wow, it's up to $57,775 after 1 day. (average donation ~$25).

I hope in the future some actors don't get the idea to create a fake video replicating this kids situation, then use it to (fraudulently) raise money.

Maybe the designer programmed the language of life in more simpler means than "perfect engineering". Does fucking Dawkins know how to create all of the necessary tools for evolution of a giraffe? I think not. He assumes a lot and he knows nothing. Theoretically, if we are living in some sort of programmed Universe that is somewhat randomized then the actual programming might be for self-replication and change in the simplest means in evolution over time... why would the program pull it all back for a re-drafting to make a current iteration, perfect? It doesn't appear to me that the "magic" of life is into re-drafting for perfection. That is something we have to figure out ourselves... I guess that's the whole trans-humanist sort of thing.

Science is science. No need to try and prove God or whatever does not exist, or is not an "intelligent designer" or "engineer"... focus on the Science! I really do not like Dawkins and I rarely say that about anyone.

capitalism only really functions well (with regulation) in a world where resources are limited and a lot of manpower is needed to get things done. Thanks to technology, it's only a matter of time before resources are so easy to come by and manufacture into needed things that the supply and demand model will be obsolete.

I suspect that within 100 years, if not sooner, manual labor will be a thing of the past...unless you're an artist or something. Robots will be able to do virtually everything..and better than humans are capable of.

The only people who will still need to have jobs are engineers and maybe technicians, but even then, eventually robots will be able to repair themselves so maybe not even technicians will be needed. Hell, given enough time, nurses and many health care jobs won't be needed anymore because basic healthcare could be delegated to robots.

It's just a matter of time. We're already starting to see the effects of automation in the workforce, we just don't need as many people to get things done. Hell even technical jobs aren't safe because as computers get better and better, They'll be able to analyze certain things better than humans.

The question just becomes what do you do about it? A whole new economic model will be needed. Because we'll eventually be living in the world where unless you're in the academic top tier, you're just not going to be needed in the workforce. At the same time, again, because of technology, we're going to have the ability to feed and clothe AND shelter you for a minimal amount of effort so the prospect of being able to being born, living, and dying without ever NEEDING to work is a real possibility in the not so distant future.

Isn't that what you would call...a utopia? You want freedom? there it is. You'll be able to spend your time doing what you WANT to do instead of what you HAVE to do just to survive. I suspect at some point, there will have to be SOME procreation laws put into place to keep the population growth in check. But hell, even that won't be so bad once we have the ability to colonize other planets.

People will still work, they'll just do it because they want to do it, but they'll be jobs where they're not a necessity or anything. even in an age where a replicator can make all your food, people will still want to cook, or do other artisan style jobs.

But hey, we'll still need defense, gotta blow up or deflect any stray asteroid that comes near us. or just send a bunch of robots up to mine the rock to smitherines so we can use the resources to build our mighty space fleet and our other grand works That Dyson Sphere won't build itself after all

In other words, the human race....has won. isn't that a good thing?

Videosift is clearly not the forum on which to teach economics (let alone philosophy or epistemology), but suffice it to say that logic applies to economics, just as it applies to geometry, and the other natural sciences.

Economics follows axiomatic-deduction. Human behavior is too complex to treat empirically (thereby precluding experiments that would be similar to, say, chemistry, which replicates the same results over and over again). With economics, such experiments are impossible because there are too many variables for which there are no controls, so therefore, a deductive approach is used, like with geometry which, if you recall, experiments aren't conducted in geometry, but logical deductions are made based on self-evident axioms.

This is in contrast to what, say, econometricians do. They try to make economics into an empirical science, like physics or chemistry and so they focus on the "science" and ignore the "social" in "social science."

Hermeneuticians/rhetorician on the other hand, ignore the "science" and focus on the "social."
Economics cannot be properly studied as a natural empirical science, but it also cannot be properly studied as rhetoric.

Deductive rationalism is the best fit for economic study.

Crap, I failed. Does that mean I'm a replicant or something?

@RedSky

Crossing your fingers and waiting for the tooth fairy to fix everything is not a valid response to global crises. That is what passivity amounts to whether your eventual, hoped for remedy is shiny's simple-minded faith or failed economic models that got us into this mess in the first place, or unforeseeable scientific advances that may never come.

You've been using the most preposterously optimistic projections available, okay, let's assume they're correct and we level off at somewhere around nine to eleven billion. You want all of these people to live worthwhile, prosperous lives; well that's at least five times as many high energy consuming, 21st century humans as we've ever actually been able to support.

This coming at the end of an economic and technological bubble of readily available, dense energy supply for which we have no replacement; relative efficiency gains in spending that energy that can never be replicated (because efficiency doesn't go above 100%); casual environmental damage that cannot continue; and diminishing returns in every scientific field, where advancement is always becoming more difficult and more expensive.

