachev comes along. Everything just feels so monopolized and entrenched, from business models to the average person’s lifestyle and habits.

If there was no plan to add consent mechanics to KSP2’s multiplayer, sneaking up on unsuspecting ships and stealing their fuel would be an interesting challenge.

I finished reading the book The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity. When I say finished reading, I mean reading the arguments rather than the evidence, because the book is kind of self-defeating after a certain point. It claims, with evidence, that arguments about how the organization of society developed, mainly that we went from tribes to city-states to empires (I’m paraphrasing there), come from philosophy and are not supported by modern day anthropological and archaeological evidence. I think their theories are very effective when it comes to looking at North America, because it’s self-evident from data gathered as early as the 19th century that the ways different groups of people organized their society varied. The idea of idyllic tribes living among nature, oblivious to complexity, philosophy, and creativity, is very much a colonial stereotype. It gets more difficult to believe when they try to reframe theories about places in China, Egypt, Eastern Europe, and Mesopotamia, mainly because it involves thinking about well known places in different ways. The authors successfully illustrate how scientists during anthropology’s infancy were captive to their own biases in creating notions like “the state” and categorizing societies based on their mode of subsistence. But it raises the question of whether these authors are captive to their own biases (one is an anarchist activist) in trying to paint a certain picture of history being a certain way or another. Their arguments about the nature of how we organize society track and so does their criticism of “big history”’s presentation of human history. I am just skeptical how historical evidence can be used to support a discussion of those arguments (from either side) when, as illustrated when it comes to how Caucasian scholars looked at indigenous American societies and history and how that influenced the popular view of them, everyone seems to be so beholden to their political bias. It’s still a good book though, and I recommend it to everyone. Just be careful not to take the evidence too seriously. They make clear how big history likes to cherry pick information to paint a picture of tribes-to-empires, but it is possible they are doing so too.

I think my main concern that causes me to question definitions of harm is people being overbearing. I think people (above the age of consent/legality or whatever) should be allowed to make their own decisions, but given a good education of the pluses and minuses of the possible choices at hand. Unfortunately I feel people (at least my age, early 20s) don’t really get taught the skills necessary to properly weigh pros and cons and end up going more with their emotions. It’s hard to find the balance between a warning and an order. I am terribly sorry but I must now correct myself. I was using the wrong term. Some families in Nepal practice polyandry, not polygamy, although polygamy can be found in Nepal too, it is not what I studied about. The way it works is one wife usually marries an entire family’s brothers. The husbands are not drawn from different families. Tension is mainly around personal issues. It’s been several months since the anthropology class and I don’t seem to have taken notes on the subject, but I recall that having two males helps raise lots of farm hands and keep the population stable. I’ve found the TED Talk I watched during my studies. I don’t know if it’s okay to post it, so just Google “Are five husbands better than one TED Talk” and you can find it if you’re interested.

Genuine question, what constitutes “ethical rules” and “morals” in “modern society?” Take for instance polygamy. The idea that it is immoral comes from Christian ideas, which don’t really make it “modern” per se. Yet its growing occurrence in the West is cast down upon by traditional thinkers as immoral. Meanwhile Nepal has had it forever, and such relationships are no more tumultuous than the average Western marriage. Nepal, obviously, is part of the modern world, given it still exists in 2024. Why does what happens in the West get called modern, and in other places it isn’t? It’s even more ironic considering a lot of Western legal, political, and moral traditions date back to Roman times. I myself don't have an answer to this question. I think making one would require a degree of myth making, as you would need to cast human culture into one monolithic story, when in reality the differences are varied. “Human culture” is a little like “desserts.” They wildly vary to the extent it’s questionable if they are related. That analogy is bad but I hope I get my idea across. I agree. I think the problem though is when the question is raised of whether we should protect others. Take for instance polyamory as mentioned above. I personally would have major emotional stress if I tried to be in such a relationship. I wouldn’t want that done to me. Using the Golden Rule, that makes polyamory wrong. But what if someone else thinks differently? Do I have a right… is it right… for me to stop someone from having such a relationship just because I think it is “wrong” based on the Golden Rule, while that person might think it “right”… because as a matter of course they don’t mind having it done to them? And to what extent is it okay to protect others? I think trying to over police what strangers do is a no-no, but what about family? If the person who thinks polyamory is wrong is a father, and the person who wants to partake in it is his daughter, does he have a right to stop her? How would he feel if his father tried to stop him from doing what he wanted? BUT, there’s the Golden Rule! So isn’t it right to stop “wrong” things from occurring in the world? Because I would want someone to speak up and help protect me from another person trying to “wrong” me? This dilemma brings me to what I said, I could say “the way to solve this is respect other’s autonomy and right to make their own decisions so long as those decisions don’t harm others,” but then there’s the question of what constitutes harm. I think it would be very hard to solve this dilemma, because what constitutes harm and what constitutes non-harm is also relative.

