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At 12/8/09 11:51 PM, Kwing wrote: But the thing is the government knows we're not going to do anything. They know our protests are completely passive, and they're not going to change. And because we ARE passive, we're not going to riot.

While this may be true, there is also the bigger issue that if a riot does occur today it wouldn't change anything. The government has naturally become increasingly better armed over time as technology improved, but the populace has become increasingly disarmed. Very few civilians today (in comparison to yesteryear) are armed, next to none are armed with anything practical for more than self-defense, and still fewer would have the slightest idea of what to do with a weapon in a riot situation. You might have a few improvising molotovs and other such, but I doubt anything one could improvise would be much use against modern armored vehicles like this little number used by the German police.

At 12/8/09 08:59 PM, AndyTHL555 wrote: Lol, I just remembered this funny video my gf showed me, where they were discussing the republicans supposed healthcare plan: Don't get sick. If you do get sick, get better. If you can't get better, die. A little extreme, but funny.

I know it's supposed to be satire, but that's actually a pretty sensible solution to health care.

I've always had trouble with fitting anywhere on the standard political charts. My optimal governments (from most optimal to least optimal), along with problems, are as follows:

1) An absolute dictatorship by a sufficiently sensible dictator.

Lacking, as we are as far as I am aware, any qualified person, this isn't yet feasible.

2)A fascist-corporatist state organized against an actual external (preferably nonhuman) threat.

Again, we currently lack the key component.

3) An oligarchy run by military veterans (a la Heinlein), with a corporatist economic system.

Currently feasible, but would require major social reconstruction.

4) An entirely free market pure libertarian night watchman state.

Though the least optimal of the four, I find this one the most likely.

So as to the question of less or more government, I would have to say more, unless the government doesn't work, in which case less.

You know, if you asked me "what state is most likely to do the sensible thing about marriage?" I would never have thought Texas. Good show, Texans, even if it was an accident.

As experience in Africa has shown, the problem of providing basic goods for free is that it undermines the production of similar goods of the cost-money variety. If the choice is between working or starving, a person will surely choose work. But when the choice is between working and living lower class, a significant part of the population chooses to live lower class, effectively reducing the number of available workers and paying customers without reducing the number of consumers.

At 12/5/09 05:43 AM, Iron-Claw wrote:
2) ICBM Interceptor-It can climb faster farther and Higher in 5 minutes than an F/A-18, F-22 or F-35 could ever dream through 1 selfless pilot's life to save millions, and if that gets you too broken up there's this:

ICBMs do not work that way. See MIRV. Even if an enemy did use a single reentry vehicle weapon hitting it with an SR-71 (notoriously the single hardest airplane to fly ever) would be about as likely as shooting though the eye of a needle with a musket. From 5 miles away. While blindfolded.

And they're all gonna fall out of the sky along with the TV Radio and GPS Satellites sooner or later at some point I don't know when I don't know where but it's gonna happen.

Spy satellites, along with all other vital satellites, are replaced regularly as needed, at far cheaper prices than operating an SR-71.

As for the stealth thing, while the SR-71 does have a fairly small radar profile (detectable with modern equipment anyway), it's IR profile is huge. The tech doesn't exist yet to make infrared baffles for engines of such size.

You might get better results around here with a 'communism sucks' test.

At 10/25/09 09:08 PM, gumOnShoe wrote: Are you suggesting that people who choose not to rape and murder each other will grow complacent and do nothing? I never said all the pressure caps would be removed. We'd still have several problems to fix and be wary of: disease, famine, space to live, transportation, fuel, expansion, population control.

There are still plenty of motivators for a species which has relinquished violence to do stuff. The very final of which is death, of both man, the solar system, the planet, or the universe.

Without violence, the remaining problems will be ones of a much longer scale. I'm not claiming that this society would lose motivation, but rather the ability to react to sudden problems. A people used to solving problems that take generations to manifest won't react in time to a problem that will kill them all in a few months, or even maybe days. That sort of reaction can only be found in a species that lives in the ever present risk of being killed at any moment.

