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DrSunshine posted:Hmm, could you explain why you think so? short answer: read the killing star slightly less short answer: if we develop powerful enough engines to lob a decent-size spaceship to other stars (or are close to that point), we are also throwing around enough energy where we will soon be able to slag a planet. accordingly, any alien neighbours, assuming they already have a stockpile of interstellar spaceship engines, should strap them to some rocks and slag us first just in case. us sending probes and radio transmissions and of course, the neighbours could also be posadist space dolphin comrades who invite us to the galactic communist party's central committee meetings as observers. e: however, as posadists, they may or may not decide that a moderate slagging should still be carried out in order to encourage the development of earthwide full communism before they invite us 
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Dec 6, 2018 01:38
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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Nail Rat posted:No they found organic compounds ie compounds that could be the building blocks for life like that on Earth. Not actually any life or direct evidence of it yet.  Sadness.
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Dec 6, 2018 01:41
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Hungry posted:I'm only half-joking when I say that's an incredibly bad idea but not for the reasons you're arguing. Due to the ridiculous timespans and difficulties involved in space travel, by the time any hypothetical alien in space is actually able to do something about us, we will either have fried ourselves into extinction or made a sufficient number of space habitats (of "on a planet", "orbiting a planet", "inside an asteroid", or "being sent on an out-of-solar-system trajectory because why the gently caress not" variety) that a decapitation strike of any sort is rather unlikely to work. And good loving luck spotting a spaceship a light year away from you. If there's someone out there looking to kill off competition, once the competition is in space, it's too late.
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Dec 6, 2018 01:43
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my dad posted:Due to the ridiculous timespans and difficulties involved in space travel, by the time any hypothetical alien in space is actually able to do something about us, we will either have fried ourselves into extinction or made a sufficient number of space habitats (of "on a planet", "orbiting a planet", "inside an asteroid", or "being sent on an out-of-solar-system trajectory because why the gently caress not" variety) that a decapitation strike of any sort is rather unlikely to work. And good loving luck spotting a spaceship a light year away from you. If there's someone out there looking to kill off competition, once the competition is in space, it's too late. the most  answer to the fermi paradox: time-on-target amongst previous civilisations has been just right to ensure all-around mutual extermination before self sustaining faraway colonies happened
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Dec 6, 2018 01:47
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DrSunshine posted:Hmm, could you explain why you think so? I mean I'm not 100% serious about this, it's more like a terrifying thought-experiment/answer to Fermi. I've seen it called Dark Forest Theory. What if the reason nobody's talking is because broadcasting your presence to the galaxy is incredibly dangerous? What if the reason we can't see any evidence of alien life is because the only successful species are the ones smart enough to treat the galaxy like a dark forest at night? What if making noise and light attracts things like ... well, things like us humans, which like to colonize and extract resources? What if it's a real bad idea to let on you've got a tasty biosphere already set up, no terraforming needed?
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Dec 6, 2018 01:50
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Hungry posted:What if it's a real bad idea to let on you've got a tasty biosphere already set up, no terraforming needed? *looks at long term climate change projections* Have I got good news for you. 
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Dec 6, 2018 01:54
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my dad posted:*looks at long term climate change projections* Yeah I mean that's exactly why dumbass species like us but in space might be in the market for a new planet.
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Dec 6, 2018 01:56
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I mean, once you're already in space, why would you care so much about other habitable planets? Sure, they're nice to find, but being able to reach one requires basically having mastered everything related to living in space (which, so far, we're finding out is actually really, really, really, really hard to do), and at that point, why bother? Any materials you can find on a planet are going to present in the solar system that formed it, anyway, and hella easier to reach. If there's some particular thing you need from an already inhabited system, it'd be hella easier to just broadcast to the locals what you want them to do. If you reeeeeally want your species to live the system, send them info on how to create some of you in a lab and how you'd like your kin to be able to live. Information travels a lot faster and safer than spaceships.
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Dec 6, 2018 02:08
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Lightning Knight posted:
To be fair, there were a number of arguments in favor of the idea that the compounds were only capable of being created organically. Sadly those arguments were unsubstantiated. It's difficult because we're basically doing life sciences with RC mining equipment.
