Gates is right about the importance of nuclear, but our current technology sucks. Even the latest commercial designs leave much to be desired in terms of safety, flexibility, scalability, and efficiency.

Gates is behind the Traveling Wave Reactor, but a lot of research would be necessary to get that idea working, and we need something sooner and more scalable.

Thorium in a Molten Salt Reactor (Liquid Flouride Thorium Reactor- LFTR) should be our energy technology of choice. It has already been proven to be feasible (a prototype was built back in the 60s), and the research necessary to build a commercial version would be minimal. China is already pursuing this promising course, and we could join in the Thorium Race by pumping in say $10 billion or more (if we're serious) to take our society into a new era. Doing so would go a very long way towards solving many of the economic and social problems that currently have us deadlocked- so many things come down to the availability of energy.

This is our Green Nuclear solution, and it would allow us to build the society that we dream about with abundant services for everyone, but not unless we reform our attitudes away from fossil fuels or trying to "farm" our energy, which has kept us pre-occupied for some 40 years. It's time to wake up and get moving!

I believe that if we had a more accurate picture of the consequences of trying to move to expensive energy-diffuse sources (wind, solar, geothermal, tidal, biofuels, etc), that we'd be thinking twice about our aversion to nuclear fission. The Green Party (of which I am a member) imagines a renewable future, and their platform explicitly forbids all nuclear development (including fusion). I think this is a disastrous and useless policy: it avoids technology best suited for drastically reducing waste by converting it into fuel (imagine radio-toxicity reduced to mere hundreds of years as opposed to thousands- the disposal problem essentially becomes a non-issue).

This is not a fantasy. Foundations for this technology were developed back in the 60's at Oak Ridge National Laboratories, and today we call this the Liquid Flouride Thorium Reactor (LFTR or even Molten Salt Reactor). The advantages are numerous: inherent stability (no meltdown possible), abundant fuel (thorium is 3-4 times as abundant as uranium), low start-up requirements (less than a couple tons of fissile material is needed- critical for scalability), proliferation resistant (U-233 is always contaminated with radioactive U-232), more than 100 times as efficient as the current fuel cycle, drastically reduced waste due to efficiency, considerably lower costs due to many factors, especially safety, and the list goes on. We need to be asking ourselves why we are not aggressively pursuing this promising technology. Cheap abundant energy is our best choice for both securing our future and dramatically reducing the prevalence of poverty throughout the rest of the world. The ability for our economy to provide the services we need is utterly dependent on energy.

In case you are not convinced that this path is necessary to avoid the most dire consequences of global economic collapse, I suggest checking out:

Energy lecture by a theoretical physicist: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeGijutBSx0

Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air: http://www.withouthotair.com/

Advantages of LFTR: http://energyfromthorium.com/lftradsrisks.html

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: http://energyfromthorium.com/essay3rs/

Our energy future is not a trivial concern. If we make the right choices, we will revitalize our economy, avoid the worst consequences of our ignorance, eliminate poverty, and live comfortably for thousands, if not millions of more years. Can you think that far ahead?

Theory provides the foundation for scientific disciplines. Einstein's early breakthroughs eventually led to the computing revolution. Plate tectonics is an integral part of geology, and probably helped petroleum companies make plenty of discoveries. Evolution is the basis of biology today, and understanding our ecological impact on the environment would be considerably more difficult without it. Without these ideas, there is practically no understanding of the universe that we live in- we could have all of this data, but it would make no sense.

It is rather difficult to make any kind of coherent argument without knowing considerably more about your topic. Am I to believe that reading books, since one is technically sedentary while reading, contributes to fat accumulation? Particular nutrients (carbohydrates) break down easily into glucose, which drives insulin secretion, which regulates fat accumulation.

Here is Taubes' Berkeley lecture from 2007, hopefully you'll find it edifying:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVvZP2av5Mk

The misuse of knowledge is a very old problem, and it will not go away by putting our head in the sand. We must become considerably smarter if we're going to use technology safely.

I do not believe that Jaynes' theory implies that exactly. As I understand it, there are particular social conditions that were once widespread that encouraged hallucinatory experiences. I would expect people to still experience hallucinations today, and they do: imaginary childhood "friends", dead relatives, and "god".

I believe Ned Block's criticism was that culture somehow changed to reflect what humans were doing all along. With what we understand about the role of language in thought, this now looks like nonsense. Broadly speaking, yes, consciousness is a cultural construct, but so is agriculture, and the Internet.

An audio hallucination sounds just like the real thing to the brain. It can be pretty mysterious if you experience it, and do not know what it is. I do not find it at all difficult to accept that a group of people could adopt a "useful" interpretation of such an experience, such as attributing it to "god" or some other relation. In fact, I've met people who currently have these experiences, and attribute them to "ghosts" or "god" or whatever. It would seem that such talk is readily dismissed as nonsense. I tend to have some respect for the experiences of others, though perhaps not their interpretations.

Though I have been quite a fan of Dennett over the years, I am not familiar with his latest views, if they have in fact changed.

I do not find "a real chemical imbalance" to be very illuminating, even if it does imply a neurotransmitter deficiency. There are a few interesting associations with schizophrenia, but Jaynes proposes a far more useful way of looking at the condition.

I do not understand this criticism at all, please elaborate.

