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With the exception of later Maori arrivals and a few scattered islands like St Helena and Pitcairn during the colonial era, the entire planet was settled millennia before capitalism.
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Jan 12, 2019 14:00
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MixMastaTJ posted:But how are we defining complex brains? My understanding is studies on feral humans their brains developed less complex. If you aren't exposed to language your brain uses that space for something else. Anyway, the reason we know that we're more biologically intelligent than other animals is that it doesn't work the other way: chimps and gorillas raised from infancy with near human style complex socialization and language training don't develop significant or testable boosts in abstract reasoning or more than token language use. They just don't seem to have the underlying neural architecture. Really the most telling example is this: we've taught other animals rudimentary language, but we've never observed them teaching it to others of their kind. Old Kentucky Shark fucked around with this message at 14:11 on Jan 13, 2019 |
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Jan 13, 2019 02:20
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MixMastaTJ posted:What early empires didn't have private property and a hiearchy based off labor exploitation? Or do you mean before the word "capitalism?" Because, yes, I'm aware civilization didn't start with Adam Smith. The very first one seemed to be rather communal and based around brewing beer. Valso feudal empires didnt have private property as we would take it either. And the ownership of private property doesnt make a civilization capitalist.
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Jan 13, 2019 12:24
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Killer-of-Lawyers posted:The very first one seemed to be rather communal and based around brewing beer. Valso feudal empires didnt have private property as we would take it either. The 'ol private property doesn't exist without capitalism canard.
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Jan 13, 2019 22:19
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Jan 13, 2019 22:27
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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Heck Yes! Loam! posted:The 'ol private property doesn't exist without capitalism canard. I mean, you could probably engineer a state with no private property and still have ownership of the means of production not in the workers hand if you wanted to. Anyways, I suppose its natural to view history through modern lenses, but its really a stretch to put modern socioeconomic terms on ancient societies.
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Jan 13, 2019 23:04
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Heck Yes! Loam! posted:The 'ol private property doesn't exist without capitalism canard. Property rights as we understand them now didn't exist under feudalism because the Kings word was law. If he wanted an object he could simply declare it his. See Monasteries and Henry VIII.
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Jan 13, 2019 23:06
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Xae posted:Property rights as we understand them now didn't exist under feudalism because the Kings word was law. If he wanted an object he could simply declare it his. I mean, that's what the king would have liked people to think, certainly, but for most of the time Europe was under the system of feudalism this wasn't remotely true, and monarchs in England, France, Spain, and the lowland countries struggled mightily and usually futilely with Parliament, the guilds, townships, county magistrates, and local nobility to raise even the modest yearly tax revenue required to keep the monarchy solvent. Feudalism actually had an incredibly complex system of interlocking personal and governmental property rights, it's just that they considered "not having any property rights" to be an acceptable outcome on the very lowest end of the class spectrum, but everyone above that step guarded their rights with violent and intense jealousy. Life was regulated down to the legal doctrine of where cows were and were not allowed to poop*. Henry VIII is a very special one-off case that only happened at the end of literally centuries worth of societal erosion when things finally got to the breaking point. *For monetary value of their fertilizer, I mean, obviously not for hygienic purposes. Nobody gave a gently caress about the smell. Old Kentucky Shark fucked around with this message at 10:51 on Jan 14, 2019 |
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Jan 14, 2019 10:22
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Xae posted:Property rights as we understand them now didn't exist under feudalism because the Kings word was law. If he wanted an object he could simply declare it his. This particular event stands out for how rare it is, how many other caesaropapist states do you know of in the era
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Jan 14, 2019 10:33
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https://twitter.com/cd_hooks/status/1084573284673470464 So uh...this appears significant.
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Jan 14, 2019 14:46
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friendbot2000 posted:https://twitter.com/cd_hooks/status/1084573284673470464 I mean, maybe? But also not really. It's one guy and he's not presenting any real evidence. Basically, this is someone who likes solar sails trying to fit Oumuamua's behavior to a solar sail.
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Jan 14, 2019 15:14
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Paradoxish posted:I mean, maybe? But also not really. It's one guy and he's not presenting any real evidence. Basically, this is someone who likes solar sails trying to fit Oumuamua's behavior to a solar sail. Taking his idea's with a grain of salt, Oumuamua's behavior is...still kind of strange. I agree, the solar sail bit was kinda weird though.
