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Saturn moon 'able to support life'

bbc.com

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Re: Saturn moon 'able to support life'

#231

Post by pitaj »

smdz wrote: post #210
nkrisc wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Critical thinking is the greatest threat to religious indoctrination as it relies on the acceptance of teachings as fact from authorities at face-value without question. If a child learns to be skeptical and questioning, they'll never learn to believe something that can't be supported given the currently available evidence, or may very well be contradicted by it.

Critical thinking is good - but kids can ask questions that are very difficult to answer (but we think of those as common knowledge) For example: This question > Why is 1+0 = 1 and not 10 Attempt to find an answer will generate more questions and it is a journey down the rabbit hole. Sometimes you don't want to do that. And upto high-school I learnt things that were based on assumptions that I kept questioning. Inter…

I think the explanation is fairly simple. Grab two of the same item, I'm gonna use apples for this example.

First, hold one apple in each hand. Ask your child how many apples you have in one hand, them the other hand, then the total.

Then, hold two apples in one hand, with the other hand empty. Point out that you have two in one hand, and none, therefore zero, in the other. Have your child count the total number of apples, 2, and explain further how zero stands for no quantity. How when you have zero of something, you really have none.

Re: Saturn moon 'able to support life'

#232

Post by rsync »

vidarh wrote: post #152
aleksei wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get your point, but I posit that this is a very human point of view. Once you've cracked the energy needs for interstellar travel, what's the point of raising a war campaign light years away (especially if you need generation ships to attack)? Furthermore, it doesn't seem very intelligent to me that all capable species just hunker down in their own gravity well to die off unnoticed and without having explored the u…

They wouldn't need generation ships. You "just" need sufficient tech to put engines on a suitable astroid and accelerate it to a decent fraction of c; it only needs enough logic to fine tune the path. An invasion force is horribly inefficient vs. just slamming a lot of mass at someone at high enough speed. And it only takes one massively paranoid, xenophobic species lobbing big rocks at people to ruin the entire neig…

It's funny, I just spent the last 18 months deep-diving into the history and literature of World War 1.

"And it only takes one massively paranoid, xenophobic species lobbing big rocks at people to ruin the entire neighbourhood."

Ahh, Germany ...

Re: Saturn moon 'able to support life'

#233

Post by rsync »

winfred wrote: post #89
Houshalter wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've read an interesting theory about this before but I can't remember the source. If there was intelligent life on Antarctica, it would be impossible for us to detect it today. Antarctica was warmer once and could have supported much more life. It's plausible any life that evolved there would be restricted to that continent. Humans evolved in warm climates and could adapt to cold climates by building shelters and we…

Here you go: http://www.coolantarctica.com/Antarctica%20fact%20file/scien... Mining wasn't banned until 1991. And as the article outlines, Antarctica is a really, really inhospitable place, to the point that it might be easier to colonize a different planet than to colonize Antarctica (I'd probably prefer equatorial Mars over Antarctica) and even mineral extraction would be very complicated.

"(I'd probably prefer equatorial Mars over Antarctica)"

Antarctica has the extremely important benefit of having earth gravity, whereas Mars is 1/3 the gravity of Earth.

Your health would rapidly decline on mars - everything from your bones becoming brittle to your muscle mass wasting to your teeth decaying. Your body would just fall apart.

Re: Saturn moon 'able to support life'

#234

Post by nkrisc »

smdz wrote: post #210
nkrisc wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Critical thinking is the greatest threat to religious indoctrination as it relies on the acceptance of teachings as fact from authorities at face-value without question. If a child learns to be skeptical and questioning, they'll never learn to believe something that can't be supported given the currently available evidence, or may very well be contradicted by it.

Critical thinking is good - but kids can ask questions that are very difficult to answer (but we think of those as common knowledge) For example: This question > Why is 1+0 = 1 and not 10 Attempt to find an answer will generate more questions and it is a journey down the rabbit hole. Sometimes you don't want to do that. And upto high-school I learnt things that were based on assumptions that I kept questioning. Inter…

I don't see the problem. Tell them their question is a good one, but one that's very difficult to answer while providing a simplified answer (if you have a toy in one hand, and nothing in the other and you put them together, how many toys do you have together?). Critical thinking skills can be taught in way that's age appropriate. What's important, or so I believe, is that young children are taught to be curious and that it's OK to ask questions and be skeptical. They won't always get an answer, but that doesn't mean asking was wrong.

