203 réponses à ce sujet

[Kaiser Arian XVII]

Now Christianity is Eternal:

 

[Fast Jimmy]

Considering the times that was written a lot of that advice on "minor" things was good. For example eating shellfish back then probably meant a good chance of a painful death from some sickness or another. Physics and astronomy? They were working off the tools that they had and what observations they could make. Biology? When did they really go into biology?

What, aside from the entire explanation of where humans, animals, plants and all life arose from? That's seems pretty "biology" based, as is their argument to not teach evolution in Biology classes.

[Eternal Phoenix]

Now Christianity is Eternal:

 

*snip*

 

I love that comic. It's just the idea of a random Catholic priest walking around and telling people random facts about the Church that makes me lol. 

[Kaiser Arian XVII]

I love that comic. It's just the idea of a random Catholic priest walking around and telling people random facts about the Church that makes me lol. 

 

Yeah, it's funny, specially the reaction of that anti-christian.

 

I'm not Christian. But hey I can realize if something will be eternal or not!

[Fast Jimmy]

Even science helps their life on Earth, the common troglodyte who walks the streets wouldn't know the real difference between a plant and a mushroom. Overall, STEM field education is really weak.

I think it is because science and math are thinking in a different manner, not just memorizing facts. In that manner, it is almost like learning a foreign language - something traditional schooling stinks at as well. I took 10+ years of math, science and Spanish in school. I can barely speak a lick of Spanish, I stink at any math that can't be solved with a calculator and if it weren't for my own desire to learn things about science, I am betting my understanding would have been limited to the periodic table.

In that regard, I think the key problem is narrative. The best way to learn a foreign language is to immerse yourself in it, spend time where you have to communicate to others in the language, not just learn a list of verbs and how to conjugate them week-in-and-out.

Math and science are the same way - tell the story of the science, explain the problems that were solved by math and suddenly it becomes real. Explain the significance of the number zero for doing simple math or accounting, explain the use of geometry and trigonometry in understanding simple aspects of engineering or navigation. Tell how scientists stared at the sky and couldn't figure out how the stars moved until they said "maybe we aren't in the middle of everything."

The problem is that students are taught math and science with no use or value to their everyday lives. When they ask why, they are told "you'll need to know it learn other stuff." That means students will learn just enough to keep up with classes they are forced to take and, once school is done, they can file it all away under "stuff I'll never need to remember again." If the focus was on telling the story of technology, science and progress as a means to solve the problems of the ages, then each lesson has value and possible real world application.

Basic geometry won't make a kid ready to be a architectural engineer, but it was insanely helpful to building ancient architecture and can be used today for a kid to build a tree house. If the only thing we can prove basic math skills do today is be a stepping stone to a certain career or field of study, we disenfranchise everyone who isn't going to be (or at least doesn't currently envision themselves being) one of those things.

[Beerfish]

Stupid Reapers and their stupid gamma bursts.

[Kaiser Arian XVII]

Science you say?

 

Q=mcΔθ

F = Gm1m2/r2

NaCl + H2SO4 --> NaHSO4 + HCl

 

 

Come at me bro!

[Fast Jimmy]

Science you say?

Q=mcΔθ
F = Gm1m2/r2
NaCl + H2SO4 --> NaHSO4 + HCl


Come at me bro!

NaBrO.

[Fast Jimmy]

Stupid Reapers and their stupid gamma bursts.

Ah yes, "Gamma bursts," the secret death of all organic life in the universe. We have dismissed these claims.

[BroBear Berbil]

The more I hear about it, the more I dislike this "science". It's a major buzzkill.

 

No FTL travel and now no aliens? To hell with science.

[Fast Jimmy]

The more I hear about it, the more I dislike this "science". It's a major buzzkill.

No FTL travel and now no aliens? To hell with science.

The only solution is to expand our lifespans and consciousness to deal with trips that take tens of thousands of years to get to nearby planets. Sucks, but it's the only option

[Fidite Nemini]

The more I hear about it, the more I dislike this "science". It's a major buzzkill.

 

No FTL travel and now no aliens? To hell with science.

 

The funny thing with science is, proving what doesn't work is for undergrads. Trying to figure out how to break old conventions with mad science is what the real deal is.

 

 

Nevermind that Einstein's General Relativity and the whole can't go faster than light is not proven fact but simply an accepted theory (accepted for reasons mind you, but not a confirmed physical fact), there's a multitude of proposed ways to bypass the whole speed limiter. That ranges from moving within a different dimensional state, screwing with spacetime to achieve effective FTL but physically not being FTL (pretty much the same basic idea as Mass Effect's FTL system) to not making yourself go faster to travel a large distance, but rather fold the local space to make the distance you have to travel shorter.

