There's multiple kinds of value. As an individual, learning new understandable models can help with developing a useful view of the world and others. Even if that benefit is simply feeling good about "understanding" something - that might still "scratch the itch" of concerns. This understanding might be detached from the material reality of the processes involved, but who cares? With this perspective, they're hardly incompetent if they're getting value from it.
This isn't very far from religion after all. You could consider it a kind of rational spirituality.
The scientific community has its own values, and might rightly reject simplified thinking like this. And that's fine for scientists, but an individual is going to have an easier time accepting stories of pleasure and drives than stories of gene expression and neurotransmitters.
If it is a blacklist, it's not a very good one. "pedobear." and "pedophile." work fine. I don't understand why they would want to block these anyway. One's just a meme, and the other is a bunch of mugshots of strange looking men.
It's unfortunately not uncommon for such images to appear on the Russian internet. The Youtube thumbnails are possibly things that were linked to from VK communities. Or maybe there are links in the content somewhere.
If I go on Yandex and search "img " and then a bunch of random numbers, I get almost all pictures of young women, and many pictures of underage girls in provocative poses.
This sort of thing does happen. A few months ago, people discovered similar results on Google Images(!) by searching "TV television and film". The results were being pulled from a 4chan archive of the board with that name.
I don't think it's related to the "VK" web results problem though. If you search "VK," or "VK!" or VK with any punctuation, all the web results come up as expected.
On Twitter there seem to be a lot of people on who expect to live in other worlds soon, and not just to explore and study them. He's likely rhetorically responding to that idea. And I think it's worthwhile to confront those ideas critically. IMO as well, living off of Earth sounds hellish, given what we know now.
The person the Twitter poster is talking with is now suggesting that many people will abandon their physical bodies, and those that won't will live in cylindrical space colonies. He's speaking fantasies.
There's also the why question. What's on the moon that would make it worth all the difficulty to get there? I suppose we might have a semi-permanent research station on the moon or even Mars, but colonization? Unless we make some really unlikely discovery like unobtanium is only found on Europa and it's really super useful, we're not going to have space colonies.
The moon will be a good source of water for spacefaring endeavors of the future, due to the large quantities of ice it has at the poles. With 1/6 the gravity of earth and the appropriate infrastructure in place, it will likely be cheaper to get that water off of the surface of the moon than from the Earth. The most promising use here is actually for producing methane fuel from this water. An industrial base of sorts could develop around this.
The other potential industry will be moon tourism. It could become something like the new Mt Everest. Obviously only for the very rich at first.
Once it becomes a real possibility and not some crazy sci-fi project, governments may start competing, so as to not get “left behind”, even if it is not immediately profitable.
One way or another, unless we destroy ourselves, it will happen eventually. There’s a percentage of people who are just absurdly curious and adventurous, and want to go where no one has gone before, even if the cost is immense. Hell, for some, I’m sure even just desire to get away from their situation on Earth will be a big part of why they go for it. People like this will build the first settlements and bases on the moon and elsewhere in the solar system.
Edit: sorry for the constant edits. It’s a bad habit — I don’t always get my thoughts out on the first try.
So, going to space to the moon is useful because it enables going further out to space.
And I'm not entirely sure how you turn water (H₂O) into Methane (CH₄). Granted I barely passed freshman chemistry 33 years ago so my chemistry knowledge isn't so good, but as near as I can recall, there is no process that will turn that input into that output.
And again, even if the moon is a source of water, there's not a significant need for any water mining operation at the poles to have a colony around it or even any human staffing. Putting people there on even a semi-permanent basis would likely eliminate any gains to be had from using the moon as a source of water.
Even the space tourism doesn't call for settling the moon. No one lives on top of Mount Everest either.
Could you simply separate hydrogen from the water, using electrolysis, or other methods and then use the Sabatier reaction? [1] Carbon dioxide in bulk may be harder to come by on the moon, however.
Also, the Lunar Gateway [2] is a key part of the plans by NASA/SLS. It's not about settling on the moon, it's about making it a stop off point to refuel or pickup supplies before going on to a further off destination like Mars. Instead of having to have all your fuel and payload when taking off from Earth, you can have a lot of your supplies and weight on the Moon. This means your trip off Earth can be cheaper. Getting out of Earths gravity and getting to escape velocity is the hard part. Getting off the moon is a lot easier.
