Sisyphus

It's much, much easier if you make a chart, rather than trying to keep everything in your head at once.

(Just a note. I don't know what you're talking about when you say "type 4 civilization." I'm restricting myself to the familiar Kardashev scale.) Anyway, there are a couple things going on here. First, your argument is that "it only takes one." I don't know that that is true. Your statement is that if there was anybody on this track within the ten million nearest galaxies, we would be aware of it without even looking. This, to me, is an extraordinary claim. Why would be aware of it? Second, there is the question of the natural progression of these things, and in the timeframes you suggest. Each step would have to follow from the last, but suppose each successive step is extremely unlikely? The orders of magnitude of improbability add up quickly. Suppose there is life possessing human-like intelligence, curiosity, and something like "culture" and technology in an average of one out of every ten galaxies. That's a pessimistic but plausible rarity, considering the multiplying unknowns of the Drake Equation. And suppose 99.9% of them go extinct without even developing space travel. And 99.99% of those never approach type 2, though some eventually do create interstellar civilizations. And then "type 3," which in my mind is the truly credibility-stretching one, since the timescales involved dwarf anything we know about civilizations to insignificance, and even if it's technically possible there's no real evidence that there would be any point to it, for anyone. So you get the idea - yes, I think it really could be that rare.

I don't think anyone here would consider themselves a "statist" (or at least, almost nobody), unless that's just the name you call anyone who isn't an anarchocapitalist or whatever you are.

Statements like "that's how it works" are the problem. We're flying blind, here. But you're talking as if these entirely hypothetical, extreme extrapolations from static analysis of a single sample are inevitable laws of nature. I didn't say it was just your assumption, just that it was a huge one. I wouldn't dare predict technology, goals, or cultural values even 100 years from now. Exploration and survival /= limitless, exponential growth. You don't have to be even a "type 1" to escape being tied to one star. And even that only becomes an actual problem on the scale of many, many orders of magnitude longer than we've been thinking about what to do about it.

The equator is also not rotating at 25000mph. That would make the day an hour long.

No, that is not what I said. Maybe they can't, at least not over, yes, billions of years. Maybe they did and we don't know. That's a hell of an assumption. Why would we?

The Bermuda Triangle is a triangular region of ocean, the corners of which are Bermuda, Peurto Rico, and the souther tip of Florida. According to urban legend, there have been many mysterious disappearances there of ships and aircraft. However, there have been no more disappearances there than any other similar patch of ocean, and there's nothing unusual about it. No legitimate scientists are researching it, because there's nothing there that needs explaining. Nevertheless, many people continue to be under the mistaken impression that something strange happens there in particular.

But again, that's one possibility. It's a supposition based on endlessly, exponentially increasing energy usage, which is based entirely on extrapolation from a miniscule slice of the history of one species on one planet. There's no solid reason to expect it to continue, even for us. There's certainly no reason it should from a pure survival standpoint. Or, there are many people these days who believe that transhumanism will disrupt all previous trends. (Indeed, the "singularity" refers to breaking down of models.) Perhaps intelligences that survive ten thousand years from now will be virtual rather than physical, and conservationists. Or perhaps we will progress to using more and more energy, but the process takes billions of years and the universe literally isn't old enough yet. Who knows? Or perhaps there are such beings. There are many further assumptions still behind the statement that if there were, we would be aware of them. Dolphins, bonobos, octopi are curious, intelligent creatures, but who among them are aware of the vast, planet-spanning, world-altering civilization living around them? ("Surely if there was such a thing, says the octopus, they would already be occupying all the good rocks to hide under!")

OK, but do you understand that "type 3 civilization" is an extremely hypothetical idea?

No, it would not have to be that rare. There are many plausible reasons why we haven't encountered anything. The fact that we haven't actually looked in any real way, for example. That any of the the many assumptions behind "intelligent species must be obvious" are wrong (saying "that's what a type 3 civ does" is ridiculously premature, imo), etc., etc. And we have no way of determining what is rare and why, as we only have a sample size of one.

Several species that could use tools, but we're the first (as far as we know, and we probably would) with any shot at extraterrestrial travel, communication, etc. Perhaps life and even "intelligent" life is numerous, but spacefarers are extremely rare.