Ignoring for the moment the question as to whether peace is good, there's the issue of complacency. I would posit that society such as you suggest would be incapable of adapting to rapidly changing external situations. All it would take would be one climactic upheaval, or one encounter with another society to cause the extinction of said thought-regulated culture.

At 10/20/09 03:10 AM, LongLongCat wrote: 1,300,000,000+ people. You know that's a lot of people. It's like US + 1 billion people. Tough job for them to feed themselves.

China currently produces enough food to feed not only itself but several other countries as well.

Proof of the existence or non-existence of free will is meaningless in itself. If it does exist it doesn't matter since people naturally assume it's existence, and if it doesn't exist we can't do anything about it.

However, proof of the existence of free will would also serve as a pretty large piece of evidence for the non-existence of God.

Despite what Hollywood seems to think viruses that mutate rapidly almost always mutate less lethal. A virus that kills its host is not a successful virus, as it dies out itself. In fact, the only viruses that have not become less lethal since their discovery are the Ebolaviri and their relatives.

Carbonic acid is very mild. We'd have much, much bigger problems (like suffocation) long before enough CO2 was produced to make enough carbonic acid to hurt the sea life.

I eat cows but not dogs or cats because cows taste better. Dogs are tough and bitter, while cats are dry and taste like sand. Of course, this is all personal opinion.

At the risk of sounding like a 50s propaganda film, I have to remind everyone that the United States and Russia are still not on good terms. And the Russians have some very good fighter prototypes waiting in the wings.

If anything, congress should cancel the F-35. It doesn't do anything that the super hornet doesn't already do better, especially if the Russians have broken stealth as they claim to have.

At 10/2/09 12:55 AM, SadisticMonkey wrote: I'm not entirely sure here, but it sounds like one of those things where you have a hard time convincing people that purposely introducing a virus into their body is going to make them healthy.

Plus the treatment was invented in the Soviet Union. Unless you're selling Vodka, that's never good for PR.

My only objection to the widespread acceptance of profanity (not that I'm advocating any action, mind) is that it has lead to the almost total loss of the art of the insult in modern society.

1930s Person: You, sir, suffer from delusions of adequacy.
Today Person: Hey, fuck you!

See the difference?

Of the stated goals for the invasion of Afghanistan:

1. Remove the Taliban regime. - Completed
2. Capture Osama bin Ladin. - Failed. Escaped the country, current status unknown.
3. Capture high ranking Al-Qaeda leaders for trial. - Partially completed, remaining leaders probably escaped the country.
4. Destroy the Al-Qaeda organization. - Completed, though copycat groups have emerged.

All in all, I think this is about the best that can be hoped for at this point. And hey, 2 1/2 out of 4 isn't terrible.

So try and imagine what kinds of freedoms we'd have in 500 years that we don't even THINK we'll have today. What rights will people have that we don't but we don't even consider?

Name anything.

Wait, you're asking me to imagine something I can't conceive? Ok...
How bout the right to marry i^3 partners.

The biggest limit to the use of phage therapy is that bacteriophages are viruses and a treated as such by the human body. After a few treatments many patients develop antibodies that destroy the 'phages quicker than the 'phages can destroy the bacterial infection.

At 1/27/09 08:49 PM, Patton3 wrote: Yes, there are problems with the different green technologies, that's why you need a combo of them, as I said. Also add to the mix green energies like geothermal and microwave power, and you've got a workable plan. See post, "100% Clean Energy in 20 Years".

Geothermal is good, but microwave power just seems to me to be a disaster in the making. I mean, we're already starting to see reports of detrimental health effects from cellular radiation, and any microwave power system would just be adding more potentially carcinogenic radiation to people's daily lives.

Sorry for the double post, I realized I forgot to include my source.

Here, about halfway down the page.

At 1/27/09 02:20 AM, SolInvictus wrote: your link said they worked?

Wikipedia is wrong.

Well OK, right in a way. It can't pass through some forms EM shielding. However, a person would need to have absolutely no exposed skin, not even a slit to see through, and the mesh would have to be extremely tightly woven, to the point that it would be totally inflexible. While I'm sure someone will eventually work it out, a quick home-made kit just won't cut it.