The Sabatier reaction relies on carbon dioxide. For the concept of using it to generate rocket fuel, there's a reliance on atmospheric CO₂ which is viable on Mars but not the Moon (which is why the section in the Wikipedia article is called “Manufacturing propellant on Mars”). And the Lunar Gateway is irrelevant to what I'm arguing, which is that there's not really any reason to settle off-planet.
>you don’t denounce meat eating therefore you are evil and your peers and employers should ostracize you (...)
This seems like a valid position to me. It’s extreme, I don’t agree with it, and I think people with such positions should be encouraged to be more tolerant, but it’s a valid position to hold in the public space nonetheless.
I don’t think the problem is people holding these positions - outrage will always exist if you allow crowds to converse freely, which is easy on the internet - but that institutions like universities instead see the outrage as an excuse to fire people. The institutions ultimately make the choices that alter people’s careers, not the crowd. Universities and companies should do more to stand up for tolerance of opinions. If the crowds themselves are viewed as the problem, then I fear for the future of free communication on the internet.
I don’t think it’s a valid reason. It’s not considered widely unethical or evil to eat meat, therefore people should not suffer disproportionate consequences. Note I’m not saying eating meat is unassailable, I’m saying for most people it’s an okay position.
In the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s universities allowed people to espouse things which were then outside the norm, contrarian and subversive. We could construct philosophies to either support or impune (the whole somewhat discredited moral relativism which had garnered popularity) but at the end of the day universities allowed people to say foul things or upset large populations of people without resorting to firing or censuring or shaming them.
I don't. It makes no sense to intimidate and threaten anyone just because that person happens to not agree with you on a position you singled out as being relevant.
It may make no sense to you (or me, much of the time), but should they be allowed to say it? I think so.
To me, I think it’s valid for a group of people to organize and write a letter criticizing someone, and then to send that letter to the person’s peer group. They can also criticize the employer of that person. That’s part of what of what being in a free speech society entails.
I don’t agree with the positions, but I think the complainers should have a space too, even if it’s outside of the relevant institution.
I also don’t like that universities threaten people’s jobs over this such complaints. I agree with mc32 in that such places should tolerate unpopular or contrarian opinions. And that’s where I view the problem appearing: it’s not the angry internet mob, it’s the university giving in to them. It’s up to the university to show thought leadership in their own spaces, and to ignore such ridiculous controversies. If signatories on my imagined letter threatened to stop working with the institution if not have their requests met, it might be best to cut ties with them, not the allegedly problematic peer. The university has to show that leadership.
There's a world of difference between expressing an opinion on how you feel something is wrong, and demanding that anyone who doesn't show enough enthusiasm for your personal cause should be punished and persecuted out of existence or relevance.
You don’t propose a solution but you seem to imply, given the context of what I said, that you want to prevent people from being able to say things, and maybe given the context of this case prevent people sending letters asking for honorary titles to be withdrawn from members of their society as in this case. Is that right?
> but you seem to imply, given the context of what I said, that you want to prevent people from being able to say things,
Please don't put your words on anyone else's mouth. If you didn't understood what someone said then try do get information instead of trying to attribute to others the absurd and entirely baseless statements that you're fabricating.
Let me adjust it: You don’t propose a solution but I infer, given the context of what I said, that you want to prevent people from being able to say things, and maybe given the context of this case prevent people sending letters asking for honorary titles to be withdrawn from members of their society as in this case. Is that right?
Those guys get a ton of criticism. Universities have been deciding to oust people for public outrage. Zuckerberg owns most of his company. Elected officials are removed by voting, and their critics are trying to reduce those votes.
Edit: My point is that all these people receive criticism. Universities seem to act on it more often, but they don’t have to. They choose to.
This project is about helping Wikipedia, which is an existing technical project. I don't see anything in his tweets that makes it sound like he's trying to solve some deep social issue.
The type of person who is adding these settings probably wants this. That is, a web browser that does one thing very well: browse the web. The title of the repo is kind of misleading in that regard, since it makes it sound like something the average user might like.
This isn't very far from religion after all. You could consider it a kind of rational spirituality.
The scientific community has its own values, and might rightly reject simplified thinking like this. And that's fine for scientists, but an individual is going to have an easier time accepting stories of pleasure and drives than stories of gene expression and neurotransmitters.