Building a contagious disease is already illegal, there are already things like KYC laws for plasmids. Trying to gate keep knowledge of biology is paying a huge societal penalty for the tiniest marginal increase in “safety”.
All the knowledge to create one has been available on the internet for decades. Heck most students who graduate with a B.S. in biology have enough knowledge to take a stab at building a bioweapon.
The constant talk of bioweapons is mostly just fear mongering. It helps set a precedent that there should be certain types of knowledge which are off-limits, and only certain anointed groups should be have access to parts of the scientific body of knowledge.
>I want to self identify and interact with other people who also self identify.
You can do that already, Facebook is pretty close to exactly what you're talking about. They do a lot of work to identify real people and de-prioritize spam/bots. You can configure your account to only be able to interact with real people if you want. Many people like anonymity though, it's important for speaking truth to power and discussing topics which are outside the Overton window.
There's a good reason that many of the United States' founding fathers used pseudonyms when writing. Anonymity and real freedom of speech are foundational to democracy. If you can put someone in jail for saying something that the government doesn't like, then the government will be able to steer discourse towards outcomes it deems acceptable, even if those outcomes subvert the will of the people.
There's no real need to have the government force all websites to always authenticate all humans. The only real argument for such a system is to move us toward dystopian authoritarianism.
I think this is a little bit oversimplified and I don't know that it's even true at all. It's basically the opposite story of what's told by "Bowling Alone".
That book was written in the year 2000, when the author observed that institutions that previously provided social fabric were all dying. The United States used to have a robust web of institutions that provided social fabric and they have mostly all gone away, and they went away because people just stopped attending them, seemingly because of lack of interest. This was then proceeded by the "problem of social alienation" that this author is talking about.
This problem of social alienation was predicted long ago by the people who worried about the collapse of institutions that provided social capital.
As someone who does organize many group events, I can tell you that it's really hard to get people to show up. A good percentage of people bail last minute or don't respond to invitations at all. The problem gets worse the older people get as well.
Created an account just to echo this. I don't agree with the author at all.
I moved to Seattle about a year ago and it's taken just as long to build something that vaguely resembles a small board game community, and I still have issues with people ghosting or refusing to play anything other than what they brought.
And despite having multiple regulars, none of them have ever invited me to anything. Not even other game nights. Multiple times I have heard something akin to "Oh yeah I invited X and Y (other regulars) to Z event" and it hurts every single time.
Two days ago, as the last two people were leaving, one asked the other if they wanted to join them for an improv festival that happened today. I love improv. They declined, so I was awkwardly like: "hey, I would love to go with you, can you send me the details when you get home?" and all I got was radio silence.
The frustrating part is that the person I asked had just gone through a rough breakup, so for the past few weeks I'd been inviting him to a bunch of stuff, even going out of my way to organize stuff just for him to get out of the house, because I thought we were good friends.
Sorry for the rant.
TL;DR: I agree that it's really hard to get people to show up and I don't know what it will take to change that, but if you figure it out, please let me know.
I have good experience with getting new friends by going to, and organizing events. I have also seen people with the exact same problem as you.
I think the core issue is what kind of event you organize. A structured board game night is a bit the same mental category as attending a conference or practicing a sport. People mainly do it for selfish reasons, they want to get better, learn something etc. I would argue that serious bowling is the same thing, but unserious bowling is not.
Personally I mainly do random hangout nights. Tell people to bring whatever and do whatever. Some people just talk, some play board games, some get slightly drunk for fun, some do wine tasting and everyone usually mingle around, switch table and group. Great way to get to know each other and figure out that person X also like Y, then you say ”we should do Y together sometime” and 50% will say ”absolutely”, and now you start having a new semi close friend you can hang out 1 on 1 with.
Fast forward a few years and you will have maybe 1-3 persons that are your closest friend but you still continue to invite 10 people to the hangouts for the whole community but get more and more time with the smaller group.
Also work on your personality. I have met some people that are lonely and clearly want some friends but there is nothing more awkward than someone trying too hard, really wanting a friend, really trying. It is strange because in my experience I get new friends when I am not thinking about making friends, just about having fun and enjoying the time regardless of outcome.
Re: Texas and Israel, that old time religion is why.