 

 

In the end, science is not about proving rules. It's about finding out the rules so they can circumvent them.

[Fast Jimmy]

The funny thing with science is, proving what doesn't work is for undergrads. Trying to figure out how to break old conventions with mad science is what the real deal is.


Nevermind that Einstein's General Relativity and the whole can't go faster than light is not proven fact but simply an accepted theory (accepted for reasons mind you, but not a confirmed physical fact), there's a multitude of proposed ways to bypass the whole speed limiter. That ranges from moving within a different dimensional state, screwing with spacetime to achieve effective FTL but physically not being FTL (pretty much the same basic idea as Mass Effect's FTL system) to not making yourself go faster to travel a large distance, but rather fold the local space to make the distance you have to travel shorter.


In the end, science is not about proving rules. It's about finding out the rules so they can circumvent them.

See, this is my problem with present-day physics. Curving space time, extra-dimensional space, worm holes... these are all totally imaginary, non-observed phenomenon that is only even made logical by mathemetaical masturbation that can't be verified with experiment. It's new age sorcery and it gives this thought process that traditional space travel is backwards and boring and that a warp drive or some other Magic trick just needs to be discovered to zip across the galaxy.

I consider a large bulk of the branch of theoretical physics to be mindless drivel. One gap in the math or our understanding of how it applies in the universe (we can have very accurate math that works for all the wrong reasons) and the entire branch is nothing more than mathematical mythology, a religion explaining the universe through faulty numbers.

Science should focus on efforts that can be tested, leaving theoretical conjecture at the fringe. Instead, physics has been basement dwelling outside of practical and applied physics for almost a century. Evidence-based science should be the groundwork for our plans for the future, not imaginary magic.

Instead, we have entire generations raised off of Star Trek who think if we can't circle the Galaxy in under a decade then it isn't worth going into space, as opposed to a generation that was inspired by flying to the moon.

[Beerfish]

"We are only killing you all with Gamma rays because we don't want all of you to be killed by Gamma rays, but now that you have found us out you have three choices...

 

Jump in energy stream one and all life will end with a gamma ray burst.

Jump in energy stream two and all of your microwave ovens will no longer function.

Jump in energy stream three and Popcorn no longer pops.

[Fast Jimmy]

"We are only killing you all with Gamma rays because we don't want all of you to be killed by Gamma rays, but now that you have found us out you have three choices...

Jump in energy stream one and all life will end with a gamma ray burst.
Jump in energy stream two and all of your microwave ovens will no longer function.
Jump in energy stream three and Popcorn no longer pops.

Or Refuse - eat the gamma rays for breakfast, become Hulk, smash.

[Fidite Nemini]

Instead, we have entire generations raised off of Star Trek who think if we can't circle the Galaxy in under a decade then it isn't worth going into space, as opposed to a generation that was inspired by flying to the moon.

 

Comparing putting someone on the moon with interstellar spaceflight.

[Han Shot First]

The more I hear about it, the more I dislike this "science". It's a major buzzkill.

 

No FTL travel and now no aliens? To hell with science.

 

That the rate of Gamma-ray bursts left Earth as the first only planet in the Milky Way to have developed sapient life is one possibility. But it isn't the only one for why we have yet to find signs of life (intelligent or otherwise) outside of our own home planet.

 

Space can be an incredibly dangerous and hostile place for life, and lot of luck is needed for it to develop and survive long enough to evolve sapience. On our own planet life has survived asteroid or comet impacts, supervolcanos, Ice Ages (including perhaps a Snowball Earth), and perhaps GRBs. If life could survive all the punches the universe throws at it here, there is also the possibility that it could have survived elsewhere among the 40 billion or so Earth-sized planets in the Goldilocks zone for their parent stars.

[Fast Jimmy]

Comparing putting someone on the moon with interstellar spaceflight.

Your point? We hadn't mastered flight for barely half a century before we flew to the moon. And not long after, space science fiction became wildly popular. Of course, fiction that doesn't involve aliens or colonizing planets that remotely resemble Earth doesn't make for good stories, so nearly all of them involve FTL interstellar travel.

Now the myth exists that this is our future - that space can only be conquered through FTL means. And humans have been perfectly content to sit on our rock waiting for that magic switch to be invented, instead of staying with practical space exploration and development.

