Carl Sagan *did* think the manned program was a waste of money. He was a much bigger proponent of robotic space exploration, which costs (or costed) 10x less.

The problem with sending people out into other worlds is that you have to get them back. Sure, symbolically it would be a boon to put a man on Mars (as it was with the moon), but that's all it would be at this point: a symbol.

In reply to this comment by Payback:
>> ^PalmliX:

How do you know so much about the hazards of space exploration? I'm looking for an expert of sorts to consult for a short film about Voyager, drop me a line if your interested.


Mostly from reading "hard science" fiction. I kinda dislike the stuff that plays fast and lose with the various accepted physical laws. The cynical part of my brain is wondering if you're teasing, but I'll let the warm fuzzy part respectfully say I ain't anywhere near "expert".

Haha well you're right to listen to the cynical part of your brain. The internet is full of, um... interesting... personalities. Seriously though I am making a short film about the Voyager spacecraft and accuracy is very important to me. I also don't like stuff that plays fast and loose with science, especially when it comes to the lighting in most space scenes...

I'm hoping to make this one of the most visually accurate space films ever made but I'm having trouble finding out some critical information on what stuff would look like out in space, like for example, how dark is it where the Voyager's are now? What would the shadows look like, are the light rays from the sun completely parallel in space? etc...

>> ^PalmliX:

How do you know so much about the hazards of space exploration? I'm looking for an expert of sorts to consult for a short film about Voyager, drop me a line if your interested.


Mostly from reading "hard science" fiction. I kinda dislike the stuff that plays fast and lose with the various accepted physical laws. The cynical part of my brain is wondering if you're teasing, but I'll let the warm fuzzy part respectfully say I ain't anywhere near "expert".

How do you know so much about the hazards of space exploration? I'm looking for an expert of sorts to consult for a short film about Voyager, drop me a line if your interested.

Carl Sagan, one of the thinkers I admire most in the history of literature and science, wrote quite a bit about the pros and cons of space exploration, particularly in light of the problems we face here on our home planet. Pale Blue Dot is a good place to start for anyone who wants to read his thoughts on the matter.

From the book's introduction ("Wanderers"): "That's what this book is about: other worlds, what awaits us on them, what they tell us about ourselves, and—given the urgent problems our species now face—whether it makes sense to go. Should we solve those problems first? Or are they a reason for going?"

Coincidentally, in the paragraph preceding the quote mentioned above, Sagan writes: "No one on Earth, not the richest among us, can afford the passage. [...] There does not seem to be sufficient short-​term profit to motivate private industry. If we humans ever go to these worlds, then, it will be because a nation or a consortium of them believes it to be to its advantage—or to the advantage of the human species."

I can't imagine how excited he would have been to see private industry beginning to invest in space exploration.

>> ^eric3579:

Space exploration gives me a chubby.


Space docking gives me a bigger one.

Space exploration gives me a chubby.

Yo man, I posted a topic: http://science.videosift.com/talk/Lets-Have-a-Space-Day

In reply to this comment by geo321:
Neither one of us are diamonds or silver stars. Anyway I got a bit drunk tonight...so I should stop typing now.
In reply to this comment by chtierna:
If you propose it let me know, I will be there backing you up, I just think a diamond can throw a lot more weight behind the argument than a lowly silver star

In reply to this comment by geo321:
Great idea.
In reply to this comment by chtierna:
We should have a videosift space day!

If you propose it let me know, I will be there backing you up, I just think a diamond can throw a lot more weight behind the argument than a lowly silver star

In reply to this comment by geo321:
Great idea.
In reply to this comment by chtierna:
We should have a videosift space day!

Great idea.
In reply to this comment by chtierna:
We should have a videosift space day!

In a world where lindsay lohan going to jail is the most important thing after breathing I weep for the future of space exploration

Oh I agree. I think the decline in space exploration has cost us more as a species then anything else as Stephen Hawking said colonization and exploration space is a necessity for the long term survival of the species.