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Dec 6, 2018 02:14
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Hungry posted:I mean I'm not 100% serious about this, it's more like a terrifying thought-experiment/answer to Fermi. Well, I guess it makes sense, but it doesn't seem to reconcile with observations. Like, you could just as easily say "We must fear the eternal night of space for demons lurk there  " It's a bit of a facile answer and is as good as any other guess. There are so many possible negative answers -- ranging from "Godlike aliens keep us in a zoo" to "The Reapers from Mass Effect literally exist" -- but the space of all possible negative theories is just so vast that you could make up almost anything to justify it. They almost all kind of converge on the same quasi-spiritual hypothesis, which I find rather insufficient in terms of explanatory power. Anyway, I know you're not 100% serious about it. It's fun to think about and get that creepy feel you get from contemplating Lovecraft stories and so on. 
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Dec 6, 2018 02:22
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suck my woke dick posted:short answer: read the killing star Couldn't this relativistic kinetic weapon be easily countered by just putting some rocks in front of its path? For example if the missile has a mass of 100 kg and is travelling at .99c, then if it collides head-on with a 100 kg rock then its speed will be halved, to preserve momentum, which means that its kinetic energy goes down four times, with the rest of the energy converted into heat and radiation. With enough rocks in the missile's path its kinetic energy can be reduced to negligible amounts.
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Dec 6, 2018 02:33
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qkkl posted:Couldn't this relativistic kinetic weapon be easily countered by just putting some rocks in front of its path? For example if the missile has a mass of 100 kg and is travelling at .99c, then if it collides head-on with a 100 kg rock then its speed will be halved, to preserve momentum, which means that its kinetic energy goes down four times, with the rest of the energy converted into heat and radiation. With enough rocks in the missile's path its kinetic energy can be reduced to negligible amounts. How do you know where to put the rock?
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Dec 6, 2018 02:42
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qkkl posted:Couldn't this relativistic kinetic weapon be easily countered by just putting some rocks in front of its path? For example if the missile has a mass of 100 kg and is travelling at .99c, then if it collides head-on with a 100 kg rock then its speed will be halved, to preserve momentum, which means that its kinetic energy goes down four times, with the rest of the energy converted into heat and radiation. With enough rocks in the missile's path its kinetic energy can be reduced to negligible amounts. You'd need to see it in time, which may be difficult at .99c, and intercept it successfully, which may be difficult if you're a bunch of naive primitives banging rocks together to create babby's first interstellar spaceship. But yeah, obviously this is all highly hypothetical and may or may not be realistic.
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Dec 6, 2018 02:45
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Morbus posted:How do you know where to put the rock? Hmm, this makes me wonder, what will it actually look like to observe this relativistic missile as it approaches Earth? It takes about 7 hours for light to reach from Pluto's highest orbit to Earth. So if by chance we have a telescope pointed directly at the missile, then we'll observe its light 7 hours after it enters the Solar System, but if it's traveling at .99c it means that it will collide with Earth almost right after it is observed. This makes it seem that if we are observing it then we'd see that it appears to be travelling much faster than the speed of light, since we'd go from seeing it enter the Solar System to seeing it crash into Earth almost instantaneously.
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Dec 6, 2018 03:06
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Lightning Knight posted:
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Dec 6, 2018 03:17
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In The Expanse they basically just painted the rocks they dropped on Earth with black radar absorptive paint, fired them up to owie speed, then turned off the engines and just let them sail. Pretty low tech (when we're talking scifi anyway) and not a heck of a lot you can do to prevent it.
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Dec 6, 2018 03:20
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MSDOS KAPITAL posted:I'm astounded that you've been walking though life thinking we had discovered microbes living on the surface of Mars until just recently I dunno! It doesn't seem like that big a deal to me personally, like yeah Mars used to have volcanism and plate tectonics and poo poo right? So it makes sense that there may have been the very beginnings of life before the core cooled. Like I know it's actually a big deal but I am dumb and don't understand science so. 
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Dec 6, 2018 03:21
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The Butcher posted:In The Expanse they basically just painted the rocks they dropped on Earth with black radar absorptive paint, fired them up to owie speed, then turned off the engines and just let them sail. While we're talking weaponised Big Fast Rocks, there's a bit in one of the many Kim Stanley Robinson books where an AI arranges for hundreds of pebbles from all over the solar system to hit one particular place at one particular time. It's like being targeted by a big rock, only impossible to detect. Anyway, this is an excellent thread and I'm glad it's here. I wish there were more like this, but I can't seem to find them- considering the huge number of threads on the forum there *must* be others out there. It's weird.
