WestAir

Gravity is a fictitious force in GR?

Sorry for the horse bashing. I haven't read the other 12 pages of this thread, and my only education on astronomy comes from High School. My degree is in aeronautical science, not physics, so you'll find I ask a lot of open ended questions here when I can't follow the conversation.

It seems like you're suggesting the Universe exists at one super-macro reference frame where C does nothing but get in the way of information transfer, and that if we could lift the vail of C we'd see the universe as it is "now" everywhere with no delay; and that FTL communication does just that. But that doesn't make any sense to me. Right now I know that Andromeda is 2.5 million lightyears away - but if I were to suddenly accelerate to near the speed of light, thanks to length contraction it will be closer despite my physical distance never changing. Spacetime just contracts on its own and suddenly Andromeda is no longer 2,538,000 years in the "past". When I reach C, suddenly I'm in Andromeda. If by moving at C the time to reach Andromeda is 0, how is that not instantaneous?

I think the word you're looking for is "time travel", not instantaneous. If in my reference frame the Earth hasn't been created yet, and you send me a message saying "Hi", you've sent that message back in time. Instantaneous would be a message that reaches me when I see you speaking into your radio from my reference frame, which just so happens to coincide with C.

I don't understand how one can send a message "instantaneously" when your reference frame shows a completely different Universe than another persons reference frame. Can the word "instantaneous" even be used here? I thought "instantaneous" meant travel at C. It is infinite velocity, is it not?

As an aside, Yeager is known as the first to break the barrier in "level flight." You can get pretty broad with sound barrier records, and to claim that the Allies lied and wrote the history books to suite themselves is a very shallow response to the specifics of the US Air Force' claims. Never has anyone with authority claimed the US Air Force was the first to break the sound barrier period, and you're wrong if you think they have.

As an aside, there are commercial airliners that allow you to disable FBW protections. Mainly airbus - I don't know if Boeing has that option with their FBW aircraft.

To quote Jamie Hyneman from Mythbusters, "I'm dubious."

I've always felt there was no such thing as free will or coincidence. That everything that has or will ever happen was decided the moment the Universe was created. For example, you could say the birth of the moon was luck, I would say if you trace back the protoplanet that hit us, its trajectory, and its origin, it would be apparent that the collision course that gave us our moon was set in stone from second 1 of existence. Everything that happens had a 100% chance of happening - our ability to predict it, however, is not 100%.* For a deeper explanation, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clockwork_universe and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determinism The same can be said for our brains. They're physical constructs. With the right technology we can replicate a brain perfectly, down to every neural connection. The fact that the technology to do that doesn't exist doesn't make a difference here: The point is that, because we are physical entities with finite neural capacities, our every move - every thought - every action can be predicted or determined by the network itself. There goes free will. *I'm aware of the the existence of this theory and the rebuttals against it, especially when we get into discussions like unpredictability and randomness.

That's mildly subjective. If I chose to go to the store to buy icecream, I guarantee my mind had more to do with it than my reflexes. If we're talking about gun fights or shoot-outs, you're probably right, but we're not.

Wouldn't that then be the role of the Government to enforce policies against companies doing that? I mean, if it were legal, companies would pay $0.50 an hour to employees, but laws get in the way of that pretty swiftly.

Given the size of the observable universe, two things are likely true: 1.) The real Universe is larger than the observable Universe. 2.) The observable universe is so large, life is nearly guaranteed to exist. Additionally, a third point, 3.) The distances involved make it unlikely for two civilizations to meet.

What if each individual owned an AI, and then you sent it to work and reaped its pay? Sort of like just making the AI the household breadwinner. If you really liked Google, for instance, you had your robot spend all its time working on maintaining Google servers, and its wage was sent to your Bank Account. Fairly simple concept, progress is still made, and most importantly you decide what "businesses" live or die and how.

I feel like we should just pay the money to do away with imperial units.

In my defense, google calculator automatically uses short tons instead of metric.

I tried.

Did I at least get it with the second equation?

F=M*A So, Force = 943.472Kg * 1181.8 m/s/s = 1,114,995.2096 Net Force. So, about 1,114Kn of Newtons. If you want Kinetic Energy, I think the equation is 1 / 2 * Mass * Velocity ^2. So the square of the speed (1,181.8m/s squared is 1,396,651.24) multiplied by mass (943.472Kg * 1.3mill = 1317701338.71), multiplied by the constant 1/2 comes out to 658,850,669.353 Joules of Kinetic Energy. Edit: I should note that I used short tons for the conversion from Tons to Kg. Kryten did not, which explains the difference and why Kryten got 727MJ.

Take Data from Star Trek. A million of him wouldn't in a million years "exterminate" mankind. I believe AI are no threat to humanity. In fact, they may be what's needed to ensure we survive another thousand years.

