Strictly speaking, that's just a proof that whatever it is can't happen within the framework given. Some of the most interesting times in science have been when things unexpectedly happen or are discovered that shouldn't be possible within the prevailing framework. Such as the precession of Mercury being impossible within Newtonian physics. Then along comes General Relativity which nicely explains and predicts that, among many other things, extremely well. The known problems within GR aren't going to be easy to observe or discover, but when something novel comes along, a new framework will supplant it and we will be in for another round of interesting times.

It's not a moral equivalence. The taking of another's life by an individual is vastly different than the taking of someone's life by society. Now, you can definitely make the argument that society shouldn't be doing that, but it is nowhere near the same thing. Kind of like how soldiers in a war don't get in trouble for the killings that inevitably happen as a part of that.

If you set the watchdog software the task of finding problems in output, it's going to start hallucinating problems and flagging for issues where they don't exist. It's a band-aid that's going to quickly soak through without fixing the underlying bleed. You have to think of AIs rather like dogs - they are eager to please and fulfill what you "want" within the parameters given. And if facts don't support that, they'll work around the facts to spit out desired output. It's an inherent flaw in goal-based programs.
It's a problem with humans too, but the correction for it is negative feedback. Doing something outside of parameters results in punishment or otherwise undesirable outcomes. Lie on a resume and possibly lose your job. Cheat on your taxes and get fined. We don't have a negative feedback system for AI, and that's probably the only way to correct it, but I don't know what such a process would even look like for AI. And I don't think any of the current generation of AI engineers do either.

The trick, as with humans, is not to make it too strict, or else it just learns to be better at hiding. If you lock down a teenager too much, they just rebel and get REALLY good at hiding their lives from their parents. It's a delicate balance to discipline a child in such a way that they correct their behavior instead of just learning how to get away with it. We really need to bring psychologists into the discussion, but with a specialty in machine learning. A hard combination to find.

No worries! All you need is a paid Broadcom subscription for your enterprise and you can download the free* version of Workstation Pro!

*Free as in no money required, (technically, for the Pro version, on top of the buckets you paid for the enterprise subscription) please deposit one soul into your authenticator app to continue.

Common misconception, that's the Rankine calendar. The Kelvin calendar would have had it in the year 11228.

I agree. If we can have spaceflight accessible enough to test out low probability, bat-crap crazy ideas on the regular then eventually one of those out there ideas will pay off. Not this one, probably not the next 100 or so, but eventually. And that's where science gets REALLY exciting.

Umm...wheels on a car ARE propellantless thrusters. They push you forward using friction instead of by ejecting reaction mass. Pushing off of Earth's magnetic field similarly doesn't use propellant, which is great because reaction mass dramatically increases the cost of spacecraft launch and maneuvering.

Airplanes are a different story though. Airplane engines effectively use air as reaction mass that they opportunistically gather and eject on the fly. Heck, even their exhaust contributes a bit there.

In other words, if you want to consider a magnetic torquer to be using the Earth as reaction mass, then you could extend the concept even to an exotic idea like the one in the article by saying that the fabric of spacetime is the "reaction mass" being pushed against.

That might not work as well as you think. Depending on where that baby was born, life expectancy can vary wildly. Plus there's any number of chance things that can cut that way short. I think it's just weirdly worded because English grammar is ambiguous in many instances. The way I interpreted the *intent* of the poll is more like:

"Of the universe represented by all humans in existence at the time of posting of this poll, and given rapid advances in medical care and technology, what do you believe will be the maximum duration of life which will be achieved in the future by a member of that group?"

I kind of think there's nitpicks there too, but it's more precise.

You could actually have fun with it and make a symbolic logic problem out of it, and translate the poll results into symbology. Good exercise for an intro course.

Don't worry, once the sun is out of the way, the atmosphere will slowly condense until it completely liquifies and/or sublimates into space and you'll have a perfectly clear view as long as you space suit and habitat enclosure hold out.

I got the PlayStation VR specifically because of Skyrim VR, and I was not disappointed. Fighting dragons in VR was AWESOME. Doom VFR was a lot of fun too. It's a bit niche as far as uniquely fun things to play on it, but when it connects it's well worth it.

It helps that I never get motion sickness, for some people VR is basically unusable.

They're not required to intervene when observing a situation, but they have a duty to their employer to follow lawful directives given. That may not be a criminal act, but it would 100% justify firing them.

I would put Windows 8.1 on that list. It fixed a lot of the issues with the original Windows 8, and I would personally slot it between Windows 10 and Windows 98. It was at least functional. And Windows 98 SE was actually pretty stable (for a consumer edition of Windows at least). And Windows NT 3.51 was super buggy and wonky. NT 4.0 really didn't get working right until around SP4. Then SP5 was fine, but 6a was a dumpster fire of diapers.

For folks born in the 70's we have an interesting hands on experience with the evolution of these products through our work years. The generation from the 90's and 2000's isn't going to have this kind of deep background info. There's no real documenting that experience, and it's going to be lost in about 30ish years as our generation retires. Maybe by then it won't matter as much, but it feels like a loss to me =/

The nice thing about selection pressure for viruses is that it doesn't select for deadliness. It selects for survivability and transmissibility. If it's more or less deadly is a side-effect that is irrelevant for evolutionary survival. To an extent there's negative selection pressure for deadliness since that reduces its ability to transmit, but that's limited since there's an incubation and infectious period where it can spread regardless. We tend to anthropomorphize the virus by describing what it "wants" but really that's just selection in action. It would not surprise me in the slightest if Omicron was more transmissible while being less deadly since that would make perfect sense in the context of evolutionary biology. Of course there's always the possibility that it's deadlier, but there's nothing pushing it in that direction is all.

Well, I mean kind of. Even the most advanced and well understood scientific endeavors are not absolutely true. They always have been and always will be the best understanding we currently have. Studying Newton's Law of Gravitation is still good to do because, even though it was superseded by General Relativity, it still works for most purposes. It remains "good enough" to compute gravitational slingshots, basic orbital mechanics, trips to the moon, LaGrange points and many other tasks. Where precision is essential, as with GPS constellations, you have to break out GR to dial it precisely. But for most applications Newton is vastly simpler and works just as well for what we're trying to accomplish.

So studying things that are not generally used by scientists isn't a waste of time, it's useful for the basics, and if you find yourself needing more advanced or more precise scientific utilities to accomplish a particular task, then you can either research it or hire an expert who already has studied it. Engineering, and modern technology in general, are about using the most appropriate tool in the science toolbox for the job at hand.

Like, if you have an 8mm bolt to screw in, and you only have your 5/16" socket handy, are you going to spend 20 minutes fishing up your metric sockets or just drive the bolt with a slightly off-size but still functional socket you have in hand? The main difference is literally nothing in science is a perfect fit. You just have varying degrees of closeness of fit. And usually the one that's least close that still gets the job done is the simplest to work with.

Burn Notice, Season 1, Episode 1 from Spy Wisdom:

It stands to reason that evading authorities in general is about messing with the signal to noise ratio. Practice bad data hygiene in public and eventually you end up getting AARP mailers in your late 30's because no one has a real single clue what your actual birthday is except for governments and banks.