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Dec 6, 2018 03:38
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qkkl posted:Hmm, this makes me wonder, what will it actually look like to observe this relativistic missile as it approaches Earth? It takes about 7 hours for light to reach from Pluto's highest orbit to Earth. So if by chance we have a telescope pointed directly at the missile, then we'll observe its light 7 hours after it enters the Solar System, but if it's traveling at .99c it means that it will collide with Earth almost right after it is observed. This makes it seem that if we are observing it then we'd see that it appears to be travelling much faster than the speed of light, since we'd go from seeing it enter the Solar System to seeing it crash into Earth almost instantaneously. I want to say that it couldn't possibly break the speed of light from our perspective because that's rather the point of relativity, but, um, this is some deep maths. BardoTheConsumer fucked around with this message at 04:10 on Dec 6, 2018 |
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Dec 6, 2018 04:06
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Tree Bucket posted:While we're talking weaponised Big Fast Rocks, there's a bit in one of the many Kim Stanley Robinson books where an AI arranges for hundreds of pebbles from all over the solar system to hit one particular place at one particular time. It's like being targeted by a big rock, only impossible to detect. Yeah, it's nice to be able to discuss these speculative topics. Most of the threads are just megathreads about "Insert local polity here".
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Dec 6, 2018 04:07
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silence_kit posted:Ouch, this is a little harsh. I don't totally agree with Kerning Chameleon (I think we should have some kind of NASA--and the amount of money spent on NASA currently is not a big deal), but I think that he/she has a good point. I think that if you are totally committed to the idea/philosophy that the government's #1 goal should be to spend all of its money to improve the lives of its citizens who are the worst-off, it is really really difficult to just reject his or her argument out of hand. I feel I was being kind. It's really easy to reject his or her argument out of hand the moment he or she starts talking about fields of research not "pulling their practical weight" and how all funding should be going to research with immediate tangible benefits. Imagine you have a government with the primary goal of spending all of its money to improve the lives of its citizens who are the worst-off. That would be great. Imagine if our current government were to reallocate funding to achieve that goal. That would mean, alongside all those great public works and strong welfare programs you have helping your citizens, you would also be robustly funding scientific research to further improve the lives of those citizens. Which would, again, be great. If you have a robustly funded research program, one of the things it does is basic research. This is the research that has the goal of expanding the total knowledge of science we have without a specific tangible benefit to us intended--which is what a lot of space research currently is. It's also the cornerstone all other research is built upon. Those other types of research may target problems our worst-off citizens have to look for solution, perform studies to analyze a problem our worst-off citizens have so they can be targeted for a solution, or act as oversight to ensure problems aren't arising for our worst-off citizens as we help them. Basic research gives these forms of applied research more and better tools to use. Saying you want to cut basic research funding completely is myopic and hurts us by directly undercutting our scientific progress. Wanting to cut certain types of basic research out completely is incomprehensible and also hurts us by denying us knowledge that could have been useful in ways we don't understand yet.
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Dec 6, 2018 04:50
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The Butcher posted:Tegmark's book is a very good read, thanks for the recommend thread. I'm learning a lot of poo poo! Oh good! I'm glad you're liking it. Let us know what you think as you go along, I know I'd be interesting in reading some posts about your feel on things and you can probably do a good job of filling in the blanks on what I originally posted in my review. Hungry posted:I'm only half-joking when I say that's an incredibly bad idea but not for the reasons you're arguing. Is this a controversial opinion? I thought the consensus was that Active-SETI was too risky to consider (and yet we still sent the Aricebo message...) The probability of the berserkers/apex predators existing is low, but if they do they'll almost certainly wipe us out. Best not to advertise our position. LtStorm posted:I feel I was being kind. It's really easy to reject his or her argument out of hand the moment he or she starts talking about fields of research not "pulling their practical weight" and how all funding should be going to research with immediate tangible benefits. A great example of this basic research is something I can talk about at detail, Number Theory. For those not in the know, number theory is a branch of math that studies the integers. Sounds fairly simple, but it's maddeningly complex with all kind of weird freaky questions. Because it's all about integers, unlike most abstract math, the questions are fairly intuitive to explain, even if their answers are complex. Some good examples of unsolved or famous number theory problems are: -Can every even integer greater than 2 can be expressed as the sum of two primes? (aka the Goldbach Conjecture, so far proven up to 4 x 10^18, but not proven generally) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldbach%27s_conjecture -Are there infinitely many perfect numbers (an integer that's the sum of its divisors. 