But I agree with Chilaxe, for profits need to be given a carrot to do any worthwhile investment. Though am glad how self funded space programs are faring.

Sorry berticus, and dag, but based on the abstracts of those two studies, neither of them refute the points I was making. The second study does not discuss body hair. The first study discusses women's views of male body hair; but this thread was focused on men's views of female body hair, so that is what I addressed.

In my earlier post, I specifically said that evolution would drive people to favor the characteristics generally displayed by the opposite sex. Men generally have more body hair than women, women should therefore generally find attractiveness in levels of body hair higher than what women have. This idea is not in disagreement with the idea that human evolution in general disfavors body hair. "Disfavors" is relative, and feelings about body hair are not binary propositions.

If you have a species with a full coat of hair, like a gorilla, and a full coat has evolutionary advantage, then you would expect evolution to predispose the individuals to preferring the full coat. If circumstances then changed such that, for example a coat only 50% as thick provided the same benefits, and there was some disadvantage to the hair in general, then the net result is that evolution would favor the 50% coat over the full thickness coat. Given enough time, it would be natural for evolution to then predispose the individuals to prefer the 50% coat also. How this preference would manifest itself psychologically is another issue; It could be that individuals would find a 100% coat attractive but a 50% coat more attractive, or they could find the 100% coat unattractive. Repeat this process for a change to 25% coat, 10%, 5%, etc. Evolution would clearly be disfavoring body hair, even though at any point in time the individuals may prefer some amount of it.

Regardless of the specifics of how it happened, it is a fact that humans have significantly less hair than their ancestors. You must agree this is a result of evolution; the alternative is to claim it's magic. This change occurred early in human evolution, long before magazines or fashion or cosmetics industries. For our comparative hairlessness to be so universal, it had to have been a widespread issue in sexual and/or natural selection. For it to have been widespread, there would almost certainly had to have been a strong benefit.

With regards to the second study, just because one feature(body size) is influenced by culture does not mean others must be also. And even if a particular trait is influenced by culture, it does not mean that evolution's influence is smaller. You can't even use that study to say that those who prefer the thinner body type are shallow or vain or whatever. What would such a claim even mean? The only way to meaningfully argue against the preference for the thinner body type would be to show that that body type is unhealthy. You can argue that only in the most extreme cases, i.e. anorexia, but the study was not addressing extreme thinness. Nor can you make much of an argument that those who prefer thinness are being abnormally picky; a preference for larger bodies is every bit as much a preference as one for thin bodies. Due to the wording of the abstract, the best you could say is that those who prefer thin bodies are slightly more picky than those who prefer larger ones. Also, the fact that these two different cultures have different preferences could easily have a reasonable explanation behind it. Such as, it's an unfortunate fact that African Americans in general have had a lower socio-economic status than Anglo Americans throughout American history, with this problem having been much worse even in the relatively recent past. Peoples with poor access to resources tend to more favorably view displays of wealth, and a large body size is a sign of ready access to food. This dynamic can be seen in other cultures throughout history.

You accused me of confirmation bias, berticus. I could easily say the same of you. You were already in disagreement with my position, you found these two studies, at a quick glance they seemed to be ammunition against me, so you referenced them without bothering to spend time thinking about what the claims in the abstracts might mean. Indeed, you point out that it only took "2 seconds" to find them; taking two seconds to find them would be moot if it took 10 minutes figuring out what they meant. I could argue that your statement of a two second search time therefore indicates you did not take the time to carefully read or think about what you found. I don't know if this is the case or not, I'm merely pointing out that your claim of confirmation bias is unfounded and works both ways.