There are 3 things I've learned in life. No man or law can ever curve the use of alcohol, illegal substances, and the opposite gender. Incidentally, laws that try to limit family sizes won't do anything but damage the families that violate those laws, and any PSA's you make to promote smaller families will just be ignored. Sadly, mankind is stubborn.

Yes. The first AI on the US Supreme Court will be the first infallible Justice. Imagine the benefits of a Justice that is pre-programmed to be a constitutionally faithful leader. The same goes for CEO's. A CEO that is intelligent enough to accurately predict tomorrows stocks and the needs of the consumer, because it's an AI with more intelligence than every human on Earth combined, will lead companies into unseen revenue. As a stock-holder, I'd definitely vote for that guy. What about in the military? An AI sitting next to our dispatchers in Command & Control, computing things like soldier rest-times, supply lines, satellite data from enemy movements. Talk about a General's best friend. As for roles beyond that, like President, I would keep those roles for humans. The encroachment of AI superiority should be stopped just short of toppling us on the leadership food chain. Keep man on top, if only because we're the only ones who care.

In my opinion, you missed the point of my comparison, and it's probably my fault you did. Compensation, right to refuse, and a lack of serfdom differentiate me from real life slaves, but at the end of the day I still sacrifice 70% of my time to someone else's labor for fear of consequence. At the end of the day, I'm not doing what I want with my life because I'll suffer if I don't work. I'm sure the English Dictionary has a word for this that isn't "slavery", but I don't know it. EDIT: As a black man, I don't want to discredit my ancestors in America or brothers in Africa who are enduring real slavery that involves violence and servitude. Like you've said (multiple times), there is absolutely a difference here. Unfortunately I'm not intelligent enough to properly describe that difference with words. I'm not sure I completely agree. I mean, even when mechanized workers saturate the workforce, all of the "money" has to go somewhere. No body is going to give healthcare or wages to an AI. But eventually it will come. Nothing, absolutely nothing, will stop the next 50, 100, or 500 years from happening. To date humanity has had an economy based on services and trade with a huge distribution of wealth. In my opinion, we'll soon reach the point where that type of economic bubble will pop, because we'll be able to replace any and every human with a more efficient AI; Even in the tasks you've listed. I understand your point that it won't happen tomorrow. It probably won't happen by 2214, but it will happen - and that's part of the topic at hand. What do we do when computers can manage, design, and repair computers better than we can?

"People will maintain the robots." - Unlikely, machines can probably detect, troubleshoot, and fix machines better than people can. Those jobs will give, too. That said, I hope this "Job collapse" happens sooner than later. Jobs and hard work get in the way of enjoyment and quality of life. The entire "how do we spread resources" debate can be argued as propaganda from the top 10%. We can provide food, water, and shelter for the Earths population - especially with machine precision handling difficult tasks like infrastructure repair, maintenance, and transportation of resources and goods. I'm awake about 16 hours a day. I spend 11 of those hours either getting ready for, driving too, or at work. For the average 9-5 guy, that leaves 5 hours a day of "fun time" that I inevitably spend on chores and non-work related work. That isn't a very "high quality" of life. It's slave labor. I am a slave to the dollar bill. Trust me when I say there is a reason the super rich don't have a 9 to 5. Quality of life is damaged by it, and machines will be the remedy to that whether you're on board or not.

If quanta of space and quanta of time are actual things, and the smallest of spacial quanta is described, it is possible to go AT the speed of light without breaking relativity.* Let's pretend a meter is the smallest quanta of space, and no particle or energy can be made to move distances smaller. Let's also pretend that a photon created during the big bang has finally traveled 13 billion light years and one meter. Let's pretend that you've existed since the big bang and have been chasing that photon, and since the big bang you've only fallen 1 quanta (1 meter) behind that photon. Because space and time go hand in hand, if we took the measurement yesterday (before you fell behind 1 quanta), you and the photon would have traveled the same distance, despite the fact that you're going slower. It's a math game with quantization of reality. I could say you are traveling "1 quanta per 14 billion years slower than light", and if 14 billion years have yet to pass, you're neck and neck until it does. And if that's the case and quantization of space-time is possible, there must also be a finite amount of energy that would be required to make you reach the speed of light (at least until a finite amount of time passes to where you lose ground on a photon). Said energy would probably be equivalent to the mass of a Galaxy or something, but I digress. *The following is subject to scrutiny by those who know more than me. AKA, anyone else here.

That's such a cop out method of transporting life. It's no different, in the end, from copying a person then shooting the original in the face. The original is dead - what does he care if his copy transverses great distances or not? He's gone. Consciousness, sentience, etc all. DEAD. This whole "mind upload / make copies / etc" is nothing but murder once the original guy is disassembled. Murder isn't progress.