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Jan 14, 2019 15:17
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friendbot2000 posted:https://twitter.com/cd_hooks/status/1084573284673470464 It's interesting, because all the photos like the one in the tweet are just drawings. Everything we know about it is from inferences from a single pixel on a digital telescope. Where it has the two properties where the dot is changing in brightness wildly and also moving as if the sun is pushing it. Which ends up in a paradox of "to change brightness that much it must be rotating wildly" and "but if it's rotating wildly the sun heating one side so it steams out gases that push it wouldn't work" where it can't be both things and there pretty much has to be some shape or property or something they aren't thinking of.
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Jan 14, 2019 15:18
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The drawings aren't even representative of any kind of consensus on its shape. It could be cigar shaped, but Loeb isn't wrong when he says it could be a big pancake too. That's where he's getting his solar sail idea from. All these drawings use the cigar shape because a big pancake shaped asteroid would look dumb. Edit- It doesn't necessarily have to have something especially unusual about it to explain its acceleration, though. It could be outgassing in a particular way that accounts for its change its change in motion and we just can't see it. Paradoxish fucked around with this message at 15:32 on Jan 14, 2019 |
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Jan 14, 2019 15:27
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Paradoxish posted:The drawings aren't even representative of any kind of consensus on its shape. It could be cigar shaped, but Loeb isn't wrong when he says it could be a big pancake too. That's where he's getting his solar sail idea from. All these drawings use the cigar shape because a big pancake shaped asteroid would look dumb. Listen, the Old Ones might like pancakes too! Maybe the sun is just their griddle and the object is just one giant interstellar waffle of suffering with a slab of molten eldritch ooze
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Jan 14, 2019 15:36
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Adar posted:Which brings me back to the point that nearly all life on Earth is a prey or a predator species, and if there's a universal theme for intelligent life out there it may well be that prey/predator interactions are required for quick evolution and sapience aka RIP us. Predation is like the easiest thing in the world to evolve, you don't even need a nervous system to do it, and it tends not to lead to human level intelligence. Like currently the factor perceived as most important to lead to intelligence is extremely complex social dynamics that probably come out of a k-selection reproductive strategy, with only octopi going against that.
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Jan 14, 2019 15:39
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Paradoxish posted:The drawings aren't even representative of any kind of consensus on its shape. It could be cigar shaped, but Loeb isn't wrong when he says it could be a big pancake too. That's where he's getting his solar sail idea from. All these drawings use the cigar shape because a big pancake shaped asteroid would look dumb. The shape is "this thing gets 10x brighter and dimmer every few minutes but we only have a 1 pixel photo of it" so the assumption is that it's something that can turn to the camera then turn to it's side, which is a cylinder or a disk, which are both silly shapes.
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Jan 14, 2019 15:43
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https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/nasa-learns-more-about-interstellar-visitor-oumuamua Some more information on this "object".
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Jan 14, 2019 16:53
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khwarezm posted:Predation is like the easiest thing in the world to evolve, you don't even need a nervous system to do it, and it tends not to lead to human level intelligence. That's the point - on Earth, it's so easy to evolve that it's the dominant strategy, which has meant that basically everything from plants onwards only exists in the context of a predator/prey dynamic. That might turn out to be wrong if all the biological dark matter is from random deep organisms that reproduce once a millennium, but that stuff doesn't really even interact with surface life. If being a part of a food chain is required for intelligence it likely means every intelligent species has at least some instinctual behavior humans would find familiar, like "things that don't look like you might be threats". This is not a comforting thought.
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Jan 15, 2019 02:52
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I think the predator/prey stuff isn't going to be relevant to anyone capable of enough abstract thought to reach another solar system. Even some kind of implausible sentient rock is going to be capable of reasoning if something is an existential threat even if it had no evolutionary history of that.
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Jan 15, 2019 13:09
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Bug Squash posted:I think the predator/prey stuff isn't going to be relevant to anyone capable of enough abstract thought to reach another solar system. Even some kind of implausible sentient rock is going to be capable of reasoning if something is an existential threat even if it had no evolutionary history of that. Predator/prey is why we, the humans who will likely be capable of visiting other planets (with one way lightsail robots) this century, are a walking bag of neuroses and insider/outsider conflicts.
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Jan 15, 2019 15:11
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You were talking about the psychology of other intelligent species in the previous post, don't be doing the old switcheroo.