Re: Saturn moon 'able to support life'

#235

Post by nkrisc »

platz wrote: post #230
pmalynin wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why not go down a rabbit hole with a child, I feel it could be a wonderful experience that will challenge your beliefs and that of the kid. I don't really get the fascination with ignoring these type of questions: "Dad why is the sky blue" - "Eat your ice cream Timmy".

because child has to get homework done to go to bed or because sibling spilled some milk and there is no time to teach number theory to toddler who is trying to understand 1 + 0

"That's an excellent question. Ask me again tomorrow."

Re: Saturn moon 'able to support life'

#236

Post by platz »

nkrisc wrote: post #235
platz wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

because child has to get homework done to go to bed or because sibling spilled some milk and there is no time to teach number theory to toddler who is trying to understand 1 + 0

"That's an excellent question. Ask me again tomorrow."

right - the operative phrase in the OP's post is Sometimes. "Sometimes you don't want to do that." He did not make a categorical statement, but y'all are treating like he did.

Re: Saturn moon 'able to support life'

#239

Post by simonh »

smdz wrote: post #178

I always had this question - Can life exist outside our perception of biological life? Intelligent life might be an anomaly, and rare in the universe - but is it possible that life exists outside our perception of biology? Afterall everything is just rules and actions that lead to predictable reactions (unless quantum physics says something else) I look at artificial life - that exists in virtual environments. It loo…

There are many very good reasons to expect a lot of the life in the universe to resemble ours at least in its chemistry. That's because, perhaps aside from dark matter, we know what elements the observable universe is made of and we know the chemistry and physics of those elements pretty well. Of these elements, we know that carbon chemistry is the richest and most complex of any of them by several orders of magnitude. Also the temperature range in which that chemistry reaches its peak complexity is the temperature range of Earth.

This isn't anthropomorphism and it's hard to see any bias in play. This is simple extrapolation from the physics and chemistry of the universe we can observe within the some 14bn light years range visible to us.

Of course there may be many different possible realisations if that chemistry. There may be many possible alternative structures other than DNA for things like heredity and alternative building blocks to proteins and such, but if there are such alternatives they are orders of magnitude more likely to be based on carbon chemistry than anything else.

If you rank the elements in the observable universe in order if prevalence, other than Helium you get the same answer as if you rank the elements in order if prevalence in our bodies. We are made of the most common materials anywhere in the universe. In terms of composition there is nothing special about us at all.

Finally, it's hard to see how natural selection or evolution are special to the conditions on Earth. There no real reason to believe that these would not apply to any other form of life.

So it's absolutely important that we try to be objective and keep an open mind. There may be much about the universe we don't know. I've already mentioned dark matter. But from what we do know, there are good reasons to look for life in worlds somewhat like our own.

Re: Saturn moon 'able to support life'

#240

Post by logfromblammo »

Swizec wrote: post #128
Pyxl101 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a crazy idea: What if we picked a domesticated animal such as a pig or dog, and began to breed the species for intelligence? Or any other suitable animal. Only intelligence (and general health), over an extended period. It's believed that all of the modern dog breeds came about in the last hundred or so years. Modern domesticated dogs are definitely intelligent, especially socially intelligent. They understand…

> Modern domesticated dogs are definitely intelligent, especially socially intelligent. They understand words, they look you in the eye to get your attention, they understand their name, they seem to have simple emotions. How fast would they evolve if directed scientifically by humans? The crazy thing about birds, parrots especially, is that they do all that without humans directing it. I have a bird at home. The big…

Birds will also play jokes.

Example: A bird may call your attention to a near-empty water dish. You fill it up. The bird uses bathing behavior to splash you with the water, and then mimics human laughter.

Source: a caique with whom I am acquainted.

But birds are also not very sophisticated as comedians. Sometimes their funny prank is indistinguishably similar to a nasty trick. But really, if the bird wanted to be mean, he'd just pretend to be chill, and then bite you in the webbing between your fingers. They do that sometimes, too.

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