Space enthusiasts are always trying to sell their fetish with this line, but the fact is that technology development is not some generic facility; if you develop technology devoted to getting things up into orbit, it will basically give you the expertise to do that. It doesn't, say, develop your semiconductor design, biochemistry, medicine, agriculture, or whatever else your country might need. It basically helps you build weapons, the main reason people get so excited about rocketry. This is the last thing India needs.
if you develop technology devoted to getting things up into orbit, it will basically give you the expertise to do that.
The key word being devoted of course. If you fail to acknowledge any benefits from the space program other than getting things into orbit, then yes it'll be hard to see any value in space exploration beyond doing it for its own sake, which you may or may not see any value in since you yourself label it a fetish.
However the larger benefits of technology yielded by the space program are undeniable, including in some of the same fields you mentioned. From wikipedia
>NASA reports that 444,000 lives have been saved, 14,000 jobs have been created, 5 billion dollars in revenue has been generated, and there has been 6.2 billion dollars in cost reduction due to spin-off programs from NASA research in collaboration with various companies. Of the many beneficial NASA spinoff technologies there has been advancements in the fields of health and medicine, transportation, public safety, consumer goods, energy and environment, information technology, and industrial productivity. Multiple products and innovations used in the daily life are results of space generated research. Solar panels, water-purification systems, dietary formulas and supplements, space suit materials in clothing, and global search and rescue systems are but a few examples of the beneficiary spinoffs that have been produced.
You may hand wave and say "oh but that could have been all discovered without going to space." Perhaps, but your thesis seems to be space exploration is a fetish with no benefits beyond making space exploration more efficient, which is patently untrue.
It's not a hand wave - my argument is that those things could all be better developed, and indeed have been, by programs that are directly focused on that kind of technology development. Ancillary technologies are nice, but why settle for ancillary development that MIGHT yield things that are useful, instead of directly focusing your technology development on those useful things in the first place?
Because you get the benefits of space exploration and the secondary benefits as well. For those that support space exploration that's enough. For those that view space exploration as a fetishistic waste of money I don't know what could possibly convince them otherwise. It'd be interesting to know.
Yeah, where would we be without LASIK? I'll also note that that article notably elides things like ICBMs and the other myriad military applications, since it is clearly intended as a puff piece to make us view space technologies as benevolent and positive.
As for my tone, perhaps you are right that I don't need to employ ridicule; but I wish to, because I feel contempt for this position so strongly I want to make it known. Space fetishism is a diversion that exists to bilk engineers into careers and positions that are in aid of the military.
Would you please stop posting in the flamewar style to HN? That includes name-calling like "fetish", which the site guidelines also ask you specifically to avoid.
Edit: alas, your comment history indicates that you've been using this site primarily for ideological battle rather than curiosity. We ban accounts that do that regardless of what they're battling for, because these two things aren't compatible, the one drowns out the other, and HN is for curiosity. If you'd please review the guidelines and use the site as intended, we'd be grateful.
You might also find these links helpful for getting the original spirit of the site:
Actually, would you please ban me? I'm not sure i agree with you about ideology vs. curiosity, I'd say rather that ideology is one of the primary things I am curious about and something I appreciate about HN is that there are smart people here willing to discuss it.
But I do think my comments suffer from a meanness I'd like to avoid, and that my use of this site is something like a nicotine habit; I'd appreciate the nudge towards quitting.
Ahhh, you're commenting on your contempt for the military, I see that now. I didn't get that at first, from your apparent comment about economics. ("the fact is that technology development is not some generic facility; if you develop technology devoted to getting things up into orbit, it will basically give you the expertise to do that. It doesn't, say, develop your semiconductor design, biochemistry, medicine, agriculture, or whatever else your country might need.")
Both the space programs and the military have well documented positive direct and indirect effects on private business, and both have many spinoff technologies that do benefit society. That is in addition to some well documented negative impacts, not to mention wars and death. But you didn't really want to talk about the economics, right?
If you just don't want to build weapons and don't think we should as a society, that's a reasonable view to hold, I can certainly find some ground to agree with you. Personally, I'll just suggest choosing clarity and not ridicule might help get that point across and convince more people. The sarcasm and ridicule tend to alienate, especially if you're talking directly to people who might enjoy space topics and would otherwise agree with you that weapon building is ugly business. You're choosing to ridicule innocent bystanders, rather than the people making weapons.