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Jan 15, 2019 15:50
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Bug Squash posted:You were talking about the psychology of other intelligent species in the previous post, don't be doing the old switcheroo. With our current sample size of one, it's very clearly relevant. When we meet another species, if it also has predator/prey baggage, that would potentially seem to be a big deal.
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Jan 15, 2019 22:27
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I don't know why you would expect a hypothetical non-predator/prey species to act in some way that is more condusive to coexistence. Lichen are pretty much eaten by nothing and they poison the gently caress out of any potential competition, for example. I don't see any reason to think that space-mineral aliens would be any more or less likely to launch the Kinetic Kill Vehicles than the space-tiger aliens. All you're saying is "Neuroses" and then leaving it at that. Your whole argument is really nebulous and poorly made to be honest. VVVV Edit Ok, that's quite interesting lichen facts, but my point stands Bug Squash fucked around with this message at 23:49 on Jan 15, 2019 |
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Jan 15, 2019 23:35
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Bug Squash posted:I don't know why you would expect a hypothetical non-predator/prey species to act in some way that is more condusive to coexistence. Lichen are pretty much eaten by nothing and they poison the gently caress out of any potential competition, for example. I don't see any reason to think that space-mineral aliens would be any more or less likely to launch the Kinetic Kill Vehicles than the space-tiger aliens. All you're saying is "Neuroses" and then leaving it at that. Wherever lichen occur in useful amounts compared to regular plants they're grazed like regular plants (see e.g.: reindeer), and even in climates with more modest lichen cover you're going to find a shitload of specialised lichen eating bugs. More broadly: wherever you have metabolisable resources you'll find an organism that eats them, and that doesn't change if the resource is an organism. You're not going to find an exception outside of extreme edge cases like rock bacteria that won't meet another cell within the next millennium.
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Jan 15, 2019 23:44
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Predator/Prey isn't even all that much of a thing in actual biology, even, with most animals being capable of some form of predation under the right circumstances. The actual important distinction would be social vs non-social, and it seems incredibly unlikely that any animals without complex socialization would be capable of the kind of technological progress that would make them worth worrying about.
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Jan 15, 2019 23:46
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Epitope posted:Hes saying for all we know they might be colossiods and it was just a burp. We can't infer it means we have any viable tech paths. Which, fair enough, but he also seems angry at us at being like "woah cool, aliens man" in the aliens thread
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Jan 16, 2019 07:55
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You're unable to admit microbes on mars has different implications for humanity than aliens emitting huge bursts of radio waves that we can hear galaxies away
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Jan 16, 2019 08:05
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Epitope posted:You're unable to admit microbes on mars has different implications for humanity than aliens emitting huge bursts of radio waves that we can hear galaxies away edit: I'm prepared to be wrong, you just need to contrast "twodot is wrong" with "I just want to say wow aliens in D&D'". twodot fucked around with this message at 08:15 on Jan 16, 2019 |
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Jan 16, 2019 08:09
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I would like to discuss the China probe on the moon. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-asia-china-46873526 They’re growing cotton on the moon. 
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Jan 16, 2019 08:27
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twodot posted:Describe to me the implications of that for humans in 2019. Do human chemical rockets become more efficient? Does climate change become less dire? Do nuclear weapons become less capable of devastating life? Like I tell you tomorrow "aliens are emitting huge bursts of radio waves" how does that affect your or literally anyone's actions the day after? It could change nothing except science books add "scientists now know that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe". It could change the course of human civilisation. We live in a world where technology has progressed rapidly, but we can't be entirely sure where the limits of engineering lie. While all manner of space activities are imaginable, not all may actually be possible. It could still turn out that interstellar travel isn't just difficult but actually an engineering impossibility, with anything built out of atoms being as impractical for starships and megastructures as trying to build a jetfighter out of Lego. Imagine though if we knew for a fact there were still millennia of progress to be made? That there was a signpost saying "keep trying, there's so far left to go". It could change the fundamental way people look at science and the universe.
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Jan 16, 2019 08:29
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twodot posted:Describe to me the implications of that for humans in 2019. Do human chemical rockets become more efficient? Does climate change become less dire? Do nuclear weapons become less capable of devastating life? Like I tell you tomorrow "aliens are emitting huge bursts of radio waves" how does that affect your or literally anyone's actions the day after? This is such a weird post. How is your definition of "things that effect me day to day" nuclear devastation? How many nuclear devastations do you face per day?