And in general, even if something is predominantly determined by culture, that does not mean there is something wrong with the preference. Nor does something being "natural" or set by evolution mean it must be right. Evolution could favor something that is 99% bad if what it is replacing is bad 99.9% of the time. This is the issue that started this conversation. Dag's comment stated that people who prefer hairlessness are in the wrong since having hair is "natural". But this is meaningless, because not only is it "natural" that our species is losing its hair, but "natural" has no bearing on whether something is good or bad. Our constantly increasing ability to do the unnatural is what, in part, sets us apart from the rest of the animals. Vaccines, antibiotics, computers, fortified foods, and space exploration are all examples of things that are both unnatural and good for society.

If a person wants to modify their body in an "unnatural" way, more power to them. As long as they are not harming others, you have no place to claim any moral objection. And if they are not even harming themselves, you have no means to mount any kind of meaningful objection whatsoever. In the case of piercings, you could, for example, argue that there is a possibility of infection or inadvertently being snagged and ripped out; but with modern clothing and shelter for temperature control and protection from the sun, no such argument can be made against body hair removal.

>> ^dag:

Yes, this. @sineral- it's an interesting idea- but I call BS that no hair is an indicator for biological fitness.>> ^berticus:
sineral, say hello to our friend confirmatory bias.
took 2 seconds to find this and this. don't ignore evidence that isn't what you want to hear.

A bad guy who is totally exposed wielding 2 energy whips for weapons seems like a pretty stupid villain. A thug with a 9mm would be more dangerous.

Also, Tony Stark is a total douche for hoarding his technology. I mean here we have a way for producing infinite clean energy, which would be the biggest breakthrough since man discovered fire. It would win every Nobel prize there is, including literature, because of how awesome it is. It would end our dependence on chemical fuels, provide unlimited freshwater, stop deforestation, end hunger, enable new means of space exploration, usher in a new generation of portable consumer electronics, etc.... and all Stark wants to do is fly around playing vigilante sheriff. What a jackass.

(this is meant to be satirical)

>> ^bmacs27:
How exactly is force the exclusive domain of the government? What about the polluter that is forcing you to breath lower quality air? I can't do anything about that. I need a government to enforce my property rights over the air. Yes, the government employs force. It's our only recourse against the force employed by concentrated capital.

Everyone has access to some form of violence, and violent impulses are part of human nature. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but the initiation of violence against another usually is. There are many ways to repress the initiation of violence, but the ultimate resource is violent retaliation. In a civilized society, a government should try to establish a monopoly over the use of force, so that private citizens can concentrate on more productive endeavours and not have to worry about coercion from fellow citizens.

The level by which an individual is free of coercion from others determines how civilized a society is.

So, I'm not saying government has actual exclusivity over violence, but the reason we have government is so that it creates a monopoly over violence, so that it can use violence itself to repress those who use violence against each other. That doesn't mean government is allowed to go nuts and use violence to plan our lives, redistribute wealth, establish monopolies, control the currency, etc.

Services that *require* violence should be done by government. You can't have a "wagging finger" police, they're law enforcers, you can't have courts that can't apply punishment or incarceration, a military that shoots flowers, etc. However, any other service that doesn't *require* the use of force to be performed (education, healthcare, housing, insurance, product safety, space exploration, research, etc.), should be done and will tend to be done better by the private sector.

Please explain to me the law of nature which prevents corporate oligarchy in the absence of government force. Collusion is the rational selection for a small number of powerful agents. They reap the return, prevent entry into marketplaces, and price gouge when privy to exclusive control over an inelastic market (such as healthcare). You've been reading Ludwig too much... I'd recommend reading more of his brother Richard's work. He actually contributed to knowledge.

Well, how would they prevent entry into marketplaces in a free market? Usually it's the collusion between govt + corporations that stops new players from getting in a market with legislation and subsidies. If that's out of the picture, what's left, price dumping? Dumping can push competitors away, but, while it lasts, it's good for consumers (lower prices) and a dumping company's profit takes a hit. No matter how wealthy a company is, it can't practice dumping forever.