This isn't a pessimistic view. Humanity has a bright future, all we have to do to secure it is stop creating more and more people out of nothing for no reason. Barring extra-terrestrial threats like meteorites, solar flares and relativistic missiles launched by hostile alien species; we have the knowledge we need to build a civilisation capable of enduring for millions of years, or burn out in a couple of hundred.

Dumbo. He didn't need no bitches or dicks to fly...
Mothra. Survives radiation, self-replicates.

Were you not paying attention in physics class the day they explained the difference between mass and weight? As @Payback pointed out the energy required to overcome inertia is the same no matter what the gravity, low gravity simply allows you to "spread the duration" of the force like a fulcrum.

I.e. it would be easier than on earth but you still have to apply enough force to move 2-300kg of mass, you just have the option of doing so less rapidly (making it easier but not easy).

Even if this were not the case your argument still makes no sense. If it was indeed faked then surely they were on wires anyway? How else are you proposing they replicated the effects of low gravity?

The fact your comment got 3 likes is rather depressing. As someone who makes researching conspiracy theories a borderline obsessive hobby I can say with some confidence that the whole faked moon landing thing is about the most debunk-able one ever conceived. It is an insult to the very term "conspiracy theory" and helps give the rest of us a bad name .

Radiation belt? = 7 mins of expertly calculated exposure, there is a 1000ish page NASA manual on how they did this.

Cameras? = they had about 20 DIFFERENT cameras & much like anyone else would the crappy poorly framed or exposed shots weren't used for publicity

Multiple light sources? = The surface of the moon is both highly reflective and uneven. (mythbusters did the shit out of that one)

Most complicated machine ever built? = Actually launched, several times, to the freaking moon and back!

Waving flag? = Funny how every single shot of the flag waving is when someone is holding/touching it eh? (& what kind of retard leaves evidence of wind in the most expensive coverup of all time?)

The Russian space programme? = They just turned a blind eye to their arch rivals lauding it over them? They were in on it? You have to get really paranoid before that one starts to make any sense whatsoever.

etc. etc. etc.

I have a lot of time for conspiracy theories and I'm happy to speculate with the best of them but I've yet to find a single good argument for the landing not happening. I can maybe work with the possibility that some things were omitted/covered up (Monoliths etc.) because this could not be conclusively refuted by empirical facts. Suggesting that it never happened however is so easy to disprove it blows my mind that people still have time for the idea.

For your own sake try looking into the opposing arguments. There are plenty people with PHD's and direct experience who are happy to take you through the counters to all this stuff. And they back it up with actual evidence and experiments rather than conjecture and selective information. Your mind will thank you for it

Well if he stood in a certain way, he'd replicate Michael Jackson's lean technique.

Welcome back, @Reefie. This is not a known issue and not one I am able to replicate.

I'm using vanilla IE10 on Windows 7 without any add-ons, but whenever I load any post that has comments, they always show up for me.

Anyone else with IE10 having the problem Reefie described?

Black RoboCop is black like his soul! (like the Black Peter Parker Spidey was)

Oh, and form the bulk of the comments here and we would also share the same sentiments, RoboCop was a singular event not unlike a comet strike or summer with a virgin, and this replication attempt should never have been allowed to manifest.

Two thumbs down, I think so!
Now......time to watch the piece of sheeeeitt!

It's cool and impressive and so on, but I'm still not sure what the point is?

He talks about being able to replicate "the sound in his head". Ok, cool. Musicians have been trying to do that for years. Electric guitarists, for instance, can spend hours/weeks/months tweaking settings on a dizzying array of gear to produce the sound they want. But ultimately, the expression of the music still comes from the guitar, from the physical manipulation and vibration of the strings.

I have no problem with Beardyman using his voice as an instrument, or even manipulating it, looping it or whatever. But surely there comes a point where the manipulation is so extreme that the "source" is lost, i.e. there is nothing about the output that is affected by the input. At which point, I have to ask, why bother with voice as an input in the first place? Why not just use a wave generator?

Actually, I think I might have answered my own question. I guess it's the fact that his voice is an easily manipulatable starting point.

'Promote for science'? Science is pretty antithetical to libertarianism - science is strictly hierarchical and authoritarian, rigidly rule-bound, and uncompromisingly collectivist. The lone, unique, and non-replicable genius might be a Great Man, but he's no scientist.

Was this a clinical trial with a sample of 1?
What happened to the other subjects (if there were any)? Have the results been replicated?

Looks like there's a couple of listeners attached to the mouseover in the CSS styles used for those items, in chartbeat.js

I haven't looked too hard but it on first glance it looks like it's trying to replicate the onkeydown behaviour to scroll the page but is scrolling the image instead.