> A 2017 LifeWay poll conducted in United States found that 80% of evangelical Christians believed that the creation of Israel in 1948 was a fulfillment of biblical prophecy that would bring about Christ's return and more than 50% of Evangelical Christians believed that they support Israel because it is important for fulfilling the prophecy
Also, there’s been a long search for a red cow to sacrifice to bring about ritual purity and construct the Third Temple, which from what I understand is believed by some Christians to be a prerequisite for the return of Christ. The Jewish people behind the search just want a third temple after the Romans burned temple number two a couple thousand years ago.
Which one? There are third rails aplenty when dealing with Israel. The "secret cabal running everything" runs into how obvious the political and technical-military influences are.
Why would it be illegal? There are virtually zero drawbacks and huge advantages to these satellites. They are not rendered to scale either, in reality they are minuscule compared to the amount of available space. There’s room for millions more spacecraft.
I think it's fair to classify the advantages as "modest" not "huge." Yes, it's cool that sailboats in the middle of the Pacific can get Internet, but the vast majority of Internet users are still connected via fiber or copper. And, arguably, the existence of Starlink could enable governments to cease the rollout of terrestrial Internet, which is a modest drawback to the technology.
I've also seen reports that, as the satellites become overburdened, speeds are pretty variable. Again, not saying it's a net negative, but I just don't think there are "huge advantages" to Starlink.
As someone who worked and briefly lived in subsaharan Africa, I will say that the advantages are huge. Bandwidth alone isn't even the whole story - latency really matters too, another area where Starlink is super helpful compared to say, trying to get fiber punched in west from the southeastern parts of Africa. I have not yet mentioned the benefits of state actors not being able to cut your fiber at sea where nobody can see them.
From the community guidelines: Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously
I'd add to your list...Or do Khan Academy, learn how to purify water, find out recent grain prices a 10 hour drive away, decide if your baby's rash needs an expensive trip in to town, and so on.
What a delusional view of reality. Do you think those who live in areas with zero fixed internet infra has the time nor the resources to sit through a few hours of Khan Academy per day, or the means to build a filter capable of purifying water?
This is a pretty uncharitable take. Every largish construction company in the country uses StarLink for their many projects where Internet isn't available. Yknow, actually building the country out. It's a game changer.
I’m thinking buying a camper van, and just travel through the world. Except I need internet, everywhere.
There are no such options. Starlink is the best, but there are two main problems with it:
- In the countries where it would be the most useful, it’s not allowed to be used (Garmin has the same problem with their Fenix 8 Pro, their availability maps are a joke)
- You need to go back to your “home” country every other month (there is a non legal, thus risky, option to circumvent this for now)
There are huge military advantages right now. The US military will not willingly give up starlink, and they can use it in every country without permission.
I’m more familiar with how Starlink compares to existing publicly-available satellite internet options. Here are some brief points:
- data throughput orders of magnitude higher,
- the ability to use smaller and more portable antennas (e.g. ~100 Mbps with something the size of a textbook, currently ~2 Mbps and soon ~10s Mbps with your normal mobile phone),
- order of magnitude lower latency compared to GSO satellites.
Other constellations like Iridium dedicate large portions to use by government(s?), too, but simply do not have the throughput or total bandwidth that Starlink does. Your speeds there, on the expensive business plans that offer it, are measured in the low Kbps.
There are millions of people in Africa and rural areas around the world who have access to the internet because of these satellites. This massively reduces human suffering. Millions of people can now get medical information, farming, manufacturing techniques, talk to experts around the world. Connecting people to the wealth of human knowledge has a huge impact on reducing suffering. It also just directly saves lives by connecting people in an emergency to people who can help. Additionally, Ukraine would have lost the war a long time ago if these satellites didn’t exist. You could go on for a long time listing the ways these satellites reduce suffering.
Government could be the creator of this just like it was with GPS. We are very tolerant of government innovation and infrastructure when it’s a military resource. But when it’s a pure public good everyone claims it’s wasteful or less efficient than the private sector.
Why do we need to let this be a monopoly controlled by one person. A king in a board room is still a king.
This is the opposite of a monopoly, Blue Origin and Rocket Lab are both planning competing constellations. Eventually there will be many competing constellations in orbit delivering service.
>Government could be the creator
Okay so why wasn’t it? The lifetime funding for NASA is 700+ billion dollars. With that incredible sum of money they weren’t able to even make reusable rockets let alone the satellite constellation. Launching a constellation with NASA’s pre-SpaceX approach (using Russian rockets) would have been literally impossible because Russia could have never built nearly enough rockets. Launching even a small fraction of Starlink would have consumed the entire NASA budget several times over.