Is the right answer to put aside differences and cooperate even if it’s not what one personally desires, or to strive for your personal desires even if they come into conflict with those of others? Is constantly changing your opinions based on interactions with others admirable, or a case of being at the whim of others’ ideas? The discussions on this forum in recent days have been my first introduction to these issues in philosophy/ethics/whatever category. More and more I’m seeing everything as relative; just a human construct. Things are what we make of them. There is no right or wrong but the rights and wrongs we (or one) decide(s) upon. Humanity is complex and I’m all for it. I had these thoughts while it was raining outside, so it counts as a shower thought, right?

Thank you for the correction!

This franchise changed my life too. I first learned about KSP2 in 2020. I had heard of KSP long ago (in like 2015 or 16) from a YouTuber called PhlyDaily. I had guinea pigs from 2015, but in 2020 one passed away, followed by another just weeks later. This hit me very hard. I did not have any human friends at the time, due to a combination of mental health issues and moving around due to my parent’s divorce. 2016 was the darkest year of my life so far perhaps. I was struggling immensely in school and in a few months would lose my the last of my human friends. I would sit on the couch with one of my pigs in the evenings, and he would look up to the ceiling a lot. I interpreted this as him wanting to go to the Moon. Also at this time I was interested in Soviet history. So through a combination of being enamored with the Soviet mass song “14 minutes to start” (the refrain of which is in my signature) and my pig’s desires, the seeds of a new interest in space travel were born. I had originally been interested in space during elementary school, but dropped it after my parents divorced. But the dark times continued. I was bitter, neglected to spend time with my pigs, and focused on war and conflict. Things changed in 2020. I lamented how I was never able to take all of my pigs to space (I planned to make a cardboard rocket and blast off with them to the “Moon” and let them run around on the surface). Now two of them never could. I became interested in spaceflight again at last. I revisited Wikipedia articles for the first time in nine years about rockets and missions. But it wasn’t enough. I wanted to be able to go to space myself, just as I “partook in combat” virtually through video games during my interest in historical wars. I recalled that rocket game, called “Kerbal” or something from that PhlyDaily video so long ago. I looked it up and lo and behold, not only was KSP thriving, a sequel was in the works called KSP2. I was blown away by the trailer. The dreams of my childhood, going to the Moon and then interstellar, returned to my mind. KSP1 seemed out of reach for my computer. KSP2 promised better graphics. I was hyped. I still ended up finding a work around to play KSP1 and learn the ropes in the meantime, but I remained highly excited about KSP2. To be honest, the (still rumored) death of KSP2 does not bother me much. It’s what happens to the franchise that does. After I bought KSP, I was able to go to orbit, land on the “Moon”, and I even attempted to go to “Mars” (I played stock and simply imagined it was the real solar system, because my computer couldn’t handle RSS). But it was something that seemed like magic, like stepping into a real life spaceflight simulator, compared to what I did in my elementary years: drawing rockets and then cutting them out and playing with them as toys. KSP fundamentally changed my life in that it gave me a positive hobby. So many video games involve some degree of violence, and yet this one is peaceful (although I did build an SA-2 Guideline replica once lol). As a result I was able to have a really good pandemic experience. The amount of time I spent playing dropped in 2022, as another of my pigs passed away, and I so strongly identified KSP with being with him, while also lacking coping skills to deal with his passing. But the interest in space exploration remained. Through all the ups and downs, I feel I have been a much happier person in 2020-2024 than I was in 2012-2019. KSP was a big part of that. I only played sandbox mode through these past four years. In 2024, simultaneous with starting college, I will be starting my first ever science save, with a goal of building a space program during my time as an undergraduate. What will happen now? At first glance it seems like it should be fine, but KSP social media accounts and even this forum moved very heavily into promoting KSP2 (as an example, the KSP2 section of the forum is above that of KSP, despite the game not even being finished, and the only creations showcased on Twitter now are all from KSP2). Will they make an about face and return to promoting KSP content? Will Private Division want to continue supporting KSP if it just makes people think about how they failed to deliver the second one, thus hurting their brand name and reputation? I certainly hope not. I voice my fears not to sow panic, but in search of solace.

