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Comment Re: The photon wouldn't notice anything (Score 1) 49

In many ways, antimatter particles look like regular particles moving backwards in time. As an armchair cosmologist with a truly BS in math, I wonder if the direction of time's arrow is why we have matter rather than antimatter, or both, in our universe? Further, if time and a particular direction swap places across event horizons, can the cross product of those two dimensions gimbal around another dimension, producing a unique version of matter-antimatter pairs in each blackhole interior/new inside of a new universe? Basically. does the direction in time that you are traveling thru a quantum field determine the properties of the particle (wavicle) produced by that field?

Comment timescape (Score 5, Interesting) 49

Time runs faster in the middle of a void than anywhere else in the universe. I'd like to see a map of how old the universe is based on local density. If we are in a void, we are ahead of the universal average, but how far? I doubt this has much bearing on the Drake Equation, but it's nice to imagine that we are some of the first lifeforms to attain self awareness and technological skills. Either way, a documentary describing the lifetime of a photon as it travels between voids and galactic cores would be fascinating. What does the uninerse look like from each of these places?

Comment On the contrary... (Score 1) 1

1. It's foreign. This should be enough. It is from a half-Arabic people in the middle east. This is both racist and ethnocentric. You take a serious credibility hit starting with this.

2. It's dualistic. Symbolic Heaven plays by different rules than Earth, causing people to reject reality. This is schizophrenia. You're forgetting about Hell. Besides, most people place heaven elsewhere, as in not here. Your view of a priori rejection of reality is just one of many ways to look at it, all valid.

3. It's exoteric. The idea that normal people can understand religion forces a constant dumbing down. It's inclusive: Smart, inspired, dumb as a fence post; they take anybody. The ones who are smart get to study all they like, even become a priest (ok, they are sexist). People who aren't smart or intrested enuf still take comfort in the rituals, which does provide benefit regardless of the metaphysical aspect's truth value.

4. It's universalist. It rejects hierarchy, except from the church of course. Don't conflate political and religious leaders. Christianity is by far the biggest religion on the planet. Yet they still respect other religion's rights and treat their religious caste with respect (mostly, some humans just suck). They pay attention to the religious hierarchy, but consider themselves outside the political hierarchy.

I am not at all christian; my beliefs are fairly radical actually. I honestly think the lessons we could learn from christianity are so deeply ingrained at this point (Ten Commandments for instance) that they are moot; simply assumed to be true as a way of behaving in society. We're stuck on the religio/philosophical equivalent of pre-newtonian physics. Reality is best viewed via a scientific perspective, but that isn't enuf. Humans need more. It will take awhile, but we will grow beyond our current confusion.

Comment Two types (Score 3, Insightful) 49

Within a few years, it will seem like it. We are even likely to invent moral and ethical guardrails for more convincing behavior.

Those who understand it will be able to exploit and break it with ease.

Actually conscious general AI will need fundamental breakthroughs that are not possible to predict.

Comment Another inconvenient truth (Score 2) 74

They are right in that giving them free reign with copywrites will speed up AI training, and not doing so may give an advantage to competitors and adversaries. However, just because it is strategically the "right thing to do" doesn't make it the ethical, or actually right, thing to do.

Comment Not Yet (Score 3, Insightful) 44

When they start putting these on the road at scale, plenty of new bugs will surface. Whether it involves safety or just inconvenience, there will be situations where the car needs to be moved when the autonomous part isn't cooperating. There will be a need for human operated controls, sooner than a tow truck can get there. I don't care if it fits the aesthetic of an autonomous car, manual controls belong there for at least 5 more years, preferably 10 or more.

Comment Re:Are you serious? (Score 4, Interesting) 70

Nice cherry picking of info to support your claim. The very next sentence after your quote refutes your position: "Stetson Flower Garden Banks Benthic_Covage Monitoring 1993-2018 -- OBIS Event," another NOAA dataset, can no longer be found on data.gov and also appears to have been deleted from the internet. I'd still think most of this is bit-rot and not intentional. If the obscured data points to an organized campaign to suppress truth or people, then we have a problem. The article doesn't provide that proof, even though that is the windmill you are tilting at. So yes, this is mostly conspiracy theory. Given the larger picture, it certainly fits what Trump is doing, so it wouldn't really be a surprise if true either. He's got a seriously intricate game plan this time around. There's some very serious changes about to hit the fan.

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