Comparing GPS and Starlink doesn’t really even make sense because the scope of each project is so vastly different. Starlink if delivered by the same people who made GPS, would have been literally impossible, because the mass to orbit is orders of magnitude larger than the GPS project. Starlink was only possible because of the efficiency provided by SpaceX’s reusable rockets and the leading minds in the government literally said that reusable rockets were impossible and impractical until SpaceX actually delivered reliable reusable rockets.
What percentage of market share do they have in launches? In awarded contracts? In satellites in the sky?
Also pointing to blue origin which is substantially related to the Amazon monopoly isn’t the best refutation of my argument. When all competition and innovation requires behemoth monopolies rather than ecosystems of entrepreneurship and capital markets capitalism has been replaced with oligarchy.
Nasas mandate wasn’t to build reusable rockets. They built the space shuttle, which was reusable. The GPS network is a constellation of satellites. They also launched numerous spacecraft that landed on planets and moons. If we wanted nasa to do what spaceX has done it could. At then end of the day teams of humans do things. If we want the teams of humans in government to do things we can arrange them to do it. I don’t see anyone saying private military, fire departments or police departments are significantly better than public government systems.
Could logically, logistically, financially and technologically also require politically. That’s the only thing that has been missing. When there was a political will there was a space race. Remove the political motive and suddenly it isn’t happening. Why do you conflate all of those abilities when it’s merely a political problem.
Before SpaceX demonstrated viability of reusable rockets nearly every single government industry expert on the topic dismissed the idea of reusable rockets as impractical and infeasible.
It’s not simply a matter of political will, the quality of what governments have been able to produce just is no match for what companies can do. It’s the same for rockets as it is for cars, computers, or anything else. Ever heard of a government-made car? There were a few that came out of the Soviet Union and they were laughably bad and only obtainable in small quantities. Rockets and satellites are the same way, the government just does not have the same incentives to produce things that companies have.
The proof is in the rockets. Compare SpaceX’s rockets with any government developed rockets anywhere in the world, it’s not even close.
Falcon 9, Heavy, Starship, Dragon. The government never would have come close to developing any craft like these let alone being able to launch a constellation like Starlink.
Dude. Stop worshipping private companies. At the end of the day human organizations creating things whether it’s a government, a partnership, a corporation. The US government created GPS, the stealth bomber, all kinds of basic tech. Thomas Edison created things as an individual and by creating a lab. Those two realities can coexist. But they have trade offs. ATT being a monopoly was bad for consumers. But breaking up ATT resulted in bell labs being disbanded and a lot of innovation stopped.
I would fully acknowledge that spaceX pushed space exploration and commercialization forward. But you have to admit 1. The government paid for that by awarding contracts. 2. A monopoly isn’t an agreement we have to accept.
>The government paid for that by awarding contracts.
Only about 20% of SpaceX's income is government contracts, and for that 20% the government receives an absolute bargain. Compare cost per launch of the space shuttle or a Russian rocket to a Falcon 9/Falcon Heavy.
>A monopoly isn’t an agreement we have to accept.
There isn't a monopoly anywhere in sight, you use that word without any understanding of its meaning obviously. Rocket Lab, Blue Origin, Relativity, etc are all competing with SpaceX. Rocket Lab and Blue Origin are both planning their own exact copies of Starlink.
Incentives drive outcomes, the government lacks incentives to produce high quality objects at scale, there's a century's worth of data to prove that point.
Compare the cost per satellite to operate the GPS constellation vs the Starlink constellation. The private company is an order of magnitude more efficient. GPS was launched in an era where the government had a monopoly on spaceflight, if it were launched today by SpaceX, the cost would be an order of magnitude cheaper.
>The stealth bomber
I don't know which bomber you're talking about but if you're talking about the B-2, that was developed and manufactured by private companies.
The government is great for funding basic tech, i.e. redirecting taxpayer money back into the private sector with a specific goal. Arguing that we should let the government have a monopoly on spaceflight is like arguing that we should let the government have a monopoly on building cell phones or cars.
Do you have any specific examples of how new state regulations actually eased the regulatory burden for building something? Adding new regulations at the state level almost never removes the hyper local restrictions, it just adds a new layer of compliance on top.
How can the solution to burdensome regulations be MORE regulation?
A law banning certain types of regulations at a lower level I would not call “state regulation” I would call that deregulation.
I suppose I agree with you that the solution to burdensome regulation is to write new laws which forcibly deregulate lower level things. But calling laws like that “state regulation” is true only in the most technical sense. Your example is a textbook example of deregulation.