Would it be nice if we did discover a backdoor FTL means of travel? Absolutely. But since there is absolutely zero evidence for it, we should focus on the fact that we may be using conventional thrusters to cross space. Deal with it.

[Han Shot First]

Would it be nice if we did discover a backdoor FTL means of travel? Absolutely. But since there is absolutely zero evidence for it, we should focus on the fact that we may be using conventional thrusters to cross space. Deal with it.

 

I think the various space agencies are. They are practical even if the public isn't. The problem is that they are criminally underfunded. NASA's running budget for it's entire 50 year history was dwarfed for example by the 2008 bank bailout. For every tax dollar an American spends, less than a penny goes to NASA.

[FlyingSquirrel]

[Fast Jimmy]

I think the various space agencies are. They are practical even if the public isn't. The problem is that they are criminally underfunded. NASA's running budget for it's entire 50 year history was dwarfed for example by the 2008 bank bailout. For every tax dollar an American spends, less than a penny goes to NASA.

Very true. I didn't mean to imply that NO ONE was doing this, just not the larger bulk of human psyche.

We need to come to grips with the knowledge that we may not be able to trick the universe into one day having a trip to another star be as quick as a flight to London. That we're not gods with unlimited potential that we have yet to unlock, but are bound by the same rules and limitations that the rest of the universe has to play by.

Interstellar travel is insanely hard, expensive and dangerous. It will take a lot of resources and not have immediate gains. But if we wait until we absolutely need it before we begin investing in it, it will be too late when the time comes. And if we wait for a magic trick to come out of a hat that turns out to never be possible, then we will be fated to the same backward thinking that repressed scientific thought in the Dark Ages - repressing truths that we don't want to hear and that contradict the narrative we invented in our head, that if we try hard enough, if we BELIEVE fervently enough, that our magical salvation will be at hand.

That's what I mean by saying modern physics is failing us.

[Fidite Nemini]

Your point?

 

 

My point is:

Moon is at 363000km under suitable conditions. The nearest planet is Venus at around 38000000km. Mars at around 55000000km. Closest solar system around 99337673159755km (not a random string of numbers, converted from 10.5ly).

 

 

And the whole "just mastered powered flight and then going to the moon in seventy years" is nothing to wave around like a flag. It was a completely normal milestone of technology. I won't have to point out the irony that until controlled flight/gliding was finally achieved at the turn of the 18th to the 19th century, people had been laughing at the audacity of the thought to have people flying through the skies. Laughing at people like Da Vinci when he concepted a glider or the earliest basic principle of a helicopter in the very beginning of the 16th century.

 

Really, if you want to compare the time it took to take finally achieve controlled, powered flight with the time it took after people started to design reasonable concepts (nevermind the time where people started to seriously wonder if they ever could), we're looking at 400 years. That's the scope you have to take when arguing the maturity of spaceflight, not the laughably sensationalist "seventy years, we r soo speshul".

 

Attempting interstellar spaceflight with current means of propulsion is very much like trying to fly by jumping off a tower and flapping your arms very fast.

[Dovahzeymahlkey]

After reading this thread maybe there might be stock in this whole no intelligence in the universe thing

[Fast Jimmy]

My point is:
Moon is at 363000km under suitable conditions. The nearest planet is Venus at around 38000000km. Mars at around 55000000km. Closest solar system around 99337673159755km (not a random string of numbers, converted from 10.5ly).


And the whole "just mastered powered flight and then going to the moon in seventy years" is nothing to wave around like a flag. It was a completely normal milestone of technology. I won't have to point out the irony that until controlled flight/gliding was finally achieved at the turn of the 18th to the 19th century, people had been laughing at the audacity of the thought to have people flying through the skies. Laughing at people like Da Vinci when he concepted a glider or the earliest basic principle of a helicopter in the very beginning of the 16th century.

Really, if you want to compare the time it took to take finally achieve controlled, powered flight with the time it took after people started to design reasonable concepts (nevermind the time where people started to seriously wonder if they ever could), we're looking at 400 years. That's the scope you have to take when arguing the maturity of spaceflight, not the laughably sensationalist "seventy years, we r soo speshul".

Okay... that doesn't address anything in my previous post except the last line where I said people used to be excited about flying to the moon.

If it pleases your grace, I can go back and edit my post so it takes that out? Would you then bless us with insightful feedback that is actually on topic?

[Dovahzeymahlkey]

if a bear craps in the woods and no one is there to smell it, are you still afraid of toasters?