No, it doesn't. Take a look at people (reporters, activists, members of congress on a lark), have tried to live on what is provided by welfare and food stamps. It's bleak, unhealthy, and unpleasant. It's only in your mind and Fox News that people in those programs are living it large.

C'mon mods, that was great.

Plus, it's about as realistic as many of the other scenarios we're getting here. At least in the parent's scenario, it's an extrapolation of what is currently going on rather than a reversal.

No, you are misinterpreting what he said. Yes, in some terms, we are definitely better off. However, take a look at the distribution of wealth within the society. There is a disappearing middle class and the wealth is overhelmingly becoming collected by a small group. Income inequality is way up; wealth inequality is way, way up. Take a look at this page; median income has not changed much since the 70's while productivity has continued to improve. The benefit of improvements have gone primarily to the rich.

That will continue with improved AI and more automation. Benefits will accrue to the already wealthly, and median income will not increase.

That's a gigantic assumption, that I don't see any basis for. Food is incredibly cheap, relative to historical standards, and people still starve and are malnourished. Further, the supply is not a monolithic thing, even for food. There is only so much filet to go around, somebody needs to buy the crappy chuck. In theory, the people directing beef production could make enough filet for everyone, but why would they? What is their incentive? Or, are you imagining some super-economist determining what gets produced?

I don't think that you have thought through the incentives in your idealistic system. There are currently people who have much more wealth than other people. They like it that way, and they will keep it that way. Even in a world where everyone could have a 100' yacht, it's not going to happen if the people who currently have 100' yachts don't want everyone to have one. What is your transition plan and how does it not involve violence?

Um..no, you are an idiot.

Really, it was not even close. It was unanimous and the opinion was written by Kagan; not only were there no dissenting opinions, there were not any partially dissenting or secondary opinions. There's lots of issues that are split 5-4 or 6-3, but when you get 9-0 with nobody bothering to put their twist on it, then something is pretty definite. Several of the justices are pretty liberal and Sotomayor is supposedly famous for her anti-business stance; given a loophole, or anti-business opportunity, one of them would have written something against the decision.

There's lots of references in this thread to both what you said and Monsanto going after innocent farmers who are victims of unwanted cross-polination. Do you, or the OP, have any references to cases? Seems like lots of FUD on both sides here.

Because it's Christianity that is trying to get its creation stories put into the science curriculum, over the objections of scientists and educators. It's a political decision induced by their Christian beliefs.

If Christians didn't try to get their pseudo-science into the science classroom, then they would not draw my ire. I don't have the same animosity towards astrologers because they are not trying to teach children in the schools that the zodiac affects their life. Homeopathic practitioners are not trying to get their beliefs into grade school biology classes. Etc. But the Christians are.

No, they are not. Radiometric dating is usually done on igneous rock. It does does not depend, at all, on fossils. On the other hand, fossils usually occur in sedimentary rock. The dates of fossils are determine by the ages of the rocks in igneous rock above and below them in strata. Further, the most common dating methods use isochrons, which are able to determine if there is signfiicant changes in the rocks or if they have undergone events that would affect dating accuracy.

So you believe that an entire scientific discipline has failed to realize that it was based on circular logic and then failed yourself to even take a cursory glance at how the scientific discipline works? Your premise that it is based on circular logic is so far from reality that I can only conclude that you are willfully ignorant of how radiometic dating works. It would take, I swear, less than an hour or two to learn enough about radiometric dating to have a pretty good grasp of the underlying concepts, how they are implemented in practice, and then read and understand an isochron.

Then, sir, you are deluded. We are not arguing over a small amount of difference. We're disagreeing about 6 orders of magnitude; that the Earth is anywhere close to 6000 years old is farcical.

Yes, but engineers also don't need to understand a lot of physics and chemistry; they need to understand engineering. The physics and chemistry that they do need to understand doesn't overlap a lot of geophysics, or Rubidium-Strontium Isochrons, or biochemistry. They seem to compartmentalize a lot as well.

Finally, the disgreement isn't even with evolution in this case. It's with the fundamental nature of the universe, how long it has existed, how it developed, etc.

No, it doesn't (currently). Not at what Western citizens would consider to be a 'average' lifestyle. It's a question of available resources, their cost and availability. There's a great book called "How Many People Can the Earth Support?" by Joel Cohen. He doesn't give a single answer, because the answer is that 'it depends', on what lifestyles people have, what resources are available to them, what those resources cost, etc. If we all ate simply (i.e. little meat) and conserved water and didn't drive cars and lived in apartment buildings and lots of other caveats, then the earth could support 20 billion, though the long term ecological effects would still need to be accounted for.

However, there simply isn't enough wood in the world to give everybody a single famly home. Before you say 'well, people could life in multi-family housing units', then you have to realize that you are changing the problem and making assumptions (and demands) about what resources people will have access to and how they are distributed. Good luck with that.

As technology changes, then the number of people that can be supported at a particular average life style will change. However, the trend is not always positive. Just look at fresh water availability; it's getting worse, not better in many places as we're using non-renewable sources (well, short- to medium-term non-renewable like lakes and aquifers).

0.0002B is 0.2M, which is $200,000. That's for a sub-orbital flight. Big difference.

Yeah, but not that much.

Really? The cooking part? I find that hard to believe, since we don't interact with the cooks. I go in to McD's, order a hamburger, fries, and milkshake. Yes, it's comforting to tell the person making miminum wage what I want and it would make sense that removing that person would cause psychological issues. However, all they do is go and get the hamburger from the slot. Yeah, I can kind of see that there appears to be people back there, but if they were suddenly not there, or if a little wall was there, then I might not even notice.

If I'm doing drive-through, then I definitely don't see who is cooking.

> > > "....my 15-year-old...etc."
> >
> > "You really should say if your 15-year-old is male or female!!!"
>
> "Um, okay. .... my 15-year-old daugther.....etc."

"Oh. What is she wearing?"

I think Bitcoins are more like Diablo or WOW equipment. Purely virtual objects that people trade real money for.

No, the value of a currency is that it is legal tender, for all debts public and private. Basically, if I am a merchant in the US, I have to take dollars. People can reasonably expect that pretty much anything that they buy or sell can be done in dollars (in the US).

Bitcoins have very limited locations where they can be used. They are only useful because they can be converted into something that can be used to buy and sell goods and services.

When bitcoins have reached that level, then it will be a currency.