Most commenters have replied to the other sentence of your post, but I disagree with this one. Offensive things do get downrated, but that is not an improvement necessarily. Many insightful statements are offensive, to someone or another. Some are offensive to large groups, even mankind. Downrating all of them, like what happens here, may not be such a great idea.

But maybe mankind is too stupid to see insight in offensive statements ;)

When "we already know" is said in discouraging further research, or to point out the futility of knowledge itself, yes it is analogous to claiming the current "known" is god given truth.

Actually anyone pointing out that some knowledge is unlikely to be helpful is unable to conduct scientific discussion so I realize why you keep claiming to know the people able to have a scientific discussion. But it doesn't work. Because "science happens" even when no good purpose of knowledge can be seen, even when negative purpose is seen.

"We already know" is equivalent to "scientists are never wrong". Get credible.

We "already knew" that continents do not move based on our "theory". Wegener's arguments were rejected due to inflexibility of the theory, and that of the theoreticians who did not want a meterologist to interfere in geology. We were proved wrong, Wegener was right, even more advanced theories of tectonics have been proposed since.

Maybe. But the research will not stop at just knowing the amount of disparity caused due to various reasons. Elementary black body radiation research figured out that radiation increases by temperature of the body - but the research did not stop there. Lots of other predictions can be made about black body radiation now, which could not have been made if research had stopped at just calculating the amount of radiation emitted by a body.

Similarly, "a big reason" of African Americans being so far behind the rest of Americans might be "known". That does not mean everything about nature vs nurture that is worth knowing is known. What environmental factors exactly at what stage of life, and in what state of mind, influence exactly what attribute of the later personality of the human? Can particular types of influences be diminished, while accentuating particular types of influences? How? Can a particular type of influence be undone later? How? If these things cannot be done, a rigorous proof is required because "People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it".

  And, like I said earlier, "known" has been wrong many times in the past.

Sometimes society holding some trait in high esteem creates a selective pressure AGAINST that trait.

It happens because females from richer families marry men having those traits. Females from richer families are less likely to have too many children for multiple reasons - they get little exercise so become infertile sooner, they get an "education" before marrying so start having kids late etc. Similarly males from richer families marry females having those traits, and for similar reasons have less children than less esteemed people.

But wouldn't nature vs nurture help us figure out exactly what in nurture is causing what? Schools, parents, society can then get more scientific about their job around children.

You got the numbers, but don't understand anything about them. The biggest problems with Indian education are at the primary education level - which is why a huge number of children never reach school, drop out, or don't learn anything in primary school. And the drop outs have more to do with impecuniosity than with schools - children have to start "work" at an age of 9.

Secondary, and higher education is really much better than that in the US - taking cost, availability and quality into account. Which is why those who do get good primary education somehow, are like the people the GP describes.

Not sure where this fits. Irrelevant?

You have no clue about how humans think.

This is a different point, and I just replied to your argument of safety. You seem to assume safety and perceived safety are same, but it is clear that there is a very weak link between these 2, sometimes increase in one leads to decrease in the other.

I am not sure you realize your statements are schizophrenic. Wildfire? 1%? 0.01%? 20 years?

The original poster said "This is why autonomous cars are a long while away", to which you said "Nonsense". Now you yourself say autonomous cars are a long while away, though not in these words, interspersed with contradictions like wildfire.

Then it doesn't fit in someone's fancy closet to keep the monitor in, so he sues. You need to measure both.

How gullible can you get? The information from pancanal.com is clearly biased when they deny the well-known (by now) controversies.

The canal resulted in not only controversies, but a revolution. Read up on proper history.

Now you know that this is a class action suit. But I don't think it is a good idea in the US legal system. Reasons :

1. one initial weakly fought class action suit indemnifies the defendant from a proper class action suit for this topic, and somewhat related topics.

2. the customers get nearly nothing, company loses some money so that future products for the customers are more expensive, and the lawyers get tons of money. All 3 of these monetary transactions are bad for the customers.

It only needs to be so to be useful. But it needs to be far better to be perceived to be useful. Because humans - regulators, law-enforcers and car buyers do not think like that.

If an automated car drives 10 times better than average, that is zero advantage. Because an average driver perceives himself as 10 times better than average.

Then there is the issue of control - driving a car seems safer to most people even today than flying as a passenger in an aircraft, because in an aircraft passengers do not control the possibility of accidents. In a car, the driver decides how much risk he takes, and a huge majority of drivers think they are taking zero risk.

Ability to remain anonymous legally in a jurisdiction does not mean everyone is completely anonymous. Ability to carry a loaded gun does not mean everyone carries and is trained to use one. Anonymity in the bullying case is so similar to guns, even fallacies are alike !!

The outbreak of Facebook has ensured 99% of internet users are "effectively de-anonymized". An outbreak of a similar disease in the gun world would ensure guns are rendered useless as a defence too, by de-gunning 99% people.

1. No, online platforms today have done a horrible job in protecting most cases of bullying. There is no reason why de-anonymization laws in one country will suddenly make all online platforms completely cooperative with that one country's vicims in relieving them of the bullying. It is a huge uphill battle to even convince Facebook that a registered account is bullying. Many of those online platforms are not based in that country.

Even if they did get so cooperative suddenly, the bully can change identities and bully again.

If there were a polite society, online bullying wouldn't be allowed to go so out of control, even without anonymity.

No, cross country you just need HV. DC comes handy when there are too many suppliers with independent problems and synchronization issues between them cause trouble all over the grid. But DC isn't fundamentally necessary just because transmission is cross country.

And no one does 3000 miles at 110 V. Transmission (long distance) grade voltage starts at 110 kV and above.

So the virus is not "smart". A "smart" virus doesn't kill most of its hosts, at least for a long time. The hosts then spread the virus around and virus propagates.

Though Ebola virus is smart about staying comfortably in fruit bats without killing the bats.