Real Life Forums

I have to wonder about the wisdom of allowing people to think of machines as human. Aside from the potentially incalculable disruption to healthy human interaction, does anyone else see a whole new category of psychological obsessions and various other issues stemming from this?

praetorian wrote (View Post): So, if American labor is screwed either way, and we gain some benefit from the trade agreement, why not go for it? "Well, my hand is gonna burn and rot off after being scalded by piping-hot BBQ concentrate...so why not go ahead and eat it? Waste not want not!"...

I'm sorry, this just seemed to fit here somehow.

http://www.ebaumsworld.com/flash/endofworld.html

Not to make light of this thread, but this video sort of embodies the ridiculousness of the worst case scenario. I don't think it would come to this.

I bet companies wouldn't export jobs as much if their own employees would be willing to take a little cut in order to help the company stay competetive. The "take one for the team" mentality doesn't really ever seem to play out. When a company cuts wages, the employees look for better pay...

Space

Intelligent Design -- creationism -- is a manipulation of definitions, an attempt to change the rules by some people who think they're clever enough to get religion back in school, and who usually have little or no real grasp of scientific principle. If that happens, then we may as well re-introduc...

To blithely declare ignorance on an entire group of people is not only deliberately inflammatory, but ignorant in itself. The ID/creationists movements have a lot of good points, and should not be so casually dismissed. It is important to remember that evolution is a theory, not a law, and as such i...

How often do you people drop buttered bread? Must be frequently.

Most quasar radiation could be explained as the result of the super acceleration of partials as they are dragged toward the event horizon, I believe the article called the effect a natural particle accelerator. The hawking radiation would be lost in the background of the massive output of an entire ...

You need to re-read your information. Everything they consume is destroyed and ejected as base matter or hawking radiation. That is not as yet a proven absolute. I don't necessarily disagree with the theory (in fact I think it fills some holes), but all of this is still highly theoretical. Even if ...

Secondarily, black holes don't really "grow". Anything they "consume" gets completely crushed in the center and maintains only 3 features, being mass, charge, and angular momentum, and is then all ejected at superhigh velocities. A tiny black hole created in a lab would simply p...

Basically it is just for them to vent. Not that there is anything especially wrong with that, but I do see Deacon's point. Aside from personal self-expression, it serves no purpose. But then again, personal self-expression is something everyone is entitled to, no matter how pointless it seems. Those...

Then...what about dolphins? So long and thanks for all the fish?

I did say virtually everything, not everything. And while dolphins may meet the so called requirements needed to develop sentience, they have not. One more hole in the theory I suppose.

I wasn't aware the "Higher developed" meant more grey matter. It's a commonly held theory. We are the only sentient life we can study in a living state, and virtually every other living thing has a walnut in comparison to our brains. Mix with human pride, and the conclusion seems natural.

I don't think any nation can claim absolution from provocation. If there is tension between two nations and one is harassing another, it is unreasonable to assume that the other will sit idly by. Ultimately, nations tend to behave like armed and angry children that will pull each other’s hair at the...