vger

Jouni, I sincerely hope you were intentionally being ironic, with at least some of what you said there. Particularly in the 3rd paragraph.

Oh well, at least bullying is frowned upon these days. By most.

The only point I was originally trying to make was the vile ridicule he received for even trying to form a hypothesis for it. That kind of a reaction doesn't exactly encourage people to suggest new ideas.

Heh, WestAir, this may be relevant to the discussion. I hardly heard a peep about this since that "Googlezon" flash video from years ago. Amazingly, Yahoo actually wrote it. http://news.yahoo.com/don-t-blame-college-kids-for-intolerance--blame-us-085916423.html?bcmt=1400810022977-a0f54dda-98d3-46e7-ac64-8aa72b5d61b4&bcmt_s=e#mediacommentsugc_container Algorithms are constantly analyzing our behavior, looking for that which is most likely to catch our attention. The end result is we get constantly bombarded with information that we already agree with. Counter-arguments are automatically discarded, leaving us with a super-polarized outlook on the world.

So in other words, if you're right for the wrong reason, you're still not right, and whatever you said should be defecated on? The Bohr model of the atom was proven to be wrong. Nobody ever took that as evidence that atoms don't exist. Yeah, therein lies what makes the concept somewhat scary. Humans are naturally biased creatures. But there seems to be a train of thought which believes that scientists are somehow liberated from bias, just by becoming scientists. (hopefully there aren't scientists who think this way, because if they do, they're opening themselves up to it) Doesn't mean I don't think that most try to be unbiased, but we can't just switch off our basic programming, unfortunately.

This was discussed in great detail a month ago or so.

My wife bought us a pair of stars from the International Star Registry a few years back (yes, I knew then that the names were never going to be seriously honored by the scientific community). I was able to find both of them with Google Sky. Seems ISR worked a bit harder on the details, and used a real star catalog. They even apparently have a little partnership going on with an observatory, so if you want a photo, you can get it. http://www.starregistry.com.au/star-photography.html

I've heard of a variant of wind farms that could be constructed on seabeds, harnessing power from oceanic currents. No idea if this is still on anyone's drawing board now. The environmentalists probably had a mad cow before anyone could even determine what the repercussions might be.

The unnatural flow of conversation may be a factor here too. The incredible range of examples often cited must have some sort of adverse affect on how we process information. Even if all the debaters were in completely remote locations, unable to see each other, logged into some kind of teleconferencing call, the debate would STILL look nothing like it does on the internet. There's got to be more to it than depersonalization. People simply do not talk that way in real-time. What amazes me is that IRL arguments don't often get MORE aggressive, when people have the capacity to "out-yell" and interrupt one another whenever they want.

Indeedy...

Vegas. Make the sections of the entire strip light up whenever tires come in contact.

Heh, G'th, I was gong to say that I think the LHC pretty much spits in the eye of any argument about reasonable cost, but then realized this is NASA we're talking about. NASA is probably never a good example for suggesting that science is a hindrance. The only thing holding NASA back is inadequate funding. Nothing to do with any inherent flaws in how science works.

I was going to write a longer response to this, but felt it probably wasn't worth it as it will probably raise total chaos. Instead, I'll just leave this here. This poor guy got treated almost as badly as how the likes of Galileo and Copernicus under the scrutiny of the Church. Probably would've been even worse had Science had control of the State.

All of a sudden this just hit me as being sort of strange that this either hasn't been done yet, or I just haven't heard about it. I know there's a single player game about managing a mars colony, but after seeing a lot of 'survival' games out there where you can craft tools, assemble shelters, grow food, etc... has there been, or is there one being developed that focuses on space colonization? A multi-player game where a bunch of astronauts land on mars and then have to construct a working colony would be so bloody awesome.

I wonder if it's been found more often in captive animals with access to medicine? If you could go back in time, you wouldn't have found it in humans either. How many women would have ever lived to a menopause age before advances in medicine and sanitation came about? I think it's probably one of those things that have become a thing because our bodies now typically run a lot longer than they were designed to. Warranty expires around 30-40.

WE know the answer. A lot of people still don't, otherwise nobody would bother with public debates anymore. The whole point of having an automated 'referee' would be to force honesty. Watson could catch their lies any time they do it. Most of the time, it soars over people's heads, because nobody can be bothered to know every single thing a politician has said during a campaign. For Watson, that would be a cakewalk.

Got it. I was thinking it was trying to imply something else, since it was a response to the suggestion that men are more dangerous behind the wheel.

We can clone sperm from existing ones. All that would have to be done then is to start playing with the genes to maintain a diverse population, which wouldn't be that hard. 'Designer babies' have been a thing for a while now.

I was thinking it was about ever-increasing technology eliminating the need for humans to do any kind of strenuous work. As far as I can tell, physical labor is just about the only thing that males were inherently built for. Every other aspect is technically a woman's world. It just hasn't gotten there yet.

*coughspidermancough* Yeah, it's getting pretty scary that Hollywood can reboot an IP in less than ten years. Nobody will ever have to write a story again. I still kinda hope they test it. I want to see what a $50,000 pothole looks like.

Wow, you sure picked a pretty poor era in biotechnology for making a statement like that. Even if the entire human race becomes impotent, science has that one covered.

That's like saying men are more reckless in professional football because the players who are always getting hurt are men. Unfortunately, unless the research takes into account the nature of the job, those numbers are going to be horridly skewed. Men traditionally have far more dangerous jobs than women. It would only be a fair assessment if you take into account not only the number of accidents, but look at each profession separately, AND factor in the ratio of men to women in that profession.

It's getting an upgrade too now. Evidently Watson's next task is to render internet politicking obsolete. They expect it to be capable of debate, analyzing a person's argument and submitting a counter-argument, backing it up of course with a thousand examples from its near infinite memory. Personally I want to see a variant of that, where Watson sits in on election debates, and points out whenever a politician contradicts something they have said in the past. Sadly, when the technology gets that good, what are the odds that someone won't slip a little bias into the machine?

It's quite a privilege to have the politically-correct authority to say "check your privilege."

With the amount of plans they probably already have through cyber espionage, I'm not sure if OVERTLY working with them would make that situation any worse. The patent system is quickly becoming an impediment to progress anyhow. The exact opposite of what it was (supposedly) intended to do.