6 is a perfect number (1 + 2 + 3 = 6) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_number -Does 4/n = 1/x + 1/y + 1/z have a positive integer solution for every integer n ≥ 2? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erd%C5%91s%E2%80%93Straus_conjecture And most famously, Fermat's last theorem that states for any n>2 a^n + b^n = c^n does not have an integer solution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermat%27s_Last_Theorem This historically was just stuff mathematicians messed around with. It wasn't thought to have any real application... And then we discovered cryptography. See, cryptography works because multiplication is weird. It's very easy to multiply 2 numbers to get an answer, but it's very, very hard to get the divisors of 2 numbers out of a single number. You basically have to logically guess. This is why it's more difficult to teach kids division than multiplication, from a computer science perspective integer factorization is in a much harder class of problems than integer multiplication. Number theory has long been obsessed with primes and factorization because of this weirdness, with composite (non-prime) numbers whose divisors are themselves prime being especially interesting. These are numbers that instead of being prime and only having 1 as a divisor, they have 2 sets of divisors, with both sets being prime. It's trivial, but 4 is a one of these numbers as it's divisible by only 1 and 2, both of which are prime. Okay so what? Well let's take an example. I'll take 2 co-prime numbers and multiply them together to give an answer. In this case the answer is 10. What are my 2 numbers? This is trivial as the answer is 2 and 5. However, if we think of a much more difficult example where instead of a 2-digit number I pick say a 100 digit number, figuring out the 2 co-primes is basically impossible. Thus, if we say that one of the co-primes is a secret message, and the other a decrypter, we have a system for transmitting coded messages out in the open, with the 100 digit number the message. There's no way to decipher it without one of the divisors and so long as our 100 digit number is truly made of 2 co-prime numbers we're in the clear. This is literally how at a conceptual level every encryption system in computers works. And this was all just a weird hobbyist area of math, but without it the modern internet wouldn't exist because we'd have no way to communicate securely, and yet Number Theory as a discipline goes back the 1600s, 300+ years before it would have any real world application. To bring it back home, there could be some weird esoteric area of science or math that appears completely useless to everyone that could be invaluable in the future. We have no way of predicting what that is, so we research everything. If you want to read more here's an article on number theory and unsolved problems in math, both which are interesting reads. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsolved_problems_in_mathematics#Number_theory edit: i really love talking about abstract math again, it's so cool. abstract math is basically solving puzzles for a field of study. if people have more questions about stuff feel free to ask itt. i'll try and answer as best as i can axeil fucked around with this message at 05:50 on Dec 6, 2018 |
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Dec 6, 2018 05:11
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The Butcher posted:In The Expanse they basically just painted the rocks they dropped on Earth with black radar absorptive paint, fired them up to owie speed, then turned off the engines and just let them sail. Deep space still has tiny amounts of matter floating around, so this relativistic missile will collide with that matter and accelerate it so much that it will release gamma rays, which could then be detected.
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Dec 6, 2018 05:56
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axeil posted:See, cryptography works because multiplication is weird. It's very easy to multiply 2 numbers to get an answer, but it's very, very hard to get the divisors of 2 numbers out of a single number. You basically have to logically guess. This is why it's more difficult to teach kids division than multiplication, from a computer science perspective integer factorization is in a much harder class of problems than integer multiplication. Also even with factorization being hard, modern cryptography wouldn't work without a bunch of other math we don't ordinarily teach to children.
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Dec 6, 2018 06:25
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A division algorithm can be built from a multiplication algorithm combined with a binary search. For example to solve 100/8 you would first make a guess, like 4, then multiply by 8, which is 32 and less than 100. So then you try 8*8 = 64, still too low. Then try 16, whoops too high. Then 12, etc, until you get to 12.5. This puts an upper bound on the runtime of a division algorithm to the runtime of the multiplication algorithm times log(n), which is polynomial in time.
