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NASA announces discovery of Earth-like planet with earth similarity index 0.98

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Re: NASA announces discovery of Earth-like planet with earth similarity index 0.98

#151

Post by manifestsilence »

GBond wrote: post #135
bsbechtel wrote: post #131

I'm disappointed by the negativity expressed in some of the top comments in this thread. This is an exciting discovery, and the most popular comments here are basically "humanity is destroying its own planet, if this place was anything like earth, the inhabitants there would have already destroyed their planet."

It is the new norm of HN. Almost ever top voted comment nowadays is a negative swipe or a nit-pick that is tangentially related to the OP.

Yes, beware! The tendency to value clever quips and memes over actual content WAS the difference between Reddit and HN. And used to be the difference between the nicer parts of Reddit and 4Chan before that... :/

Re: NASA announces discovery of Earth-like planet with earth similarity index 0.98

#152

Post by d-equivalence »

blueprint wrote: post #128
d-equivalence wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is weird because it is present in many "mundane" plants and in the human organism, allegedly released at the time of death. It lasts 10 minutes which is strange for a psychedelic substance, which after the experience you can go back as Terrence said "answering phonecalls". Apparently the human body knows perfectly well how to metabolize it completely without any taxing effects. From my personal experience in psych…

Have you actually taken (non-endogenous) DMT and witnessed said alien intelligences with your own eyes?

DMT no. These are all coming from reports (and from Terrence himself) which I have no problem believing since I've witnessed my fair share of weird shit in general.

I've only done my share of LSD in the past, which by comparison, seems quite tame and merely "psychological" than DMT.

Re: NASA announces discovery of Earth-like planet with earth similarity index 0.98

#153

Post by psaintla »

redcalx wrote: post #132
psaintla wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what fossil fuels and nuclear weapons have to do with this but 1075 years isn't a very long time. There may not be intelligent life on the planet yet.

"There may not be intelligent life on the planet yet" Sounds pretty similar.

The cynicism is amazing.

Re: NASA announces discovery of Earth-like planet with earth similarity index 0.98

#154

Post by d-equivalence »

myth_buster wrote: post #94
d-equivalence wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is weird because it is present in many "mundane" plants and in the human organism, allegedly released at the time of death. It lasts 10 minutes which is strange for a psychedelic substance, which after the experience you can go back as Terrence said "answering phonecalls". Apparently the human body knows perfectly well how to metabolize it completely without any taxing effects. From my personal experience in psych…

Ah, the white light at the end, the flow of knowledge, being close to the all-knowing and other statements as described by those who had near-death-experiences. This seems logical and is quite fascinating. Thanks for describing it in detail.

There are several parallels depending on how far down the rabbit hole you want to go. Reports of feeling accepted and loved, and the "tone" sound in the beginning which seems to me really similar with the one you hear when you astrally project out of your body.

But we are fast getting out of HN accepted topics of discussion so.. :-)

Ultimately one should (not must) explore these things on his/her own instead of reading it on the web. All this quickly degenerates to entertainment if one only reads about them online.

Re: NASA announces discovery of Earth-like planet with earth similarity index 0.98

#155

Post by d-equivalence »

adam12 wrote: post #96
d-equivalence wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is weird because it is present in many "mundane" plants and in the human organism, allegedly released at the time of death. It lasts 10 minutes which is strange for a psychedelic substance, which after the experience you can go back as Terrence said "answering phonecalls". Apparently the human body knows perfectly well how to metabolize it completely without any taxing effects. From my personal experience in psych…

I don't think I'd be able to handle an experience like that. Especially if it feels real and not dream-like.

Well, apparently we will all at some point :-)

Re: NASA announces discovery of Earth-like planet with earth similarity index 0.98

#156

Post by weland »

Osmium wrote: post #118
weland wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a reasonable measure of surface gravity, which, along with an idea about the distance from the star it's orbiting, gives us a good idea about what kind of atmosphere we can expect (i.e. the lighter and the hotter a gas is, the easier it can escape a planet with a particular escape velocity), at least a basic idea about what kind of surface features we might expect and so on. It's also a parameter that is quick t…

Right, but the escape velocity is ~ radius * sqrt(density) anyway, and if you look at the equation for the Earth Similarity Index[0], each term has an associated weighting. So why include escape velocity explicitly, rather than just changing the weighting of radius and density? The weightings seem to be quite specific numbers too, so I imagine there's a methodology behind it, I was just curious as to the logic. (Also…

I think the formula that Wikipedia gives isn't used that often for most exoplanets. Oftentimes all you know about a planet is the mass, radius and some information about temperature or at least energy flux to its surface, so they use those at first.