Does anyone know if you can book a (cheaper than one way) two way international ticket, get there, and then cancel the return and get a refund? If you bought a fully refundable ticket. My dad is thinking of doing this for me this Summer. We’d fly United.

Mi-28. It’s pretty different from the Mi-24, perhaps resulting in some doctrine change on the use of attack helicopters?

My mom bought me that game for me when I was like 9 or 10 and we never played it. It’s still in her game closet, so we’ll need to try it out some time.

It would be so cool to know how this thing would have fitted into Soviet doctrine in Central Europe had the Pact not fell. It’s very different from the Mi-24.

It’s not. It’s smaller. Saturn V is about 1:110, and SLS is 1:160 I think.

The issue with what happened to me here over the past couple weeks is that it wasn’t an opinionated matter we argued over, it was- 1. The definition of something 2. History of something The first time, the guy had a weird definition of something that sounded like something else, so I looked up the dictionary definition to see if I was right. It didn’t match up and I pointed that out. Then he continually changed his own definition until he accused me of not discussing in good faith. Second time, I made stupid statements about something in history. I honestly did not know I was wrong. In fact, other people in the discussion later politely pointed out the flaws in my statements and I accepted I was incorrect and retracted my statement. But before then, this guy- the same guy as with the definition talk- simply says I’m “making walls of words” and again speaks of me “lacking good faith.” This isn’t public policy or favorite foods we’re talking about. If we can’t correct each other when we’re wrong and accept that we’ve been wrong when it comes to facts, how are we supposed to learn anything? Isn’t that what the internet is supposed to be about? For All Mankind had a clip of Tim Berners-Lee praising the then potential value of the internet in the 80s and he spoke of a “more informed electorate.” Obviously politics is politics and it can get nasty in its own right, but what about technical discussions? Discussions about the humanities? I think I’m getting back to my point I made in my long post about climate change. Everyone has armies of rhetoric and data on their side to defend their arguments, and criticism and differing data is “politicized” or has an ulterior motive. If I or others can’t or don’t want to correct or be corrected on facts when we’re wrong, what’s the point of even being here? Just hop in, see if we fit in the echo chamber, hop out if we don’t and then post tweets and occasional witty jokes from time to time? Isn’t a forum all about discussion? I’ve never expected people to change their opinions when I’m criticizing them. But if there’s a fact they’re talking about that’s incorrect, I have a hard time sitting by and letting them be wrong. I wouldn’t want someone on this forum to let me continually make inaccurate statements, and when I did that in the history discussion, I’m glad I was corrected. Considering most of the people who regularly post in the main section of the forum I visit- the Science & Spaceflight section- are also the same people who have espoused the climate change denial arguments I listed in my climate change post in this thread, perhaps I just need to recognize the people there are not who I thought they were when I joined this forum and read about the better forum movement and rules intended to make it a more positive place. The Lounge is cool though, so I’d still visit here. But I can get space news on Twitter and don’t really have any more technical questions to ask people over there, so if it’s just a place to report the news and make jokes from time to time- discussion, while legal, will lead to arguments if anything beyond supportive comments are made, even if someone is incorrect about something- what am I even doing there? I’m also now thinking about how I don’t even really follow much spaceflight news beyond what’s going on in China. I might as well just head over to Sino Defence Forum (where I’m much more conscious of what kind of people they are and how it’s important not to start arguments).