I must admit that I am very confused by your post. Are you trying to say that people do not experience hallucinations? Browsing the relevant scientific literature will show you that the phenomena is alive and well. There are certainly many questions that arise with Jaynes' theory (as with all great theories), but I haven't seen anything that can be used to dismiss it today. As for the transition from a bicameral world to the one we inhabit today, Jaynes discusses his idea in detail, perhaps you've forgotten it?

How well do you understand major scientific breakthroughs like Evolution, Plate Tectonics, and Relativity?

Right now part of the scientific community is buzzing with discussion of this idea of Diseases of Civilization. The problem is an old one, but recently science writer Gary Taubes has taken a stab at sorting out the confusion. His book was first published almost three years ago, and conservative estimates expect social changes in a decade or so. Considering the widespread concern over the Obesity Epidemic, heart disease, and whatnot, I would hope we could change things sooner than that. You could get a jump on this if you get into the science, but I suppose the biochemistry and social history is way too much trouble for most people.

I want to blow your mind.

I grew up in a Christian environment, and the only way that I have found to avoid cognitive dissonance is to adopt the view that the universe is understandable. So I examine religious experience as a series of related phenomena.

A common form of religious experience involves groups of people gathering together to sing, and to listen to some appointed person that performs motivational-type monologues, often intertwined with narration. Extra-curricular study of religious texts is strongly encouraged, so the central memes are reinforced.

The human brain is divided into semi-symmetrical hemispheres, with the left usually being dominate with speech. Imagine the individual moving through environments that are either unsafe or safe, the organism defending itself or opening itself up for influence. The religious context is one of safety (or at least where the participants defenses are lowered), and I believe from a meme standpoint, also one of suggestibility (to use a computer metaphor, programmability). Split-brain observations (see Michael Gazzaniga or Roger Sperry) have given rise to Dual Brain Theory, so under this paradigm we might suppose that each hemisphere has a semi-separate emotional experience, and consequently different memories of those experiences. Interestingly, dolphins in the wild appear to alternate which hemisphere is sleeping/functioning, with conditions varying from safe (captivity- both hemispheres can sleep), to dangerous (swift current- rapid cycling of hemispheres). Now try and imagine Dissociative Identity Disorder and Schizophrenia within this model.

So, "god" exists, but is actually just the non-dominant hemisphere programmed in a religious environment. The great psychologist Julian Jaynes put together a fascinating theory in his influential The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, and it remains a classic in psychology more than three decades after its original publication. Religion would be an evolutionary adaptation to larger tribes, made possible by agriculture. And Jaynes' ideas would not seem so radical if the field of psychology kept within the same vein of understanding pioneered by William James and Dr. Bois Sidis (it was however sidetracked by followers of Freud, and later Skinner). One of his most important works was The Psychology of Suggestion (1898).

So, science is definitely not religion. And we need to figure this communication problem out very soon, because a "perfect storm" of crises is upon us and our old tricks of technologically accommodating a mentality that believes that useful energy is infinite or that growth is inherently good has come to an end. To grasp the historical significance of not coping adequately with this mentality, all one has to do is look at the great disasters of the 20th century, beginning with WWII.

Apple has produced a device in both hardware and software that exceeds in areas of form factor, performance, and functionality. The size is comparable to a magazine and fairly lightweight at 1.5-1.6 pounds. The interface is intuitive and very responsive, and it functions pretty much all day. Apple's mature app-store and the device's elegance are encouraging the morphing of the computing landscape. The iPad will likely usher in the post-Flash web. The Internet has been waiting for this device for about 15 years. This is the dawn of a new era of computing, and those tablets that you mentioned were just the prologue.

Sure, there are competitors (JooJoo, HP Slate, Dell, Acer, etc.), but they fail in form factor, interface, simplicity, longevity, expandability, or responsiveness. When Google and Microsoft get their act together, we'll finally see some real competition, but they'll be minor players fighting over what is left of the market.

In the meantime, naysayers will see that neither cameras nor Flash will be necessary for success, but 'fun' is. Cameras will likely be an important and integral feature to appear in future iterations.

When a new artifact appears that is so well designed that its likeness becomes ubiquitous, what do we call that? It doesn't matter that there were similar things before that pioneered the artifact-space, they didn't have the features to succeed. We should be glad that the bar is being set so high with the iPad. As with the iPhone, alternatives will exist, but Google still hasn't figured out the app-store, and Microsoft is just now figuring out the touch interface. This is a huge indication of how far ahead Apple is in their thinking. It is the very definition of visionary- like Google with search. It is as if up to that point everyone else was trying to make due with the current technology, hacking away one little piece at a time, banging about in the dark, groping for a tiny bit of success. Will the JooJoo or Slate prove to be as useful, elegant, and fun to use?

In just a few years, these devices will be very low-margin products that will be in the price range of far more of us (less than US$100), the batteries will likely cycle a magnitude more, they'll be better for us and the environment, we'll be able to make good use of them outdoors, and it'll be a special occasion when we leave our bloody pads behind.

As for Flash, in all the years that I've used it on Linux, Mac, and Windows, it has been among the slowest and least reliable software. I banish thee to the deepest abyss of cold space, never again to entertain the gravity well of a sentient's dust speck!

There is some scientific disagreement over the nature of fat accumulation (consider Gary Taubes landmark book Good Calories, Bad Calories), and I would think that this plays an important role in how the culture views the qualities of various foods. Furthermore, as has been mentioned in other posts, TV ads are designed to affect those who watch them. It is non-trivial to resist the sophisticated suggestions (see Boris Sidis' The Psychology of Suggestion 1898) that vulnerable people encounter in broadcast media.