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Dec 6, 2018 06:36
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qkkl posted:A division algorithm can be built from a multiplication algorithm combined with a binary search. For example to solve 100/8 you would first make a guess, like 4, then multiply by 8, which is 32 and less than 100. So then you try 8*8 = 64, still too low. Then try 16, whoops too high. Then 12, etc, until you get to 12.5. This puts an upper bound on the runtime of a division algorithm to the runtime of the multiplication algorithm times log(n), which is polynomial in time. edit2: Like imagine proposing a multiplication algorithm which is "First perform a guess, then use division to decide if your guess is too high or low", you can do it, but why in the world would you? edit3: I'm actually really bothered by this post, do you think if you open calc and ask for 100/8 the computer thinks "Hmm, 100/8, no way to know the answer I better guess, a trillion maybe? Nope 8 times a trillion is 8 trillion, that's definitely bigger than 100. Okay let's go lower negative 3? -3 times 8 is -24, that's definitely less than 100, I better binary search the number line between -3 and a trillion until I find the answer"? twodot fucked around with this message at 07:00 on Dec 6, 2018 |
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Dec 6, 2018 06:40
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qkkl posted:Deep space still has tiny amounts of matter floating around, so this relativistic missile will collide with that matter and accelerate it so much that it will release gamma rays, which could then be detected. That's an interesting thought! While in theory we could detect emissions of light due to a relativistic object hitting hydrogen atoms (or other matter) in space, I can't think of a way the collisions would aim the gamma rays in the direction of travel of the object consistently. As your missile is relativistic, the impact is going to create some sort of nuclear reaction that produces the gamma ray--which wouldn't be too directional. And without those gamma rays travelling the same direction ahead of the object--like exactly the same direction, and probably being collimated (like in a laser beam) in some way, I can't imagine they'd be noticeable. This does remind me of an amazing website that's relevant to this topic; Atomic Rockets which is full of articles on all forms of space travel, living, and war both plausible and implausible.
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Dec 6, 2018 06:42
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I can't remember where I read it, but someone was saying that the discovery of complex life on Mars would basically be the worst news ever written in a newspaper in the history of the world. 1) because if life evolved independently (important caveat) on two different planets in our own solar system, it would mean life is infinitely more abundant than we ever thought possible. 2) which again would mean that the great filter is most definitely ahead of us. E: it was a little more complex explanation, but that was the basic gist of it. EE: vvvvv I think that's why there was the 'complex life' stipulation, at least that's why I put it n there. Don't recall if it was in the original thing I read, maybe sheer probability makes it less important though. Revelation 2-13 fucked around with this message at 07:37 on Dec 6, 2018 |
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Dec 6, 2018 07:19
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qkkl posted:Deep space still has tiny amounts of matter floating around, so this relativistic missile will collide with that matter and accelerate it so much that it will release gamma rays, which could then be detected. In this scifi one it was just big rear end rocks being dropped from the asteroid belt. No need to get up to crazy speeds where more exotic stuff happens, just do the math with a rocket burn and point them near population cores, let gravity do the rest of the work.
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Dec 6, 2018 07:26
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Revelation 2-13 posted:I can't remember where I read it, but someone was saying that the discovery of complex life on Mars would basically be the worst news ever written in a newspaper in the history of the world. 1) because if life evolved independently (important caveat) on two different planets in our own solar system, it would mean life is infinitely more abundant than we ever thought possible. 2) which again would mean that the great filter is most definitely ahead of us. I think this is slightly presumptuous because it depends heavily on what kind of life we find. For example, it could be that microbial or relatively simple life is common and abundant but complex life is much more rare due to [science reasons] and that the great filter is still behind us.
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Dec 6, 2018 07:29
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Lightning Knight posted:I think this is slightly presumptuous because it depends heavily on what kind of life we find. For example, it could be that microbial or relatively simple life is common and abundant but complex life is much more rare due to [science reasons] and that the great filter is still behind us. twodot fucked around with this message at 07:40 on Dec 6, 2018 |
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Dec 6, 2018 07:35
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Well, I did stipulate complex life. Anyway, can't find the original, more sensationalist headline of the 'worst news in the history of the world' but I found that it was attributed to certified 'smart guy'(tm) Nick Bostrom, and this thing he wrote is similar: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/409936/where-are-they/
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Dec 6, 2018 07:48
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silence_kit posted:I don't think I'm making up the unpopularity of mathematical platonism. There was a thread on Tegmark a couple years (don't know how many 3? maybe?) back. A bunch of the arguements have already been had, basically. Its not so much that there is a consensus, it's that it is a repeated conversation. Idealism can make one nuts, especially when it gets developed into a full cosmology. Personally I'd rather risk going nuts with an idealism with a human content rather than mathematical one. But on the other hand I've actually had some modern physics and quantum mechanics. And what I said: The wave function is the math. Many worlds is an interpretation. That's basically pulled straight from the text book. My understanding from the last Tegmark discussion is that while some of the interpretations of quantum mechanics have come more into favor, that they are still only interpretations. That's an uncomfortable place to be and I get it. The wave function is describing a probability not a reality. We want to talk about what the reality is. But... talkin bout the Real, is still talking about the Real and that is a departure from math into metaphysics or theology.