The problem most ignore is that you will either have public regulation from the government or private regulation from companies.
Would you rather have a published regulation that is subject to democratic and judicial review and applies equally to every one. Or a company terms of service that forces binding arbitration and your only recourse is to not use the service?
I lived in a neighborhood with an hoa and it was the worst form of regulation I've ever dealt with. I own a health care provider and the regulation when it was direct medicaid was infinitely better than after it was privatizatized with managed care.
This is incredibly regressive thinking. Any technology or human progress changes the world around us. Do you lament the construction of new buildings or roads because they change the natural landscape? Would you prefer we never explore space or build anything new?
IMO it’s a marvel to look up at the sky and see man made objects flying through the sky, it’s incredibly inspiring to see the great feats of engineering that humans are capable of.
Also if you look up at the night sky you can still see ALL the stars, it’s just that you can now see a few extra tiny dots flying by, it subtracts nothing from the average stargazer’s view.
Your children will get much more amazing and inspiring sights from space telescopes and spacecraft that this new space industry will enable. They will benefit from new science and manufacturing techniques that are enabled by cheap access to space.
>when it’s the government
The government had a monopoly on space access for the past half century and barely managed to put a handful of extremely expensive objects in space. They were never capable of creating reusable rockets or lowering the cost of access to space in a meaningful way. Maybe it feels nicer when governments do it, but cheap access to space will never happen if they are the ones running the show.
I am a progressive. But ownership of the commons is something that requires careful policy decisions. The same applies to utilities, the open ocean, wireless spectrum.
We shouldn’t allow monopolies in the name of progress or the monopolistic rent seeking will stifle progress.
The government could have absolutely done all of this and more if there was any commitment to the investment. Instead nasa had its budget gutted.
My kids won’t have a future with any opportunity if resources are so concentrated that their bargaining power can’t have any effect in the world.
>The government could have absolutely done all of this
Yeah they totally could have, so why didn’t they? World governments have had massive budgets for space agencies for like 70 years, yet they were never able to build reusable rockets or do anything other than send a handful of extremely overpriced novelty science projects into space.
You say they could do it, but there’s no evidence to support that they ever actually would.
No private company would have been able to bootstrap the basic research upon which spaceX is now building its business.
The government isn’t a commercial for profit enterprise. It serves a different function, specifically providing services for which markets won’t be functional like fire departments, policing, broad categories of infrastructure.
And your argument is a distraction. Just because government doesn’t do something well doesn’t justify granting a monopoly to a private actor. And if a monopoly is necessary then it should be a regulated utility like power generation, telecom etc.
The space shuttle was laughably bad compared to SpaceX’s rockets and they were not really rapidly reusable. They required an extensive refurbishment which involved disassembling the entire craft. The process took upwards of 6 months to re-fly. It also cost close to 1 BILLION per mission to fly it (that’s more than 10x what it costs to fly a SpaceX rocket).
What exactly are you saying is a monopoly? SpaceX is not a monopoly by any stretch, they are competing with Rocket Lab, Blue Origin, ULA, Relativity, and others.
>providing services for which markets won’t be functional
We are talking about a situation (launches, satellite constellations) where the government had a monopoly for 70 years and then transitioned to a market model. Since switching to a market model mass to orbit has gone through the roof and costs have fallen off a cliff. So much so that entirely new types of missions are now possible because of the increased access to space (Starlink is one such example).
We are specifically seeing the opposite of your “markets won’t be functional” statement; the market is so much better than the state-run enterprise that the idea of returning to the old model would be unthinkable.
By this logic we should also enjoy every time someone puts a motorway through woodland. Just look at the human achievement embodied in all that concrete!
Well some creations are more marvelous than others, maybe you wouldn’t find a concrete road beautiful or interesting, though arguably you totally could (many people still to this day find the enduring road/aqueduct infrastructure of Ancient Rome to be beautiful and inspiring), but looking at a city skyline with massive skyscrapers and intricate infrastructure is very inspiring.
Humans are capable of incredible feats of engineering and many man-made things are extremely inspiring.
All the knowledge to create one has been available on the internet for decades. Heck most students who graduate with a B.S. in biology have enough knowledge to take a stab at building a bioweapon.
The constant talk of bioweapons is mostly just fear mongering. It helps set a precedent that there should be certain types of knowledge which are off-limits, and only certain anointed groups should be have access to parts of the scientific body of knowledge.
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