“‘The ET hypothesis has very little predicative power,’ Wright said, noting that you can invoke it to explain just about anything—the so-called “aliens in the gaps” fallacy.”

Cool. dismissed.

Yep, and what I’m worried about is random people on the internet using this out of context to say that goal of strong AI is impossible—because magic brain box can’t be reverse engineered!—or something equally hand wavy.

I actually get this joke. What a dweeb I am!

Yeah, it makes sense given what we already know about quantum mechanics. Until an measurement is made, all three particles exist in both holes in superposition.

I get the joke but I have to share something with you, whenever someone says “we shouldn’t do this research” a little part of my brain screams in agony and demands, “Why? Why can’t we explore this? Who says so?”

If we’ve learned any lesson from the last 500 years of scientific research, naive intuition simply has nothing to do with most of reality. Naive intuition:

This might be pretty good. Below the radar, no hype or buzz, a new writing talent, not part of any franchise mill—and a revival of an old foe: nuclear war.

Or Red Dwarf’s Jake Bullet:

Thanks very much!

There’s a short story by Cordwainer Smith, “Scanners Live in Vain,” where he imagines that the entire ceiling of houses had a force field just for holding and juicing plugs for electrical devices. To plug something in, you just throw the plug up into the air, the field would magnetically catch it and current would…

Look, Gabriel Perez-Giz is an actual astrophysicist and an expert who specialized in both special and general relativity. He works for National Science Foundation. Why don’t you e-mail him and tell him why he’s wrong. In other words:

Bailey and Olivaw it wasn’t.

No arguments from me.

Well, not being a graphics algorithm person, I’ll take your word for it.

Like the musical accompaniment for these. Also, having never been there myself, these do take a little of the mystique out and make NYC seem like just another place, a real place where people live and work—which is a good thing I think.

Or a measly dollar.

Yep, when you sit and really think about it for a moment, it is astounding that we can do this. And that more and more countries are getting involved in doing this. China’s on the Moon and India is on Mars. More will be coming.

All the stars for this.

Hmmm. I wonder if this could be harnessed to provide new ways of cooling electronics? Or maybe a new way to understand superconductivity? It could pan out in so many ways.