I guess the parameters were chosen by some curve fitting procedure to make sure it gives 1.0 for Earth, 0.7-ish for Mars, 0.2 for Uranus and Neptune which are basically the most "not like the others" in our solar system and so on. It's not really a measure of habitability or anything like that. "Equalizing the parameters' meanings" presumably has to do with mapping their relative variation (and the effects of that variation over various observable parameters) over a smaller range.

Re: NASA announces discovery of Earth-like planet with earth similarity index 0.98

#157

Post by dang »

GBond wrote: post #135
bsbechtel wrote: post #131

I'm disappointed by the negativity expressed in some of the top comments in this thread. This is an exciting discovery, and the most popular comments here are basically "humanity is destroying its own planet, if this place was anything like earth, the inhabitants there would have already destroyed their planet."

It is the new norm of HN. Almost ever top voted comment nowadays is a negative swipe or a nit-pick that is tangentially related to the OP.

That's not true at all! So not true that I went and checked the top comment on every page; not one of 30 came close to what you claim. Instead I saw top comments that:

* provide substantive links: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9936945

* point out possibly-critical missing information: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9936448

* compare the author's approach with one's own: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9937333

* describe showing the material to one's grandmother: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9934321

* link to the commenter's presentation on the topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9935644

* give detailed usability feedback: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9935477

People often make false generalizations about HN. I doubt that's particular to HN—probably just humans in general being human, with sample bias and all. But getting the wrong generalizations in your head can prevent you from seeing things. Here that might mean seeing less of what's good about HN, and thus getting less out of it.

This is on my mind because we've been thinking lately about new ways to highlight the positive and amazing things this community comes up with, many of which go unseen by the majority of readers.

Re: NASA announces discovery of Earth-like planet with earth similarity index 0.98

#158

Post by d-equivalence »

nerd_stuff wrote: post #127
jMyles wrote: post #29

Whenever my imagination starts to run wild with the possibility of a huge announcement of this variety, I always like to remember what Terence McKenna said about this: "if aliens were to land on the front lawn of the white house tomorrow, it would not change the fact that the weirdest thing in the universe is DMT."

By all accounts NASA's getting ready to announce they've found an earth-like planet and you guys are like "yeah but I'm sure it won't compare the experience of taking my favorite drug." That's a sad and closed-minded way of looking at things. It reminds me of Jon Stewart's character in Half Baked who thought everything was better "on weeeeed!" If your drug of choice prevents you from enjoying other experiences, like…

The psychedelic experience is the most intense experience anyone can have on this planet, and it cannot be compared or described by anything else one has experienced in his/her life. Surely there's no good reason to assume anything but you do assume and in the most cliche way. Maybe first you should chuck 5 gramms of dried mushrooms with some lemonade and come back and tells us what you think after that.

I'm not sure if the parent was advocating or saying this. It was in reference to Terrence Mckenna's view of the present assumptions that mankind has about what aliens should look like and how one should go about contacting them (and that DMT and mushrooms are probably an alien artifact).

And certainly one can lose the plot and spend his entire life tripping. Noone is saying thats a good thing.

Re: NASA announces discovery of Earth-like planet with earth similarity index 0.98

#159

Post by psaintla »

redcalx wrote: post #132
psaintla wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what fossil fuels and nuclear weapons have to do with this but 1075 years isn't a very long time. There may not be intelligent life on the planet yet.

"There may not be intelligent life on the planet yet" Sounds pretty similar.

Yes, let's not celebrate human achievement and think about the positive possibilities, let's focus on the negative at every turn.

Re: NASA announces discovery of Earth-like planet with earth similarity index 0.98

#160

Post by jMyles »

nerd_stuff wrote: post #127
jMyles wrote: post #29

Whenever my imagination starts to run wild with the possibility of a huge announcement of this variety, I always like to remember what Terence McKenna said about this: "if aliens were to land on the front lawn of the white house tomorrow, it would not change the fact that the weirdest thing in the universe is DMT."

By all accounts NASA's getting ready to announce they've found an earth-like planet and you guys are like "yeah but I'm sure it won't compare the experience of taking my favorite drug." That's a sad and closed-minded way of looking at things. It reminds me of Jon Stewart's character in Half Baked who thought everything was better "on weeeeed!" If your drug of choice prevents you from enjoying other experiences, like…

This is a ludicrous reduction of the point McKenna was making. You're acting like he didn't directly address this fallacy. Go read The Invisible Landscape, listen to one of the lectures that covers this material (such as Eros and the Eschaton and / or his address to the Jung Society), and then address the whole of what he was saying.

If you don't think that human neurochemistry is astonishing, I think that's weird. But don't sit here and straw man his research; that doesn't help anyone.

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