If, through price gouging, a company tries to take advantage of its "monopoly" in a market, that creates demand for competition. No matter how inelastic a market is, that doesn't stop the dynamics of supply and demand.

If you're dismissive of Ludwig's contribution to economics, yeah, I hear ya. Whatever knowledge he contributed got pretty much diluted in the mess that economics currently is. If after years of study you were lead to believe you're an economist, I can only offer you my sincere condolences.

Like I stated, healthcare is an inelastic market like police, fire, and water. As such, it should be provided by the government because the status quo of a small number of profit-driven actors in the market leads to price gouging.

You're talking about a highly regulated market that is about 60% provided by government. Gee, I wonder why it's so inelastic.

I'm not saying people got greedy... (loads of crap) It was the banks writing a junk bond, and slapping a smily face on it.

Look into how low interest rates set by the Fed for so long encouraged people getting into debt, how government pursued policies to encourage home ownership (good intentions gone bad), how the subprime market was only possible because of government guaranteed loans.

I've said this before, but I always find it curious how creative interventionists become when they come up with all sorts of "unsolvable" problems that arise from a free market, yet can't use any of that imagination attributing bad consequences to government intervention in a regulated market. It's always the market who gets the blame.

Actually, they do. If our dollar were to suddenly become worthless, they would have no currency reserves. While I agree, they have the upper hand in this, they've already seen what a collapse of consumption on our soil does to their own economic growth. (...)

China along with many other countries were duped into using dollars as reserves, pieces of paper we can print as many as we like. For a while now they've been accumulating actual reserves, such as gold, in preparation for the "quantitative easing" we'll soon be indulging ourselves in.

Consumption isn't a huge favor the world needs from us. Anyone can consume, it's not that hard. what matters is that you pay for it and America hasn't been able to do that for a very long time now. Hell, China has many more consumers than us who can actually pay for stuff with real money. Why would they care to export to us when they can consume most of their goods themselves?

Do you think a chinese is thankful he works in a dishwasher factory so he can go home and wash his clothes by hand on a rock? Or making cars for us so he can ride his bicycle to work?

Their government is also being stupid because they're still trying to prop up the dollar and devaluing their currency by keeping it pegged. They'll wise up eventually.

I didn't say hyperinflation... I said inflation. Between 2 and 4% inflation is a good thing. If you disagree, you are beyond help.

That's kind of a silly statement. Governments like inflation, people who have to produce and earn money don't. That's like saying "low interest rates are good". Depends on who you ask, they're good for debters, but not good for lenders and savers.

As for the Austrian school, yes, it's BS. (BS)

"The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design." -- Hayek. Not that a keynesian would care.

No force, but enforce contracts. Right.

Touché Señor Nitpicker I meant something along the lines of "don't allow use of force among citizens".

It's easy not to worry about how the rules are set up so long as they are benefitting you. Once you see that not everybody is getting a fair deal, you realize the moral, and even selfish reasons for entering a broader scoped social contract. In the end, we all benefit from a well educated, healthy society. We just need to put up the VC.

Unfairness is, most often than not, advanced by the use of force. Problems that don't involve force to begin with, don't require force to be solved. Violence is in a different domain. That's like bullying people into liking you.

Why aren't you questioning the selfishness of those who advocate the use of force? They want power over a whole domain of other people's lives. They say people are being wronged yet they propose using the most destructive tool, something that opens up so much potential for abuse, to solve everything.

Libertarians are always worried about individuals instead of this group, or that group, or whoever claims to be speaking for the interests of society, not out of blind selfishness, but because "individual" is a very cool concept with the following magic properties:

An individual is the smallest minority, so when you help the individual, you help the minority that needs the most protection from abuse (they're the smallest!). An individual is the most numerous minority, so you help the most minorities. An individual is the majority because everyone is an individual. So when you keeps things always at the level of individual, individual rights, individual liberties, etc. you're helping everybody and people tend not to be benefitted at the expense of others.

That sounds a lot more fair to me.