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Jan 16, 2019 13:12
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Anyway the practical application of knowing aliens exist and do large scale galaxy sized engineering programs is that much of modern physics and our understanding of the universe in general is based on observation. Up till now we have taken the reasonable position that the universe as we see it is primordial and that most things are unmodified natural phenomenon. If we learn that aliens are making telephone calls by manipulating galaxies worth of matter and have that sort of ability and also employee it then we basically need to go to every astronomy and physics department at every college and throw out every text book because every single observation and theory is in question now. Much of modern physics is confirmed and rejected based on using observations of space to see if the theory does or doesn't confirm to reality. If we add near limitless powered aliens in then it's al up in the air. Why is there less antimatter than matter? Maybe an alien ate it, maybe they ate the missing lithium, maybe the great voids are places aliens ate stuff to build too many telephones. All these are toss off stupid suggestions with what we know now, and tons of science is based towards looking for naturalistic answers, but once we know aliens are real and really do move things at galactic scales we suddenly have to rethink what is and isn't a natural phenomenon.
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Jan 16, 2019 14:37
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Lightning Knight posted:I would like to discuss the China probe on the moon. https://www.cnet.com/news/chinas-moon-lander-sprouted-a-plant-but-now-its-dead/ quote:Xinhua announced the sprout Tuesday and posted a series of progress images covering the course of nine days and showing a seedling reaching up inside the habitat. The experiment didn't last long. The same day, China's state-run Xinhua News declared that it's already ended. Of several seeds sent, only one had actually sprouted, and then promptly died afterward. Yet more evidence organic life has no business ever being in space, and a rather poetic one at that Kerning Chameleon fucked around with this message at 18:15 on Jan 16, 2019 |
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Jan 16, 2019 18:12
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Kerning Chameleon posted:https://www.cnet.com/news/chinas-moon-lander-sprouted-a-plant-but-now-its-dead/  That's because night fell and the temperature dropped inside the lander.
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Jan 16, 2019 18:20
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Kerning Chameleon posted:https://www.cnet.com/news/chinas-moon-lander-sprouted-a-plant-but-now-its-dead/ I saw, I’m really sad about this.  It is a good demonstration for laypeople of the hostility and difficulty of space habitation.
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Jan 16, 2019 18:25
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Lightning Knight posted:I saw, I’m really sad about this. What? that is the worst possible way to see this experiment. It's an experiment that showed plants could sprout in space on the moon. The experiment ended and everything died because the experiment didn't bring all the equipment to heat the chamber through the night, but it wasn't supposed to go past that 9 days. It's not a thing where anyone thought you could grow plants in -200 degree weather and are now shocked and dismayed that you can't. It's a thing where you had 9 days of reasonable conditions to watch germination then have the experiment naturally end.
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Jan 16, 2019 18:33
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:What? that is the worst possible way to see this experiment. It's an experiment that showed plants could sprout in space on the moon. The experiment ended and everything died because the experiment didn't bring all the equipment to heat the chamber through the night, but it wasn't supposed to go past that 9 days. It's not a thing where anyone thought you could grow plants in -200 degree weather and are now shocked and dismayed that you can't. It's a thing where you had 9 days of reasonable conditions to watch germination then have the experiment naturally end. I said “for laypeople.” Most normal people don’t understand how difficult space habitation would be or the kind of preparation, equipment, and resources it would require. From a normal person’s perspective, this shows that life in space is possible, but not easy, and thus we need to not view things in silly science fiction terms.
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Jan 16, 2019 18:35
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As explained in the Motherboard article, the lander shut down non-critical functions in order to keep the mission-critical components warm and functioning through the lunar night. It was not an experiment to see if an ecosystem could be sustained indefinitely -- instead it seems as though they added fruit flies and other germinating plants to see if one could be started spontaneously. It seems more like an afterthought than anything. In fact, one should look at it more as a positive, that some plants were able to germinate at all is a moderate success, and in a mission actually devoted to that end, one should see more plants survive.
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Jan 16, 2019 18:36
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Lightning Knight posted:I said “for laypeople.” Most normal people don’t understand how difficult space habitation would be or the kind of preparation, equipment, and resources it would require. From a normal person’s perspective, this shows that life in space is possible, but not easy, and thus we need to not view things in silly science fiction terms. this is literally an experiment to show growing plants on the moon is possible. It is the first time in all of human history that a plant has ever grown on another world. It's a huge big deal. Reading it as "i guss space is inpossimble" is the dumbest possible way to view this. What did you possibly want them to do?
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Jan 16, 2019 18:37
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