> Space fetishism is a diversion that exists to bilk engineers into careers and positions that are in aid of the military.
That makes it sound like a conspiracy theory, as if nobody would be interested in space were it not for the sneaky military. Isaac Newton had a space fetish and died before NASA or the US military industrial complex began. You didn't get tricked into a NASA career, right? I know a few engineers that have worked in space & military applications, and all the ones I know participated knowingly.
Well, at least in the case of India, most of what you pointed out has been directly benefitted by the space industry. India has its first major semiconductor foundry operated under the Department of Space. And the space agency spends a significant part of its on-ground budget on developing outreach programs for farmers to teach them how to use meteorological and soil data to get a better, more reliable harvest. Also, India is one of the few countries to have a civilian space agency led solely by engineers. The only time it rubs shoulders with the military is when it sources spacecraft and launch vehicle parts from the national defence supplier or when it shares data with the military in order to satisfy the government's political mandate.
Most industries get their start in the military because that is where the money always is; however, semiconductors have definitely moved on to other applications, whereas rocketry remains mostly about making missiles.
Exactly this; also, as a computational biologist I cringe at the stacking of dubious models that produced this "mapping". First is the "interactome", a terrible way to model biology, which is used to predict drug interactions, a highly dubious proposition, which is used to identify similarly-acting molecules in foods, again highly dubious - this isn't even GIGO, it's GIGIGIGO. And at the end of the day, none of this crummy methodology is going to result in any wisdom superior to "eat more kale". It's unfortunate that this is the prism certain investigators have trapped themselves in.
I find those terms particularly perplexing because the idea of ridiculing people for their sensitivity to particular political concerns is an exercise in demonstrating your sensitivity to particular political concerns. Cura te ipsum!
"Tu quoque, (Latin for "you also"), or the appeal to hypocrisy, is a fallacy that intends to discredit the opponent's argument by asserting the opponent's failure to act consistently in accordance with its conclusion(s)."
I'm guessing you are not a parent. I have a toddler and a one month old. It is rewarding in many ways, but it is also crushingly boring, repetitive work. It's also overwhelmingly placed on women; men simply don't do as much child care by a factor of probably ten. I'm pretty sure no woman is trying to have her cake here, and every single one would choose to have help so they could do anything else on occasion.
before we had children my dream was to work part time so i could spend a lot of time with my children. when we had children, i got that opportunity, because my wife got a good paying job and i was a struggling freelancer.
and i hated it. it was boring, unfulfilling, and i didn't feel that i got enough time to work (which was where i'd seek that fulfillment)
when working, my wife often talks about how she'd like to stay home to take care of the kids, but since i work from home i know that she also feels unfulfilled if she is not at work.
we are fortunate that we live in a country where having a nanny is common and socially acceptable (means, it's not considered a rich peoples privilege), (most often it's a relative like the kids grandparents).
i eventually developed a theory that men are really privileged to live in a society where it is acceptable for them to leave this work to their partner.
Claiming success is a social construct seems to me to be trivially true, not a staggering claim. Intelligence is less obvious since there is a vast literature around it, but, again, it is clearly a social construct; we must struggle to agree on a useful definition of intelligence, therefore it is a social construct.
I'm also not sure what "scientific evidence" would look like here. You seem to have had some sort of allergic reaction to the assertion of social construction and retreated instinctively to familiar but hollow epistemic grounds.
>we must struggle to agree on a useful definition of intelligence, therefore it is a social construct.
This makes everything a social construct, which negates any usefulness of the distinction. Having to agree to definitions cannot be a realistic definition of social construct, because it's a basic part of using language.
Yes? And? This is one of the most profound and basic observations of twentieth century philosophy. That is what social construction is, it underlies our basic notions of perception and reality.
What you've said is not profound. When you go around saying "the sky is blue" people aren't wrong to assume you meant something relevant, rather than just tossing out vague and trivial statements.
I'm not sure what to do with this remark. You said my definition of social construction was untenable because the implications were too broad and you seemed to find that frightening. I responded by saying that social construction IS a theory with broad implications and gave you a reference to read, since you seem to be unfamiliar with these concepts. Your response seems a non sequitur.
This is garbage. Contrary to popular belief, remission is in fact common in schizophrenia, so n=2 demonstrates precisely nothing. In addition, there is no evidence that schizophrenics have any brain dysfunction other than that caused by taking neuroleptics for decades.