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Dec 6, 2018 07:48
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Paradoxish posted:I've never really been a fan of touting all of the peripheral inventions that have come out of space travel because it isn't really an argument in favor of NASA or space research in general. Lots of research goes in unexpected directions and lots of inventions end up having uses other than what they were intended for, so really you're just making a kind of vague "science good!" argument. I don't think anyone who is seriously opposed to funding space travel is going to be swayed by this kind of thing. Also when people make these arguments in defense of NASA they almost always overstate the role of NASA in developing the technology. For example, in his or her list posted earlier in this thread, friendbot2000 is giving NASA the full credit for the high efficiency mono-crystalline silicon solar cell, which is a very misleading claim. Paradoxish posted:A much, much better point in my opinion is that satellites are basically the best tool we have for just about anything that involves studying the Earth. Do you care about the climate? Do you care about food scarcity and famine? How about water management? Biodiversity? Earth science is a core part of NASA's mission and the number one reason why you can be sure that anyone who says that they want to defund NASA to "solve problems on Earth" has no idea what they're talking about. This is a much more socially responsible type of research than space travel, manned missions to other planets, moon bases etc. Studying and engineering systems for those things is solving some kind of problem, but IMO that problem isn't really relevant to society. It also likely is more costly than just studying Earth. Ashcans posted:But there is no political path for that to happen - removing NASA funding would just funnel that money back into other, less useful, projects for dumber poo poo If you really believe in the expansion of government power & services with the goal to serve the public interest, making this kind of argument undermines your point and isn't productive. 'It doesn't matter if we are funding something might not be very useful or great--if we were to cut the funding, it would just go to something worse' is not a strong endorsement of whatever project you are trying to justify. It also isn't a strong endorsement of the idea that we should expand government power to improve the lives of its citizens. LtStorm posted:If you have a robustly funded research program, one of the things it does is basic research. This is the research that has the goal of expanding the total knowledge of science we have without a specific tangible benefit to us intended--which is what a lot of space research currently is. It's also the cornerstone all other research is built upon. Those other types of research may target problems our worst-off citizens have to look for solution, perform studies to analyze a problem our worst-off citizens have so they can be targeted for a solution, or act as oversight to ensure problems aren't arising for our worst-off citizens as we help them. Basic research gives these forms of applied research more and better tools to use. A lot of basic research isn't really a cornerstone for anything though, and is kind of navel gazing. Take finding the Higgs Boson, for example. We now know that we have the Higgs Boson (well, I guess we've always had it), but after finding it, nothing really has changed. The Higgs Boson doesn't really inform or matter to anybody outside of the insular world of high energy physics. Also it isn't a binary thing--there are different levels of basic research funding and you can choose between cheap projects (theoretical research) and expensive projects (build and engineer some giant expensive contraption which might have a dubious social benefit).
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Dec 6, 2018 12:12
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silence_kit posted:Also when people make these arguments in defense of NASA they almost always overstate the role of NASA in developing the technology. For example, in his or her list posted earlier in this thread, friendbot2000 is giving NASA the full credit for the high efficiency mono-crystalline silicon solar cell, which is a very misleading claim. There is also the issue of economic activity, which for R&D type stuff is consistently high per dollar spent. Even if you make the myopic argument of "humanity will never require space stuff ever", that argument becomes irrelevant in the face of a modest tax rate. quote:This is a much more socially responsible type of research than space travel, manned missions to other planets, moon bases etc. Studying and engineering systems for those things is solving some kind of problem, but IMO that problem isn't really relevant to society. It also likely is more costly than just studying Earth. quote:If you really believe in the expansion of government power & services with the goal to serve the public interest, making this kind of argument undermines your point and isn't productive. 