I feel like the reason the world is so divided is because no one has the modesty or backbone to conduct extended, intense debates/arguments. If we fail more than 2-3 times to convince someone of something, we don’t have a hard look at what we’re saying to see if it’s wrong, we accuse the opponent/target of being “brainwashed” or “lacking good faith.” Idk, maybe I’m spending too much time with the people on this forum who are mostly old enough to remember Apollo or STS-1 and need to interact more with my own generation.

Because Ice Age people actually might have had varied culture and not a monolithic way of thinking across Eurasia. Hence why I said within their group. The objective of all life is to survive, no? Would you say one’s desire for food and water is an opinion? I suppose it could be. The Wendat did have punishment mechanisms for things people agreed were bad, like murder. Instead of punishing individuals, the whole clan would have to pay tribute to the clan of the slain person, creating an incentive to prevent others from committing murder. Kandiaronk said this was more effective in preventing crime than European punishment of the individual, but we don’t really know for sure whether that was true or not. What the Wendat did not do was force people to do something they didn’t want to. No one was forced to participate in war against another tribe if they were not convinced it was the right course. I don’t think a decision requires punishment of those who don’t agree and cooperate. Sometimes decisions involve recruiting volunteers to execute them, in which case those who oppose go unpunished because they aren’t needed. Not the case. Pacific Northwest tribes were “peasants of the fish” in that they conducted mass harvesting and processing of salmon according to the right time in the season. The environment they lived in was unsuitable for HG lifestyle because the main trees were conifers. They raided each other for slaves because the leaders could not convince their own people to take up the intense labor needed for processing salmon. But the northern Californian peoples, who lived with access to similar abundance of salmon, consciously refused harvesting salmon and preferred the hunter gatherer way of life, because they valued work for the individual and did not believe in slavery, unlike the almost bourgeoise-like leaders of the Pacific Northwest peoples who showed off their immense wealth (and shared it) during potlatch. But the Pacific Northwest people never raided the northern Californian HGs, despite being in close proximity. (The northern Californian peoples actually did keep a small number of slaves, but the institution was frowned upon and those who owned them were ostracized)

It would be very interesting to know if Soviet space artists took notes on what their Western counterparts were doing, or if they both read Jules Verne as kids and ended up following the same (convergent) evolutionary path.

https://x.com/cnspaceflight/status/1783621625495318904?s=46&t=Jd73T2beq0JLNtwTy1uR5A Shenzhou-18 has docked with Tiangong. There are now 13 people on orbit. Shenzhou-17’s crew will depart in 4 days.

What’s the likelihood they were killed lined up like that? Your images come from a European caricature of the native person. Both a Frenchman named Lahontan and the Jesuit missionaries who lived there spoke of how the Wendat did not use violence to force others (within their group) to do things they wanted them to. The AI is not going to want others to have arbitrary values like “righteousness” and what not. It’s just programmed to ensure the physical survival and expansion of the colony. This regulates basic needs and the functions of the colony. The colonists are free to decide how they want to spend their own free time. When I say “law” I mean public decisions, which the Wendat did make when deciding things like going to war or not. No one could force anyone to do anything. It was up to the persuasive powers of the person proposing the action to convince others to help. 18-25 villages over 35x56 km area, with a total population of 18-22k. Lands farmed extended up to 880km squared. http://www.1704.deerfield.history.museum/scenes/nsscenes/lifeways.do?title=Wendat#:~:text=Most of the villages%2C of,through their success in agriculture. These were not hunter-gatherers. Many tribes besides them cultivated maize and other crops. And yet, no money, no institutionalized trade, no authoritarian chief. Farmers did not force others to give them something in return for food, they gave it as they believed freedom was an important value, and you’re not free to do much besides gathering food if you’re hungry.