Comments by "David Terr" (@dcterr1) on "Joe Scott" channel.

  1. Fascinating, especially the astronomical computer! Makes you wonder how much of our current technology may become lost in the future.
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  2. Fascinating history of airships! I'd like to see them come back and maybe even take a ride in one someday. Perhaps that's more likely than going into space!
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  3. @ERICKSON I don't believe in heaven or hell but I do believe in karma and reincarnation. In particular, I think in the long run, everyone gets what they deserve, which means in part that their suffering equals the amount of suffering they cause others.
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  4. Intelligent life may be exceedingly rare, but we're nearly at the point of being able to create artificial intelligent life, perhaps even exceeding our own intelligence.
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  5. To me, one exciting thing about automation is that is may actually make socialism work! If machines are able to do all of our manual labor, then perhaps, given sufficient free education (provided by tax money), everyone will be able to work at interesting and self-fulfilling jobs rather than be required to work to make ends meet.
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  6. I could go on and on about this topic, but I'll try to keep it brief. I believe in democratic socialsm, which is NOT communism because it does not involve autocracy. I think everyone has certain basic needs, such as food, clothing, shelter, education, and health care, which should be guaranteed to everyone by the government. This would require everyone to pay much higher taxes, particularly the rich. I also think there should be limits on how much money people can make, because let's face it - how much better off is someone with $20 million versus someone with $10 million? I know I'll get a lot of criticism for my views, but that's part of the beauty of living in a democracy, so feel free to attack me all you want, but try to keep it civil.
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  7. I find it sadly ironic that people are now considering launching sun shades 1.5 million kilometers into space which can only realistically be built by robotic factories on the moon, while about 50 years ago, Gerard O'Neill proposed building space colonies just 400,000 kilometers away, also with materials from the moon, and that never happened!
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  8.  @truthwatcher2096  Perhaps not, but this is what I believe.
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  9. Just two words: democratic socialism
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  10. I was a big fan of Gerard O'Neill in the late 70s, but looking back, I was pretty naive to believe his vision had a chance of success, at least in the way he imagined it, as well as his timeline.
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  11. Judy Garland: "Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore!"
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  12. I wonder if aliens are communicating with gravity waves.
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  13. How about Apollo 13? This movie may not count as science fiction, but I heard that the recreation of Mission Control at Houston was so precise that many of the movie crew, who had worked there, became so convinced that they were really there that they looked for the bathroom on the set where it had been on Mission Control! Of course, another thing they got right was the zero gravity scenes, which were filmed aboard the "Vomit Comet", a plane that flew in a parabolic arc simulating zero gravity.
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  14. How horrible!!! It's really sick to realize how inhumane people can be, and justify it in the name of "science"!
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  15. I think intelligent life may be exceedingly rare, but I'm willing to bet that single-cell life isn't so rare. Perhaps some single-cell extraterrestrial life exists in our own solar system. Europa, for one, seems like a good place to look for it.
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  16. I started graduate school in physics in 1985, right around the time of the first string theory revolution. Naturally I was very excited about it, particularly all the hoopla of how it could be the Holy Grail of physics, namely the Theory of Everything. However, I quickly learned that the math behind it was impossible. Moreover, as it turned out, it wasn't at all the Theory of Everything that it promised to be - more like a Theory of Nothing! As of 2021, string theory has yet to make a single testable prediction, so one could make a good case that it isn't really science, or in Lee Smolin's words, "not even wrong!". I'll become much more excited about string theory once someone performs an experiment which confirms one of its predictions, but until then, I'll continue to dismiss it as theology and occupy my time with more useful stuff.
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  17. I'm all for UBI
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  18. I agree with your views on space travel, though I think it's unfortunate that the only civilians that can now go up are billionaires. Hopefully this will change soon.
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  19. I'm not worried about how the universe will end, since that won't happen for at least several billion years. But I AM worried about the possibility of extinction of human life within the next 100 years, even though I probably won't be alive to see it happen. I think we should all be worried about this!
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  20. As someone who has studied science in detail, including quantum mechanics, I'm wary of any unfalsifiable claims, especially if they seem absurd.
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  21. This idea is pretty nuts IMO! Why not just put all our efforts into developing fusion energy, which when viable will remove our dependence on fossil fuels and meet all our energy needs. I believe this could be accomplished within the next 10 years if we put enough money and manpower into it, and by enough money, I mean considerably less than a quadrillion dollars!
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  22. I don't think we'll get fusion energy until we really need it, which won't be too long from now.
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  23. I don't think the SSC would have allowed us to discover the graviton, since this is a very WEAK and massless particle.
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  24. I saw an estimate once that it the Big Freeze scenario, all is not lost, since in approximately 10^10^10^56 years, a new universe will tunnel out of the vacuum.
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  25. I'm not crazy about Hyperloop. Like you, I'd rather see Maglev in the USA. Tunnels aren't a bad idea either. Here's an interesting fact about tunnels: In theory, with a tunnel in a vacuum, you could travel between any two points on Earth in less than 90 minutes, just due to gravity.
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  26. Personally I'd much rather live on an O'Neill cylinder than in a mile-high Earth-based structure.
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  27. Great video, but it seems like I watched this last Thursday.
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  28. Tommy said, "I Am The Light" (from the rock opera Tommy by The Who)
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  29. I like the ekpyrotic universe theory (hope I spelled that right!) a lot better than some other far-our theories of cosmology for no other reason than that it appears to be testable. It will be interesting to see whether it holds up to experiment.
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  30. I think it's highly unfortunate that poor African Americans have gotten blamed for widespread drug abuse time and time again, while when rich white people have used them, it's been acceptable.
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  31. I think the biggest problem with cults is that most people basically act like sheep and don't think for themselves.
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