stefan

Recent Actions

• Commented on A reminder
  Actually nowadays the speed of light is not measured (at least in vacuum), but defined. And since lengths are defined via time (and the speed of light) measuring it would not make sense....
• Commented on "Tomorrow belongs to me"
  If you say you want to maintain the ethnic status quo, you are basically implying that people should be treated differently depending on their race. That is racist!...
• Commented on "Tomorrow belongs to me"
  Unfortunately building walls is almost always part of the problem, not part of the solution....
• Commented on The unspeakable truth
  By the logic of Charlie's argument & yours, then Norway, which has consistently rejected EEC/EU membership is in imminent danger of a fascist takeover, too, with all the non-Scandinavian residents being drowned in the fjords ... err, maybe not. It...
• Commented on A game of consequences
  But humans wouldn't live fulltime in a vacuum environment. They would live in a space colony which would be much less fragile than the spaceships of our time. And if it is a genetic tweak, you would need to tweak...
• Commented on A game of consequences
  Yeah and by making that duct reopenable you are probably increasing the chance of heart failure caused by a malfunction of that duct way beyond the probability of the problem you are trying to solve....
• Commented on A game of consequences
  A habitat can phone home for creativity if it needs it. It's not like these habitats will be cut off from communication. Not necessarily. If you are in the Orbit of Earth, yes. If you are on the other...
• Commented on A game of consequences
  if you get it wrong, you can't walk away. The reverse (more or less) is also true: if you get it wrong no one can come and help. If you are far enough away, no one can even give advice....
• Commented on A game of consequences
  A space colony can't afford to be governed by ideology in the absence of feedback from instrumentation. This takes care of the first two elements of "lies, damned lies and statistics". It still leaves the possibility to be governed...
• Commented on Updating a classic
  And a corollary to 4: Don't listen when your specialists say something is not possible. If they truly are specialists, they should be able to find a solution....
• Commented on Updating a classic
  Unless it is a (part of a) documented process, employees are not allowed to do it. In those documentations there are detailed instructions for every step of the process and strict compliance is enforced. Oh, and the processes must only...
• Commented on Updating a classic
  In addition to 1. and 5.: Provide guided tours to show all your business partners your cool new workplace concept (aka zoo)....
• Commented on A purely theoretical dilemma
  If what the Galactic Federation want is a brake on idiotic impulsivity, that should suffice. If you need an brake on idiotic impulsitivity, the ability to read minds is probably not enough. I think you also need a way to...
• Commented on A purely theoretical dilemma
  You are assuming, that the change leads to a hive mind. This is not necesssarily so....
• Commented on Science-fictional shibboleths
  Yes. Needing about 100 devices when increasing the radius by a factor of 10 (50m to 500m in the original comment) is a square law....
• Commented on Science-fictional shibboleths
  Shouldn't the number required vary as the third power of the radius? No. If you shield the surface you are effectivly shielding the whole volume. How is the gravitational interaction coming through the surface? Think Faraday cage as an analogy....
• Commented on Science-fictional shibboleths
  I find the use of antimatter outside a laboratry (a rather big laboratry with a collider stashed somewhere) extremely unplausible. How do you generate the quantities needed for applications? And more important, how do you store it?...
• Commented on Science-fictional shibboleths
  In that case, what very often gets underestimated is the area that needs to be covered with that beam....
• Commented on Wag that puppy
  I mentioned in the other thread that performance psychology fascinated me. One part of this was the "flow state" (what I suspect is meant when the Japanese start talking about "no-mind"). I'd suggest that most experienced drivers have in fact...
• Commented on The Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis
  What is wrong with simply defining intelligence as generalized problem solving ability? Because there is no generalized problem. Each problem and the solution depend on the context. If you have experience solving similar problems you can probably adapt some techniques...