D. Mark Key

D. Mark Key

  • Commented on COVID-19
    Thanks guys, for all the responses to my comment, but I'm still not convinced that the Coronavirus compares to the ordinary flu in terms of seriousness... Barry, @143: "IIRC, the current range of estimates is from 10x to 20x the...
  • Commented on COVID-19
    I think it's worth a bit to provide some context, esp. in the face of some of the more hyperbolic headlines: The CDC (https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2018-2019.html) estimates that the ordinary flu killed 34K Americans during the 2018-19 flu season, almost half a...
  • Commented on So you think you can be a reality TV producer
    Sure, but what does it mean? The mathematical model that predicts the outcome of the twin "paradox" is based on the idea that the difference is due to a change of one twin's inertial frame of reference, which is another...
  • Commented on So you think you can be a reality TV producer
    @Whitroth: If they livestreamed video to each other continuously, neither slows down or turns around relative to the other, then they will each perceive the other twin to be moving more slowly than they are....
  • Commented on So you think you can be a reality TV producer
    Greg Tingey 1654: The Dems would need a net gain of 4, yes. That's harder than it sounds, since most seats up for re-election are safe seats for one party or the other. 538 has an interesting article on it,...
  • Commented on So you think you can be a reality TV producer
    UHC = "Universal Health Care"? Warren is in favor of Sanders Single Payer Plan. So long as the R's have the Senate, never going to happen....
  • Commented on So you think you can be a reality TV producer
    You know, I started out more or less convinced that objections to FTL with respect to our current understanding of physics could be overcome, but now, thanks to the arguments with Erturs, I'm rather more skeptical than I was before....
  • Commented on So you think you can be a reality TV producer
    @Paws4thot, 1491: "#1465 - I can't see why you think the wormhole can function as a transceiver before it's established (call that mission time 40Y), or will transmit information generated before that time." The way that I understand the latest...
  • Commented on So you think you can be a reality TV producer
    @erturs 1472: Thank you for the clarification, but that wasn't the question I was asking. I'm taking a crack at the restriction that prevents Bob from replying to Alice that you outlined in 1289. You said this in 1365: "For...
  • Commented on So you think you can be a reality TV producer
    @Elderly Cynic: Can you explain how your exclusion principle prevents the following paradox: A spaceship is traveling away from Earth, toward Alpha Centauri, already many lightyears distant. It is carrying with it one end of a wormhole that is connected...
  • Commented on So you think you can be a reality TV producer
    Perceptions have nothing to do with it. GR says that no frame of reference is privileged, so if an observer sees events happening in a particular order, that order is just as valid as any other. This isnt a problem...
  • Commented on So you think you can be a reality TV producer
    @erturs 1166: OK, so this should be the equivalent of an observer on a spaceship, moving at relativistic speed in the direction of Earth to Alpha Centauri, and watching two signals being sent, one from E to AC, and another...
  • Commented on So you think you can be a reality TV producer
    IIUC, the what erturs is saying is that ship A can evade the fire from B before B fires, but B can compensate for A's evasive actions before A undertakes them. Both cannot be true, yet they are, so, paradox....
  • Commented on So you think you can be a reality TV producer
    Sorry for the double post, but my PC sent the message too soon. How does the airplane see the light arrive at the front of the train first? Even from the pilot's perspective, the front of the train is moving...
  • Commented on So you think you can be a reality TV producer
    Thank you for that. IIRC, the train illustration is the one Einstein used in his own book. I find it difficult to visualize how that example maps to another setting (star travel) so I find that using wormholes is more...
  • Commented on So you think you can be a reality TV producer
    Since no one came up with any objections, I’m going to assume that my illustration of why FTL=time travel + paradoxes is correct (that is, if you don’t invent some additional rules which prevent it). That implies some things. One...
  • Commented on So you think you can be a reality TV producer
    While I appreciate the interesting comments, I wasn't asking a question about wormholes specifically, nor does "Empire Time" do anything to address the potential for paradox. My scenario was intended to illustrate in a very simple form why "FTL =...
  • Commented on So you think you can be a reality TV producer
    I feel lik a monkey being trained to fly an airplane. I don’t know why the various buttons and wheels do what they do, so I just have to trust the nice humans who tell me. So I just watched...
  • Commented on So you think you can be a reality TV producer
    You mean this one: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2018/07/unsustainable-interstellar-civ.html#comment-2048652 "Subject to my aging memory forgetting the details of what I proved a month or two back, and me having got it right, you can have FTL without a breach of causality under at least...
  • Commented on So you think you can be a reality TV producer
    Best and clearest discussion of FTL vs. causality (in which causality wins) is here: http://www.rocketpunk-manifesto.com/2011/03/ftl-part-i-honest-cheat.html "And a post here from last year which noted that contemporary physics has just barely left the door open to FTL, subject to certain constraints....
  • Commented on So you think you can be a reality TV producer
    "I'm in the US, where nobody has shot at anyone for being American in living memory" Possibly the San Bernardino attackers, but it's rare over here. People get shot for all sorts of other reasons, of course, including political ones....
  • Commented on So you think you can be a reality TV producer
    The basic idea is an old one in SF--it goes all the way back to 1944 with A. E. van Vogt's short story "Far Centarus."...
  • Commented on So you think you can be a reality TV producer
    861: "I'm trying to work on ways to maintain a technological society that don't involve slavery and genocide." Er, think the ship sailed on that one, some centuries ago. I'm not excepting the current set of arrangements, either. I think...
  • Commented on So you think you can be a reality TV producer
    @Moz, 544/545: If I express myself in layman’s terms, it’s because I am layman with respect to this issue. This means that I am forced to utilize language that is more simplistic than someone with more technical expertise than I...
  • Commented on So you think you can be a reality TV producer
    @Moz, 467: "You still focus on EROEI when I specifically said that's one starting point, just as finances are one starting point..." You were the one who brought it up, my friend. If you dont really care about it, then...
  • Commented on So you think you can be a reality TV producer
    @Moz, 378: Yeah, I'm funny. I'm laughing all the way to my grandchildren's graveyard. Others have already answered most of your points, so I wont belabor it here. Getting more energy out of a nuclear plant than you put into...
  • Commented on So you think you can be a reality TV producer
    @341: Here's the thing: Nuclear waste is very dangerous, and very expensive to store, and it's distribution has often been marked by middle class NIMBY (not to mention sheer racism). However, the question to ask is: is it more expensive,...
  • Commented on So you think you can be a reality TV producer
    "It doesn't matter a tinker's fuck whether a nuclear power plant is "financially viable"; what matters is whether it produces energy without combusting carbon." Well, it does, though perhaps not in the way people usually mean that. Whatever plan we...
  • Commented on Introducing Dead Lies Dreaming
    That's the result of policy decisions. We could engineer our way out of that, but cars produce a sense of privacy, convenience and control. The only bright side is that air travel is becoming such a hassle that people might...
  • Commented on Too Many Thoughts About Genre
    People are just people. I subscribe to a simplifying mental framework that says there are no "immoral" or "moral" populations--given a large enough sample size, any community will produce about equal numbers of evil, good and in-between. The reason why...
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