101–110 of 120 posts
“And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.”
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That really depends on the disability. If you use a mobility scooter for example, particularly one of the faster ones, that's going to drive much more smoothly on a bike path than on the sidewalk (where the pavement is often uneven, you have to deal with the curb every block, etc). For that matter, not everyone can drive either. Some disabilities result in your license being taken away; for example, you may not be ab…
I can neither drive nor bike (safely enough) because my vision is too poor. I‘m happy to walk for a long time (anything under an hour), but any larger city should have trams imho. However, bicyclists need to get their shit together in terms of pedestrian respect and traffic rules. I can cross a street pretty easily but crossing a busy bike path is a real challenge. I‘m sure we will figure it out in due time. It also…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's about what I hope the future It's about time to be very clear about this. This sentiment based on hope for the future and the entertainment of seeing the rocket land on its butt is not unlike the one experienced by the fan of every crappy sport franchise putting too much hopes on their chances to win the Championship . Said hope is based on nothing factual , but it's all based on the entertainment they feel wh…
Exploiting space is "impossible" because rockets can't economically lift the whole mass of the Earth's crust? Be serious. This is like pooh-poohing Apple Computer at its founding because Jobs and Wozniak couldn't personally bankroll the world's telecommunication infrastructure out of their garage. Since you're psychologizing the optimists so hard... can you or someone else explain to me the appeal of doom?
Let's go smaller scale then? How many players need CCTV like surveillance down to 50m resolution from above?
How often do the satellites producing such images need to be replaced?
Who's gonna pay for the whole ordeal? It's the government as always.
Even smaller scale: How many people are isolated and need Internet via Satellite? Considering that the world is constantly moving towards urbanization is it really necessary?
Laying fiber cable from A to B will always be cheaper
The private jet crowd and private yacht crowd will maybe be interested in it.
What's the economic breakdown of the ISS? 100B thrown down the sink , just like everything space related which is not military related or weather monitoring.
> Since you're psychologizing the optimists so hard... can you or someone else explain to me the appeal of doom?
We have just witnessed a miracle with the mRNA vaccine, there are so many things to be optimistic about here on Earth. Pragmatic optimism beats pipedream type optimism every day of the week. Also only the latter can be abused for graft purposes, for sure not the former.
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Exploiting space is "impossible" because rockets can't economically lift the whole mass of the Earth's crust? Be serious. This is like pooh-poohing Apple Computer at its founding because Jobs and Wozniak couldn't personally bankroll the world's telecommunication infrastructure out of their garage. Since you're psychologizing the optimists so hard... can you or someone else explain to me the appeal of doom?
> Exploiting space is "impossible" because rockets can't economically lift the whole mass of the Earth's crust? Let's go smaller scale then? How many players need CCTV like surveillance down to 50m resolution from above? How often do the satellites producing such images need to be replaced? Who's gonna pay for the whole ordeal? It's the government as always. Even smaller scale: How many people are isolated and need I…
Laying fiber cable will not always be cheaper. Satellites can be built and operated by fewer people - and more economically - than the hundreds of thousands of crews you'd need to connect every remote place.
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a VTOL rocket booster, no, but NASA has had experience with VTOL rockets. Despite their marking, SpaceX did not invent VTOL rockets.
NASA has never launched a orbital velocity VTOL rocket
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I can neither drive nor bike (safely enough) because my vision is too poor. I‘m happy to walk for a long time (anything under an hour), but any larger city should have trams imho. However, bicyclists need to get their shit together in terms of pedestrian respect and traffic rules. I can cross a street pretty easily but crossing a busy bike path is a real challenge. I‘m sure we will figure it out in due time. It also…
Context: I'm a cyclist that prefers no bike-specific infrastructure in downtown cores, but I think your pain is caused by (1) no dedicated bike facilities (lanes, parking, signaling, etc) and (2) inconsiderate or just ignorant cyclists. Turns out a bicycle doesn't magically transform the jerks nor the clueless into decent, aware people (I believe they do help though!)
I would think that at a traffic light, bicycles should act the same as cars, but this just doesn‘t happen at all. I‘m lucky if bicyclists don‘t blast straight through a zebra crossing. It feels especially cruel for traffic lights that are placed between the bike path and street yet require a button press.
So it‘s two things: inconsiderate cyclists and and no common pedestrian crossing system on bike paths (or clarity on rules at existing street crossings).
