I'm not defending paranoia, but if I were planting a cache in a crowded place, and receiving suspicious looks, and was still determined to put it there... what would be the problem of chatting up someone nearby (like a vendor that sticks around), showing how it works, asking where he thinks would be a good spot (just to engage, no need to actually listen :).

At worst it would be someone uninterested, but capable of clearing this kind of misunderstanding before panic mode. At best its someone that thinks its cool and joins in afterwards.

Seriously, I'm not a "people person" at all but this is just common sense.

Conspiracy nut guesswork really is something. Dome the stars are painted on? Really? That's absurd!

You assume the government did actually launch the probes. It's all a setup. Can't you tell between a real engineer and an actor?

What we should be asking is why is Hollywood behind it. Stick with the facts.

Would your otherwise "wasted" time directly provide NASA funding or lead to legitimate new discoveries?

I'm not trying to be adversarial, but even from a cynical point of view, things still look better than the alternatives.

I live in a scientific reality where the morons of today reliably repeat the morons throughout history.

And somehow I can't see the social context for this kind of significant technological progress.

It's less about knowledge and more about just... keeping it real.

I think it is reasonably safe to assume that interplanetary civilizations have access to virtually unlimited resources, the universe being big and all, and that the more advanced, the more resource scarcity gets backwards.

Even if that isn't the case, what would make our system resources particularly valuable? Unlikely, the table of elements being the same everywhere.

And all that supposing that advanced technology does not require social progress leading away from belligerence, or that evolution would select for competition modes even without scarcity. Again, unlikely.

Favorable natural geometry, meteorite impact?

Slightly less favorable geometry, slightly more energetic impact?

Endless possibilities do make the unlikely possible. And I wouldn't be sure plutonium is essential to a nuclear reaction.

Actually, the moment it slung past the event horizon, any light originating from the object would also be trapped within. So, not visible at all.

Permanence would be lightspeed exactly at the horizon. Still no information getting out though. Very insidious backup system, as the hole slowly absorbs stuff, grows, and eats your data.

And for things farther away, its just an orbiting billboard, but there are a lot of safer things to orbit than a black hole :]

I'm not an astrophysicist either, but even if I were, I wouldn't think questions about something this unintuitive would be silly. Theories this crazy can only be interesting, right?

I humbly ask to whoever is doing this to unify quantum mechanics and general relativity while they are at it.
Preferably using my ghosts and faeries theory for spooky action at a distance. Pretty please?

Until then its just common sense: turtles all the way down.

Well, literally, I'm not buying that.

Government where I live is big on OSS, interoperability formats and all, so no conspiracy theories there. And consumers always buy what is best for them. This monopoly thing is old already.

If you think big vendors should 'escape the microsoft tax' selling linux, think again. The casual user would be lost and end up with a useless machine. That doesn't make them money. And of course there's the Apple choice, with no 'microsoft tax' whatsoever, and quite a few people are happy with that. Just because you don't like other people choices doesn't mean they're being forced to choose that way.

And regardless how Mr. Gates obtained his money, he could be sipping martinis and watching it burn, but isn't. Of his own will he spends it with a purpose beneficial to us all. That part is always worth cheering.

Or trust lawyers about lawyering, or politicians about politics. Sure we can.

I may or may not have a particular nitpick about the "scientific method" behind psychology, but I'm certain your argument doesn't help because the analogy doesn't go beyond bridge building and the nightmarish math involved to the soft sciences. For the hard sciences, the physics is either right or wrong, and bridges stand or fail, regardless of the engineers outlook on life.

That's not to say judges or whatever are unqualified. But it's very hard for them to be wrong, because their opinion is what actually sets the precedent for what is right. And no objective error means no correction, no evolution, no science.

At least some psychologists know their field is highly subjective, and their science is very, very hard to do.

Well, they actually would, since I hear there's quite a few chinese around, and they don't like being in the dark.

On the other hand, a big marching army carrying torches would be quite scary at night.