Honestly, what makes me most excited about these sorts of things is the expectation that by the time I'm old and physically feeble (I'm currently only 24), "wearable robotics" will be sleek and inexpensive enough that I can keep my independence and dignity until I die. (And maybe fight robocop.)

Note: moved thread to engineering subforum I don't know much about it, but there is a Wikipedia article on "powered exoskeleton" here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powered_exoskeleton

I can think of a few things. It can display social aptitude and intelligence, which are both valued signals in sexual selection. It can help form social bonds (sharing a laugh), and perhaps most importantly diffuse tension, both as a harmless outlet for stress and to charm your way out of a fight without resorting to outright subservience. It's notable that laughter is often the response when a dangerous or stressful situation turns out not to be, and that in general we are far more likely to laugh at the jokes of people we like. Laughter can be used as a form of flattery (laughing with), or to discredit another (laughing at). So basically, I think humor's role is probably very complicated, and useful from an evolutionary perspective in many different ways. That's not to say that every aspect of it must have an evolutionary purpose. There are many things that humans do that are basically just side effects of having remarkable brains evolved for other purposes.

I guess a GPS that approximated its own speed would essentially be that. Obviously that's not a self-contained system, though, and requires pre-calibration to some other arbitrary ("proper?") frame.

dichotomy, So, just so I know what we're talking about here, you would be satisfied if you saw a contemporary Soviet newspaper about it, but you estimate a 10% chance that Khruschev is lying about the newspapers (and nobody is calling him on it), being brought into the conspiracy upon coming to the United States? Since, as far as I can tell, there are no online archives from that period (and I don't speak Russian anyway - do you?), how many/what second hand accounts would convince you that it's all not a staggeringly enormous, staggeringly successful conspiracy? How about Roald Sadeev, former director of the Soviet Space Institute: http://www.theworld.org/2009/07/20/former-soviet-space-official-on-us-moon-landing/

I really don't get what you're talking about with "proper velocity" vs. "coordinate velocity." How is the speed of light infinite in any way? What is a "distance of C?" I thought it was just "counting how many 1km interval markers go by per unit time," which is just an error in frame mixing, but now you're saying a lot of other stuff. How do "human senses" enter into it?

Recently, an unintentionally hilarious editorial in Investor's Business Daily about the supposed "death panels" of "socialized medicine" included the following quote: The sentence has since been removed, though not before setting off a snark bomb in the liberal blogosphere. TalkingPointsMemo decided to ask Hawking himself about it, who responded by email with a decline to interview but saying, I bring this up not merely to make fun IBD or the Palinesque fearmongering about "death panels" (although obviously I'm not above that), but as a jumping off point for discussion using this high-profile and illustrative case. The point here is not that the NHS is wonderful in all things. Stephen Hawking is a wealthy man who, I assume, has also been well taken care of by Cambridge University. I very much doubt every British ALS sufferer has received the care he has. But that's exactly the point. There's nothing stopping him from getting additional care from other sources, which he has taken advantage of. Even if there was a "death panel" deciding they couldn't afford to take care of him (and there obviously wasn't), that isn't a "death sentence," any more or less than not having any such system in America is a death sentence for everyone who gets sick. Nobody is forcing you to rely on it. And despite taking advantage of this using his own resources, he has also taken advantage of and apparently been satisfied with what the NHS has been able to do for him. So at least in this case, he doesn't see it as just a drag on the rich to take care of the poor. Win win? Or is Hawking's perspective distorted?