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> If that means 99% of the world population dying in horrendous circumstances Right here, here is a sign that you are reading quite extreme literature. More importantly: Unbalanced, uncriticized literature. Scientific studies don’t only need to seem backed up by facts, they also need to be criticized to ensure the facts were not cherry-picked. Studying science in the current political climate is like saving paintings…
I pulled that number as an exaggeration to illustrate the fact that even if "our civilization" survives (whatever it may mean), it doesn't mean things are going to be OK. Even if you make that 50% it's still not great news in my book. I've read Dire Predictions written by members of the IPCC, the famous Limits to Growth and I follow the works of Jancovici, a French engineer specialized in these issues (here is a talk…
Potentially yes. Everyone can be biased. Do they share a common interest or trait? They do.
I have been a fan of Jancovici in 2006. I see through his game now. He’s the master of correlations and he’s sorely lacking causations. Because causations at global scale are hard to demonstrate, short of actually doing global-scale experiments, which we can’t do.
Another aspect is that we citizen can’t measure it, so it’s hard to discuss on something that we can’t see (It’s the Covid effect). Another is that we’re planning on literally playing chemists with the Earth’s atmosphere composition, despite just having concluded that large-scale chemical experiments are to be avoided. One last point is Janco divides emissions by the number of people on Earth, which is a heavily-loaded formula with extremely bad side effects (but has been approved by UN), such as giving advantage to countries who overpopulate, which Janco himself demonstrates is bad, but he doesn’t see that because he’s under his own ideology. The EU follows and in June it plans to vote an increase of population of 12% by 2030 (through external growth). It feel like all our efforts will reduce global emissions by 5% or 10% only to be cancelled by a population increase. So it just seems that they want us to consume less.
It’s a minefield that would be easily influenced by many parties for political gain. I’m not saying global warming doesn’t exist.
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> When you'll realize that there is nothing for us up there Nothing but resources, science, space to expand, copious energy and the chance to make humanity some what immune to the next asteroid. 200K years ago there was a guy sat in a cave saying "I don't know why you need to go over that horizon, we have everything we need here". I am an atheist, I'm not dogmatic about it. I just think that a species can have more t…
> It's about what I hope the future It's about time to be very clear about this. This sentiment based on hope for the future and the entertainment of seeing the rocket land on its butt is not unlike the one experienced by the fan of every crappy sport franchise putting too much hopes on their chances to win the Championship . Said hope is based on nothing factual , but it's all based on the entertainment they feel wh…
I've often thought that the pragmatic thing to do would be to send people to Mars that already have short life expectancies. Like old people, and people with incurable diseases. They may want to do something great with their remaining time.
> and die of a terrible death
I doubt it would be worse than the terribleness of most ordinary deaths on Earth.
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> I just want a piece of the dream As I said many times, space has become a religion for people who identify themselves as atheists. And Musk is the techno-utopian Pope, with stock ownership in one of his scam companies becoming a form of techno-utopian indulgence Many of you are unfortunately too smart to keep believing in absence of evidence, unlike religious individuals who can hold a belief for their whole life.…
I think there's value. Resources at the very least, be they from moons, planets or asteroids. The problem I have with space exploration is the cost. Almost 10% of the global population still goes hungry, even though more than enough food is produced to feed the global population. That's 811 million people that starve while Bezos facilitates ego trips to space.
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I pulled that number as an exaggeration to illustrate the fact that even if "our civilization" survives (whatever it may mean), it doesn't mean things are going to be OK. Even if you make that 50% it's still not great news in my book. I've read Dire Predictions written by members of the IPCC, the famous Limits to Growth and I follow the works of Jancovici, a French engineer specialized in these issues (here is a talk…
> Do those qualify as biased sources to you? Potentially yes. Everyone can be biased. Do they share a common interest or trait? They do. I have been a fan of Jancovici in 2006. I see through his game now. He’s the master of correlations and he’s sorely lacking causations. Because causations at global scale are hard to demonstrate, short of actually doing global-scale experiments, which we can’t do. Another aspect is…
That was true 20 years ago but not anymore. Glaciers, ice melting on the poles, extreme weather events, air and land pollution, biodiversity collapse, primary commodity shortages... some of which we can observe ourselves and some of which is measured by scientists. And again, it's not only about climate.
> Another is that we’re planning on literally playing chemists with the Earth’s atmosphere composition, despite just having concluded that large-scale chemical experiments are to be avoided.
If you're referring to geoengineering, it sounds like a very bad idea to me as well.
> The EU follows and in June it plans to vote an increase of population of 12% by 2030 (through external growth).
I didn't really get this point about population but I'll do my research. I just hope it's not related to the "Great Replacement" theory. I find it interesting that you didn't mention nuclear power as it's one of the most frequent criticism against him (which seems like a straw man to me).
> I’m not saying global warming doesn’t exist.
OK so if I understand correctly your doubts are more about to what extent global warming is caused by human activities? Or do you agree that it's caused by human activities but you think isn't not going to be as bad as some people say?