It's debatable how much antipsychotics help, but people do become ill in the first place, and do develop brain damage over time independently of the drugs. Psychosis is natural and not healthy.
The problem I see is not that there is a vast conspiracy to push useless drugs, but that the drug industry inherently is geared towards developing the "minimum viable product" which means anything that has a just barely statistically significant effect in studies. Which means everything new is just possibly useful, but quite possibly not.
Yikes. This case study isn't in any way conclusive, but it also doesn't claim to be. You need a better reason than that to write it off as "garbage".
I have bipolar disorder. My uncle had schizophrenia. YEARS without an episode AND without medication is an exciting prospect for many people, including myself. I don't understand why you are so negative towards preliminary findings that may point to a route of treatment that doesn't require neuroleptics, which as you correctly point out, can cause cognitive impairment.
Also, it's been known almost 100 years that the ketogenic diet has neuroprotective attributes. There's strong evidence of its efficacy for epilepsy, and mounting evidence for all sorts of other conditions.
I'm inclined to agree. That being said, having been prescribed zyprexa for type 1 bipolar, anything that leads treatment away from the standard trope of what in my opinion is nothing other than a strong off-label tranquilizer for these symptoms is a positive thing in some regard.
I wonder if Wellbutrin/Zyban/bupropion is underutilized. It's well known that people with chronic mental illness, particularly schizophrenia, tend to smoke, as it seems like nicotine helps somehow. So I wonder if a "quit-smoking" drug is really a good treatment, because it enhances the sensitivity of the brain to whatever normally stimulates those receptors.
However, I know a lot of times this and similar drugs seem to stimulate impulsive, almost manic behavior when they are first started. A family member of an acquaintance took Chantix to quit smoking and nearly wrecked his life through uncharacteristically reckless behavior.
It's amazing what medicine can and cannot do. While it's great to think that medicine and diet and exercise arranged in some unique fashion will place Schizophrenia/Bipolar into remission, there are an incredible number of variables in play in mental health and physical health overall, and they seem to vary in everyone.
So I take most of these articles with a huge grain of salt. Perhaps this is a nudge in the right direction, and maybe it will encourage further research into diet and mental illness. Personally I would support this as I'm far from enthusiastic concerning psych meds in general, but unfortunately they're the best we have it seems.
And yes, if you have had manic episodes, taking an anti-depressant should be done with care. Actually I would suggest doing everything possible and would recommend using any psych medication as a last resort for any health related situation.
No, this is not right. Most power generation is done by steam in the US (85%). Steam can get much hotter than boiling water, and it is cheap and makes no waste.
That doesn't have to do with temperature, it has to do with the efficiency of the engine.
Gas burns at a much higher energy than steam, so it's much easier to extract more energy with less fuel, making for a smaller form factor.
I should clarify I was talking about an engine here. Not a power generator.
What I said is correct though. You can compensate for lower temperatures with a more efficient engine & energy conversion, and of course more fuel/input.
Neither the “engine”/“power generator” distinction you are attempting to make, not the statement “gas burns at a higher energy than steam”, is physically meaningful. It is true that supercritical steam turbines operate at a lower temperature than gas turbines, and if the cold reservoir of the Carnot engines in question were at the same temperature, that would indeed make gas turbines potentially more efficient. But in fact gas turbine outlet temperatures are much higher. This is why adding a steam engine to the output of a gas turbine makes it more efficient. (This is called a “combined cycle power plant”.)
The actually relevant distinction is that gas turbines, like other internal combustion engines, have a much higher ramp rate than external-combustion engines like a steam turbine. This makes “peaker” gas turbines a crucial resource for establishing power grid stability.
I am not a real engineer; I have never built a working heat engine, unless you count rebuilding a Volkswagen engine. But I'm glad my comment was helpful!
Thanos doesn't understand exponential growth. If you actually want to have an effect, cutting a population in half does nothing, it'll just grow back in whatever the doubling time is, probably on the order of decades; you need to decimate or eradicate.
This is exactly the kind of logic that led to Silent Spring. "We think we have a viable solution, we haven't really evaluated any of the side effects, but we need to act, and act fast!" We went through this with DDT. It worked; we killed all of the insects. It had side effects we didn't anticipate. Then it stopped working due to resistance.
The question is, did we learn anything from this history, or are we going to be equally incautious with each new technology we come across?