'It doesn't matter if we are funding something might not be very useful or great--if we were to cut the funding, it would just go to something worse' is not a strong endorsement of whatever project you are trying to justify. It also isn't a strong endorsement of the idea that we should expand government power to improve the lives of its citizens. In an ideal world where we already spend an extra half trillion dollars annually on poors and international development instead of F-35s, shareholder pockets and tax breaks, diverting ten or twenty billion dollars from NASA because you're offended America spends funbux on cool poo poo hardly matters. If you think we will start building an ideal world by defunding NASA you're disconnected from reality. quote:A lot of basic research isn't really a cornerstone for anything though, and is kind of navel gazing. Take finding the Higgs Boson, for example. We now know that we have the Higgs Boson (well, I guess we've always had it), but after finding it, nothing really has changed. The Higgs Boson doesn't really inform or matter to anybody outside of the insular world of high energy physics. quote:Also it isn't a binary thing--there are different levels of basic research funding and you can choose between cheap projects (theoretical research) and expensive projects (build and engineer some giant expensive contraption which might have a dubious social benefit). What you term expensive is a drop in the ocean in the national budget, and even compared to overall science spending it's not a disproportionate expense. For instance, the NIH alone has 2x the budget of NASA, and then there's the NSF and NOAA and DOE and National Labs and USDA and a fuckton of minor pots of money from other departments. There's also several NASAs worth of science funded by the DoD which isn't just military R&D but also a huge range of physics and engineering and ecology with dubious military applications (probably shoehorned in there to hide it from Republican spending cuts  ).Also I again refer to R&D money (as long as it's not just misdeclared pork barrel spending that only keeps people employed doing very little in surplus existing jobs) actually being very good economic stimulus, so that you can just siphon off money via taxes and thereby still have the same money to spend on the poor as you had before. suck my woke dick fucked around with this message at 12:59 on Dec 6, 2018 |
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Dec 6, 2018 12:49
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Also, side note, if every dollar spent on space robutts and asstronauts is one dollar taken away from the poor and oppressed, does that mean we should also defund all the arts (except those producing socialist agitprop)?
suck my woke dick fucked around with this message at 13:04 on Dec 6, 2018 |
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Dec 6, 2018 13:01
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Defund agricultural research! What does it matter if we have greater yields in five years if there are people starving now? Have the scientists work the fields, anything else is equivalent to murder!
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Dec 6, 2018 13:27
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silence_kit posted:A lot of basic research isn't really a cornerstone for anything though, and is kind of navel gazing. Take finding the Higgs Boson, for example. We now know that we have the Higgs Boson (well, I guess we've always had it), but after finding it, nothing really has changed. The Higgs Boson doesn't really inform or matter to anybody outside of the insular world of high energy physics. This seems so dumb. Like not getting that pure research into space has tangible benefits seems like one thing, but arguing that basic physics research never gets us anything seems insane. Like it's so obvious that you had to pick something that was discovered so recently just so you could find an example that didn't have practical consumer applications yet. Like, when you are studying basic physics it doesn't even matter if the thing you discover has a direct use, even if we never make a toaster that cooks things with the higgs field or something eventually your gameboy will play better games because better understanding of the standard model of particle physics makes us better able to design things that use physics. Like we discovered protons and we still don't go to the store and buy a bag of protons. But almost every practical bit of science since has been informed by what the heck an atom is.
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Dec 6, 2018 13:28
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What has this 'elec-tron' ever done for me? So much money wasted on playing with these voltaic piles and coils of wire, when it could have been spent on something useful like breeding a faster breed for horse for mail delivery!
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Dec 6, 2018 14:26
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twodot posted:This is totally false. Factorization is hard, multiplication and division are basically identical. Teaching kids division is not any harder than teaching multiplication. Especially given modern techniques for teaching multiplication are "memorize it, and if you didn't memorize the answer start to add the numbers" and teaching division is "reverse recall the table we made you memorize, and if you didn't memorize the answer start to subtract the numbers.". You could use non-memorization methods for multiplication and division it would just be slow for the same reasons. Factorization is division where you can only have integer results. Multiplying 2 integers together is easy. Dividing a number so that the result is 2 integers is hard. silence_kit posted:A lot of basic research isn't really a cornerstone for anything though, and is kind of navel gazing. Take finding the Higgs Boson, for example. We now know that we have the Higgs Boson (well, I guess we've always had it), but after finding it, nothing really has changed. The Higgs Boson doesn't really inform or matter to anybody outside of the insular world of high energy physics. Do you have a rebuttal for my post on number theory and cryptography? edit: additionally the GPS network only works because of relativity. Computers only work because of our understanding of quantum mechanics. I'm real curious to see you try and argue your way out of this one, because your position is completely untenable and I have a hard time believing you're not just trolling. axeil fucked around with this message at 14:42 on Dec 6, 2018 |
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Dec 6, 2018 14:37
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