Quite honestly, I hope you're right. It's just that I've seen some of the new weapons coming out being demonstrated, and quite honestly I don't see how anyone can stand up to them. It wouldn't be so bad if they were just guns, with human minds deciding who they kill. But these things are fully automated. They pick targets, aim, and fire all on their own.

Already, there have been writings on how the ADS may be the death of civil protesting as we know it. At least for now there are actual people on the spot who decide whether or not to subject protesters or rioters to it, but once the decision can be made totally remotely, well, I'm not optimistic. At the risk of invoking Godwin's wrath, the events of WWII should be enough to show how distance from a situation reduces empathy.

At 1/25/09 09:24 PM, BetaOrionis wrote: Mirrors.

Not that kind of energy weapon. And no, metal mesh won't help either. Nor tinfoil. The army tested both.

A 50-Pound block of steel with a handle on the back should suffice against everything except gas and RPGs. Gas mask for gas. If it starts launching RPGs, then I'll need more time to think of a solution.

Metal storm fires 20mm anti-tank grenades at a rate of up to 1 million rounds per minute. It was designed to destroy an entire tank battalion in a singe shot. It's also fully automated, so instead of needing soldiers to operate it who could refuse to fire on civilians, you have some fat guy with a joystick (possibly on the other side of the world) making the call.

Either way, a crowd of super poor people are not necessarily going to gather as an angry mob. Once dispersed using the ADS, they will smarten up and begin implementing guerrilla warfare tactics. Probably sending in assassins with sniper-rifles, or flooding the area with poison gases. The super-rich won't want to live in a war-zone for the rest of their lives. Besides, if a fort is under siege long enough, it eventually falls.

Doubtful. If they were that bright, they'd be running the show.

At 1/25/09 08:07 PM, Korriken wrote: Can anyone here name anything that was invented in a country that was full blown communist?

Tetris.

At 1/25/09 07:14 PM, Musician wrote: I seriously doubt they will have "nothing" to fear. When 90% of the population takes up arms against the other 10%, armored vehicles and other advanced weaponry offer little protection. Besides, there's nothing to stop such a rebellion from procuring their own armored vehicles and "mass-kill" systems. This is America after all.

For starters, we're talking about a hypothetical rebellion of the super poor against the super rich. And these aren't the kind of weapons that you can just make in your backyard. The army hasn't released the cost-per-unit for the ADS, but its estimated at over $7 million per unit. In other words, if you can afford it, you wont be the one rebelling.

Secondly, there is NO defense against the ADS or metal storm. ADS hits you, you're out of the game. It can clear an entire football field in seconds. And if metal storm hits anywhere near you, you're not only dead, you are probably completely unrecognizable as ever having been a human being (and metal storm's firing rate can hit 1 million rounds per minute).

At 1/12/09 09:59 AM, Memorize wrote: It's funny because people laughed at those who said that "people will start demanding legal necrophilia".

Just FYI, necrophilia is legal and has always been legal throughout most of the U.S., assuming you have ownership of the corpse (defined by a will or common law).

At 1/25/09 05:58 PM, VigilanteNighthawk wrote: That is a good point, but I doubt it would hold. If too many people can't afford the basics of life, you will get massive civil unrest. Being rich doesn't matter too much if an angry mob is hanging a rope from a tree branch right outside your mansion gates.

Sadly, we've moved beyond the days where an angry but poor mob can power through all opposition. How would this mob face armored police vehicles? Or anti-crowd energy weapons? Or, if it came to it, automated mass-kill systems like metal storm? No, the super rich in this hypothetical future will have little to fear from any sort of prole uprising.

What you're talking about is post-scarcity economics. Hypothetically speaking, under the current capitalist system without labor costs there would be virtually no way to set prices for goods. Even the price of raw materials is set by the price of the labor required to produce them, so that metric would also be obliterated.

In my opinion we would see a move from production-based economies to intellectual property based economies. Or, we would see a redefinition of value from the price of labor to how much a good is desired (pure demand economics, with no thought given to supply).