It isn't, though. I'm not just making stuff up. That's not how it works. The Big Bang was everywhere. It's not an explosion like you're thinking. No, it is not motion. It is regression. "The fabric of space itself" is not a bad way to think of it (though not entirely correct either). Imagine an infinite universe with no edge, but with stuff spaced throughout it, at measurable, finite distances. Now imagine that for every foot of distance between objects, an inch of space is added in a given period of time. Or, say 10%. So after X number of years, objects that were 10 light years apart are now 11, objects that were 1000 light years apart are now 1100, etc. And yet nothing is actually moving, just the "space itself" is increasing in volume. That is the way the expansion of the universe works. The Big Bang, then, is basically just that point, moving backwards in time, when all distances approached zero. The universe was never a point in space. In fact, if it is in fact infinite now, then it was infinitely large from the very beginning. It continues everywhere. Check out this Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_expansion_of_space

The hypothetical person who would have bought the clunker (who in many cases wouldn't exist - cars don't last forever) would benefit, but at the cost of everyone else in the form of the aforementioned externalities (national security, environment, public health). Instead the person who buys the scrap benefits. Another good example of necessarily destroying something of value in order to create more value is pretty much any urban construction project. Those low buildings where the Empire State Building now stands were probably quite valuable.

The clunker program has been criticized as an example of the Broken Window Fallacy, which I think is what navigator is getting at. However, it's not merely destroying something to make work for someone else (which would indeed be a net loss of wealth and not a "stimulus"), but scrapping/salvaging something wasteful and replacing it with something efficient, which in the long term (a few years) is a net increase in wealth, as well as being a short term boost to the auto industry and participants, and a long term boon to national security, the environment, and public health. And yes, an additional burden on taxpayers, in theory to be paid off when times improve.

Yes, that's wrong. The universe is not a Euclidian 3D object. It does not have an edge. It does not have a center. It does not have an "outside." Expansion is not motion away from some central point, or any other kind of motion, just an increase in distances (e.g., one inch is added to every foot every X years). It might be infinite in size (in which case it's always been infinite in size, even when everything was much closer together), but if it's finite then it "folds back on itself" in some way, and is almost certainly much larger than the visible universe.

"Maximum liability" is not a realistic net loss. For example, FDIC insures all private bank accounts to $250000. However, it hasn't spent that amount, nor will it ever, and it certainly hasn't been added to the national debt. Nor will every single Frannie or Freddie mortgage default, or all collatoral drop to zero value. The $23.7 trillion figure is the absolute worst case scenario of absolutely everything. Realistically it will be much, much less than that. A meteor destroying New York also "could happen," but I'm not including the losses in projections for GDP for next year.

$23.7 billion = every single mortgage defaulting and the value of all property dropping to zero. So, ridiculous. As long as we're doing "worst-case scenarios," imagine how expensive it would be if a meteor destroyed New York City!

But what you're asking is not, nor is it even coherent. What do you mean by "formula?" It is fact, as far as we know (which is pretty far). There is no universal standard definition, no. Definitions given are going to be variations on a basic premise, which I gave. However, there is no hard and fast line between living and nonliving. Some cases are grey areas, and some fit one definition but not another. Life is messy, basically. That's something you really need to understand. Well, every living thing is a bunch of atoms, so clearly it's possible. If you want to know how you, personally, became alive, you should look into sex ed. Life is a continuous reaction, and you owe your independent existence to your parents. If you want to know how the "first living thing" became alive, then you should look into hypotheses of abiogenesis. What you need to understand, though, is that there was no "magic spark," no clearly defined moment when the inanimate became animate. What counts as life and what does not is ultimately arbitrary. I honestly don't know what you're looking for. Well aren't you adorable? No, there is not. There are lots of ways to make computers. An infinite number of ways, actually, if all you're trying to do is make something that satisfies the definition of "computer." So too with life. And yet you or I cannot, can we? Computers are complicated. A human being is much, much more complicated than that. We can, however, "exactly identify and describe" something like a simple virus. You're the one who is insisting they're fundamentally different, not me. I say it's a fine analogy. Here's another: "Chairs are made of matter and cannot compute anything. Trying to prove your point regarding computers are made from atoms by make some comparison about chairs like trying to prove that computers are made of atoms by talking about rocks or spark plugs or TVs." An atom is not alive. An atom is an atom. All living things we know of, just like pretty much all other physical objects, are made of atoms. Look in the mirror! I don't know what you're talking about, and I doubt that you have a clear idea, either. What do you mean by "science that empirically states that a group of atoms become alive?" Beside the fact that you're a group of atoms and you are alive (and haven't always been, presumably), what kind of thing are you looking for? EDIT: Ok, how about some basic reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence