03 JUN 2016 by ideonexus
"No Man's Sky" as Humanist Adventure
The true value of No Man’s Sky lies in something both incredibly simple and breathtaking. The point of the game is to discover and share knowledge with the other inhabitants of the universe. It’s almost as if the developers took the Enlightenment-era Encycloédie and turned it into a science fiction video game; a true testament to the best qualities and powers of the Information Age. While the sheer size may overwhelm some or risk boredom for others, players shouldn’t ignore the larger... 1 
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notes07 NOV 2014 by ideonexus
Matrioshka Brain Simplified
"Take all the planets in a star system and dismantle them," she explains. "Turn them into dust – structured nanocomp, powered by heat exchangers, spread in concentric orbits around the central star. The inner orbitals run close to the melting point of iron, the outer ones are cold as liquid nitrogen, and each layer runs off the waste heat of the next shell in. It's like a Russian doll made out of Dyson spheres, shell enclosing shell enclosing shell, but it's not designed to support human li...Folksonomies: futurism transhumanism
Folksonomies: futurism transhumanism
1 08 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
The Case for Robotic Space Exploration
In a dispassionate comparison of the relative values of human and robotic spaceflight, the only surviving motivation for continuing human spaceflight is the ideology of adventure. But only a tiny number of Earth's six billion inhabitants are direct participants. For the rest of us, the adventure is vicarious and akin to that of watching a science fiction movie. At the end of the day, I ask myself whether the huge national commitment of technical talent to human spaceflight and the ever-presen... 1 notes
notesOnly a tiny percentage of Earthlings get to go into space, for the rest of us it's a vicarious experience.
18 MAY 2012 by ideonexus
1847 Speculation About Extraterrestrials
In general I would be cautious against … plays of fancy and would not make way for their reception into scientific astronomy, which must have quite a different character. Laplace's cosmogenic hypotheses belong in that class. Indeed, I do not deny that I sometimes amuse myself in a similar manner, only I would never publish the stuff. My thoughts about the inhabitants of celestial bodies, for example, belong in that category. For my part, I am (contrary to the usual opinion) convinced ... th...Folksonomies: xenobiology
Folksonomies: xenobiology
1 On the sun trees would be larger, but would break apart if made of the same material as those on Earth.
28 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
The Earth is Not the Center of the Universe
To a body of infinite size there can be ascribed neither center nor boundary ... Just as we regard ourselves as at the center of that universally equidistant circle, which is the great horizon and the limit of our own encircling ethereal region, so doubtless the inhabitants of the moon believe themselves to be at the center (of a great horizon) that embraces this earth, the sun, and the stars, and is the boundary of the radii of their own horizon. Thus the earth no more than any other world i... 1 notes
notesGiordano Bruno's logical argument that the earth cannot be the center of the Universe, because the universe is infinite in size and something infinite has not center. He would be executed by the church for this heresy.
24 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Inferring the Universe From Our Limited Perspective
It may seem rash indeed to draw conclusions valid for the whole universe from what we can see from the small corner to which we are confined. Who knows that the whole visible universe is not like a drop of water at the surface of the earth? Inhabitants of that drop of water, as small relative to it as we are relative to the Milky Way, could not possibly imagine that beside the drop of water there might be a piece of iron or a living tissue, in which the properties of matter are entirely diffe...Folksonomies: induction
Folksonomies: induction
1 notes
notesWe are like the inhabitants of a drop of water, unable to imagine other elements and molecules outside of it.
12 JUN 2011 by ideonexus
If We Only Saw the Stars One Night Every 100 Years
We lay and looked up at the sky and the millions of stars that blazed in darkness. The night was so still that we could hear the buoy on the ledges out beyond the mouth of the bay. Once or twice a word spoken by someone on the far shore was carried across the clear air. A few lights burned in the cottages. Otherwise, there was no reminder of other human life....
It occurred to me that if this were a sight that could be seen only once in a century or even once in a human generation, this litt...Everyone would come out to wonder at them. Instead we never look at them.
08 JUN 2011 by ideonexus
Eating Fish During Pregnancy
I dive deep into the research, its strong currents pushing me first one way—fish is good!—and then the other—mercury is bad!—and finally surface with a seemingly obvious conclusion: eat fish, lots of it, just not the mercury-laden kind. This is harder than it sounds. Fish, to me, has meant a pink slab of tuna steak or a creamy slice of swordfish (or that coveted tuna-salad sandwich). Now I set about getting acquainted with the ocean’s other inhabitants: small fish at the bottom of ... 1 notes
notesHealthy for the baby, but complicated due to mercury.
