Beg pardon?

Yeah. Let me get all mathy on you for a second here...

A) There are 7 billion people we could help now and ignore the long-term. Alleviating human suffering should be our goal, right?
B) If there is no ELE there's more or less an infinite number of humans in the future (less because the universe will presumably end).
C) If there IS an ELE and we prevent/avoid it, see B.
D) If there is an ELE and we DON'T do anything about it, and we're all still on Earth, the number of humans comes to a dead halt.

It's all about debating the values of A and D.

A) Thanks for the insult that doesn't add anything to the conversation.
B) You're the one who's labeling me a "doomsday nutter" to begin with so there's no reason for me to defend the position. I'm not; I'm just talking probability space.

You say "there's absolutely no point in spending money on space." I say, "We don't know enough about the universe yet to make a definitive statement on the matter." (For my next trick, I'll debate religion vs. agnosticism vs. atheism!)

Kind of fits into my point, funnily enough. What we need the money for is to get further. Is "cutting our losses" at this point winning? I can see the argument for that.

Well, you got one thing right, at least--I am a programmer. Hey, I'm arguing probabilities, so big surprise, right?

Aaaand more ad hominem insults. Good day, sir.

P.S: After skimming the first bit of that extremely long article, I'm not sure what point you're trying to make with it. The guy actually comes down as a supporter of the space program. Or are you taking the "it's hard therefore we should give up" line? s/hard/expensive/g

I would state that in an if-and-only-if form. It's also a bad idea to piss off the world's most powerful governments and then go bum around Europe raping women.

And, y'know, raping people in and of itself is bad.

Ha ha, seconded.

Maybe internally, but Mozilla labels the categories separately as plugins, add-ons, search engines, etc. I'm talking about things actually found under the menu option labelled "Add-Ons."

Thanks for the infodump.

Then there's also the question of, how many wars have there been lately where both sides were clearly identifying themselves? Those fighting have gotten the hint that it's a dumb idea to engage bigger powers in anything other than asymmetric/guerrilla/whatever warfare.

I just find this whole conversation so bizarre. You criticize me for a position I don't hold, and when I tell you so, you insist that you know better than me what my opinion is.

I'm done.

Or, as it turns out, you. And you still haven't answered the question.

Hey, he's the one who said, "No, I don't have a cell phone, I have a mobile phone." If that wasn't the meaning, I have no idea.

Is that what we're currently getting? Then hell yes.

Are you saying 1000 spam and 100 worthwhile things is worse than 100* spam and 10 worthwhile things?

*because no filtering will ever be perfect

Yeah, we're capitalists here--where we take your money away and then eloquently explain how you didn't deserve it in the first place because you're poor.

So much better than just taking your money just because (fascism) or taking your money while telling you it's for the greater good (communism). At least with the last, there's a philosophical argument involved rather than just "I want yours."

I was under the impression that if Byzantium couldn't stand up to an invader, probably nobody else who was around at the time would have been able to do much better...

When I hear you guys across the pond say stuff like this, I wonder whether your politicians are crazier or if you're just more eloquent in saying "I hate those other guys."

I guess we can just fire everybody at NASA and stop teaching astronomy in schools, then. Because itzly says there's nothing out there.

The arrogance.

First step to getting somebody on another planet so a single Extinction-Level Event doesn't come along and wipe out humanity.

I can't believe I'm practically the only one who can figure this out whenever this topic keeps popping up.