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How automatic transmission almost made sperm whales extinct

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Re: How automatic transmission almost made sperm whales extinct

#91

Post by bfrs »

srean wrote: post #8

Sperm whales are incredibly interesting animals. Amongst their multiple records is their ability to dive deep, fast and long. They are the deepest diving warm blooded animal, they go close to 25 times deeper than their other equally famous and endangered cousin the blue whale. To give an idea of how deep they dive, here is an infographic http://i.imgur.com/ESp2j.jpg The jpg needs to be magnified to get the perspectiv…

Is that Cthulhu [1] hiding at the bottom?

[1] http://www.southparkstudios.com/guide/episodes/s14e13-coon-v...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cthulu

Re: How automatic transmission almost made sperm whales extinct

#92

Post by soci »

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #68
aidenn0 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not true. DCS has been found in cases of free-divers who perform repeated deep dives. The primary gas that causes DCS is nitrogen, which exists in large quantities in the air you are breathing now. The reason you don't often see DCS in free divers is that it takes time for the high-pressure nitrogen to dissolve in the blood and enter tissue.

So, it's not a problem if you dive once and go home. But it is a problem if you dive again, and again, and again. Makes sense.

Depends on how deep you dive and the time you spend down there. for instance, people that attempt world records in freediving might need some decompression time after the dive.

Re: How automatic transmission almost made sperm whales extinct

#93

Post by mseebach »

microarchitect wrote: post #80
mseebach wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So that just leaves the problem of figuring out what the desired way is.

Rather than trying to design for how people should act, we can try to design in a manner that optimizes for measurable objectives that we can all agree on as good. A few objectives I can think of are "least number of people hungry", "most number of people reporting themselves as satisfied" etc. I don't understand why we aren't doing this now. Our political mechanisms and were designed a few centuries ago by people wh…

Large scale hunger is typically a symptom of systemic failure, not a lack of food production ability. There's no consensus on how to fix that. Niall Ferguson suggests that the "killer apps" are competition, science, democracy, medicine, consumerism and the Protestant work ethic. This is controversial - see, for and example the comments on his TED talk[1] or the reviews of his book[2].

As for reporting yourself as satisfied, this is hugely subjective. I could be unsatisfied because I think my bosses at my well paid and comfortable programming job are doing things wrongly, this, I suspect, would be a luxury problem to an unemployed graduate on benefits, who again has a luxury problem compared to a homeless crack addict.

> Our political mechanisms and were designed a few centuries ago by people who had the mathematical and scientific sophistication of a contemporary high school student.

Will all due respect, but there's really no way to say this without being a dick: Go read a book. The big philosophers of the enlightenment are towering intellectual capacities.

> There is every reason to believe that we can do better if we put our best minds on this task.

Quite the contrary. People are people and they all have individual goals and desires. Societies can't be designed and directed on any significant scale without devolving into totalitarianism. Our enlightenment friends realized this, and anyone who's tried to do this has failed miserably and bloodily.

1: http://www.ted.com/talks/niall_ferguson_the_6_killer_apps_of...

2: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Civilization-Ways-West-Beat-Rest/dp/...

Re: How automatic transmission almost made sperm whales extinct

#94

Post by bad_user »

bdunbar wrote: post #69
borism wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah, two guys all of us might or may not be related to... one have domesticated deer, offered good conditions for it to breed (protected it from other predators including hunters like himself) and then he and his children prospered off their cattle... the other one just hunted his food to extinction... guess who's children have survived to tell the story?

the other one just hunted his food to extinction All of mine - and your - ancestors have done just that. They found new sources for food or they didn't become our ancestors. I get what you are saying about hunting one's food to extinction, how it's a bad idea. Do you get what _I_ am talking about when I say that poachers don't _care_ about tomorrow, that they are do poor and desperate that today is all that matters?

That's how agriculture happened, which is the biggest step forward the human race ever took.

And many groups and individuals that failed to evolve towards agriculture either died or have been thrown in slavery (as civilizations with agriculture developed more rapidly than the others without it - that's how cities started to emerge, as suddenly bigger groups could live together).

I get what you're saying too. Personally I would do anything to keep my child from starving. But extinct species are NOT in danger because of poor people that are fighting for their lives. And not all poachers are poor, not all poachers have an excuse, quite the contrary.

Re: How automatic transmission almost made sperm whales extinct

#95

Post by aptwebapps »

stonemetal wrote: post #82
borism wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah, two guys all of us might or may not be related to... one have domesticated deer, offered good conditions for it to breed (protected it from other predators including hunters like himself) and then he and his children prospered off their cattle... the other one just hunted his food to extinction... guess who's children have survived to tell the story?

Yeah those poor guys with thousands of acres of land with fences, barns and hundreds of pounds of feed for the winter. To bad they aren't smart enough to heard animals. Owning a ranch typically isn't a poor man's occupation. It requires investments in land, improvements to the land, food for the animals when the land is unable to support them, etc.

I'm pretty sure that borism is referring to the domestication of wild animals in prehistory.

Re: How automatic transmission almost made sperm whales extinct

#96

Post by dhughes »

blhack wrote: post #38
srean wrote: post #8

Sperm whales are incredibly interesting animals. Amongst their multiple records is their ability to dive deep, fast and long. They are the deepest diving warm blooded animal, they go close to 25 times deeper than their other equally famous and endangered cousin the blue whale. To give an idea of how deep they dive, here is an infographic http://i.imgur.com/ESp2j.jpg The jpg needs to be magnified to get the perspectiv…

My dive-master friend has told me that the bends isn't an issue if you're holding your breath. The bends is a result of the air mixture that you're breathing with a SCUBA. This is why freedivers can dive down to 100meters, and then come back up quickly without dieing.

I've also read when free-divers are down in such high pressure the plasma of their blood is squeezed out and fills their sinuses. In a way it helps protect them since the large open areas are now filled with fluid.

Re: How automatic transmission almost made sperm whales extinct

#97

Post by bdunbar »

aptwebapps wrote: post #95
stonemetal wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah those poor guys with thousands of acres of land with fences, barns and hundreds of pounds of feed for the winter. To bad they aren't smart enough to heard animals. Owning a ranch typically isn't a poor man's occupation. It requires investments in land, improvements to the land, food for the animals when the land is unable to support them, etc.

I'm pretty sure that borism is referring to the domestication of wild animals in prehistory.

It's true now, it was true at the dawn of animal husbandry: it's more expensive to capture and domesticate wild animals than do the hunter-gatherer thing.

Re: How automatic transmission almost made sperm whales extinct

#98

Post by borism »

bdunbar wrote: post #97
aptwebapps wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure that borism is referring to the domestication of wild animals in prehistory.

It's true now, it was true at the dawn of animal husbandry: it's more expensive to capture and domesticate wild animals than do the hunter-gatherer thing.

it's more expensive in the short run

Re: How automatic transmission almost made sperm whales extinct

#99

Post by eru »

bad_user wrote: post #94
bdunbar wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the other one just hunted his food to extinction All of mine - and your - ancestors have done just that. They found new sources for food or they didn't become our ancestors. I get what you are saying about hunting one's food to extinction, how it's a bad idea. Do you get what _I_ am talking about when I say that poachers don't _care_ about tomorrow, that they are do poor and desperate that today is all that matters?

That's how agriculture happened, which is the biggest step forward the human race ever took. And many groups and individuals that failed to evolve towards agriculture either died or have been thrown in slavery (as civilizations with agriculture developed more rapidly than the others without it - that's how cities started to emerge, as suddenly bigger groups could live together). I get what you're saying too. Personal…

Agriculture might be the biggest step. But I don't know whether it was forward.
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