LucyDuke
staring at the clock
Pure sarcasm of course. But I do disagree, some education is junk but schooling definitely can help you learn to think.
Theoretically possible inventions you would like to see?
- Thread starter Xanikk999
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Pure sarcasm of course. But I do disagree, some education is junk but schooling definitely can help you learn to think.
Get a job and buy one.
G-Max
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I find the opposite to be true: school teaches you to not think. Oh sure, there might be a lesson about what the Federal Reserve system was allegedly intended to do, but how many explain the bowels of its inner workings? How many even mention the fact that Congressman Charles August Lindbergh said "This Act establishes the most gigantic trust on earth. When the President signs this bill, the invisible government by the Monetary Power will be legalized. The people may not know it immediately, but the day of reckoning is only a few years removed. The trusts will soon realize that they have gone too far even for their own good... Wall Streeters could not cheat us if you Senators and Representatives did not make a humbug of Congress... The greatest crime of Congress is its currency system. The worst legislative crime of the ages is perpetrated by this banking bill", and Congressman Louis T. McFadden, Chairman of the House Committee on Banking and Currency from 1920–31, accused the Federal Reserve of deliberately causing the Great Depression? How many schools tell you to look at Title 12, Chapter 3, subchapter XII, § 411 of the US Code, which states that Federal Reserve Notes are to be issued exclusively for the purpose of "making advances to Federal reserve banks" "and for no other purpose"? I'm pretty sure that circulation among the general public as money counts as another purpose. It goes on to say that the notes may be "redeemed in lawful money on demand at the Treasury Department" "or at any Federal Reserve bank". Now, if they can be redeemed for lawful money, doesn't that imply that they aren't lawful money? If so, why are they printed with the words "legal tender" on them? Name one school that teaches this stuff.
For that matter, name one elementary, middle, or high school that offers a logic class, in which the concept of a logical fallacy (broken window fallacy, slippery slope fallacy, etc.) is explained.
Er, you might want to reeducate yourself, considering that the broken window fallacy is a parable meant to expose hidden costs, not its own category of logical fallacy, and the slippery slope is not necessarily fallacious.
Bah, time travel isn't what it's all cracked up to be.
If you decide to stay at your destination for more than a couple hours, then you're going to need to haul all your own food, medicine, weapons, etc. etc.
Cause I mean, you can't even drink the water they have! If drinking the water down in Mexico gives you a bad case of the runs, imagine the agony of drinking the water from a time in which it came out of lead pipes, with no stuff to clean it, and, well, you know
G-Max
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Both are officially considered logical fallacies; the broken window fallacy is named after the parable, and is not the parable itself, whereas the slippery slope argument is always fallacious, even if the slippery slope effect does sometimes happen.
The parable of the broken window is just that: a parable. It's not a genuine fallacy outside of the fact that there is an unstated assumption in ignoring hidden costs. It's not some sort of grand set of the logical fallacies, it's just an invalid argument used by libertarians to show why analogous arguments are invalid; it is not in any sense a formal fallacy.
As for the slippery slope argument, no it's not always fallacious. The flaw in the argument occurs because of the multiplicative effect of probability in A -> B -> C -> D -> ... Z; If A occurs 95% of the time, B occurs 90% of the time, etc. the total effect would be such that Z occurs a small part of the time. So you just have to have independent justifications for B --> ... Z, that is, justify that B --> Z are true. A slippery slope argument certainly can be non-fallacious as long as you justify the other premises.
Besides, you're missing the more critical point in that knowing logical fallacies has nothing to do with convincing people that they are wrong.
Whiskey_Lord
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Cybernetic brains (with good virus protection of course).
Time travel and teleportation are theoretically possible. In fact, scientists have already teleported atoms (it's still a long way to teleporting humans but it is possible).
I would like to see space colonization. I suppose that might require faster than light travel. Traveling faster than light is way beyond our technological capabilities, but it is theoretically possible.
EDIT: Forgot to mention, I'd like to see huge advancements in nanotechnology and quantum computers before space colonization. Also materials that are superconductors operating in room temperature would be great, though I'm not at all sure if that is possible.
I'd like to see brain scanners brought into court-rooms, and a perfusion of lie-detection technologies.
Right now, judges and juries use their instincts as a form of 'lie detector', but they're fallible ones and our meta-cognition regarding our ability to detect lying is pretty poor.
I knowledge uploader is a neat idea. The problem is that each person's brain arrangement is unique, and so you cannot just 'force' a knowledge set into a brain without either a customizable translation device already implanted or unless you first arrange the information specific to the person's existing brain. Both of these would require scanning at orders of magnitude better than we currently have, as well as some way of decoding a person's individual patter.
I think it's theoretically possible. Heck, we already can use EM waves to plant knowledge through the optic nerve (it's called 'reading'), so it's more of a factor of cranking up the bit rate.
Right now, judges and juries use their instincts as a form of 'lie detector', but they're fallible ones and our meta-cognition regarding our ability to detect lying is pretty poor.
I knowledge uploader is a neat idea. The problem is that each person's brain arrangement is unique, and so you cannot just 'force' a knowledge set into a brain without either a customizable translation device already implanted or unless you first arrange the information specific to the person's existing brain. Both of these would require scanning at orders of magnitude better than we currently have, as well as some way of decoding a person's individual patter.
I think it's theoretically possible. Heck, we already can use EM waves to plant knowledge through the optic nerve (it's called 'reading'), so it's more of a factor of cranking up the bit rate.
LucyDuke
staring at the clock
Don't overlook "some education is junk".
Honestly, I don't understand your example. Is a discussion of the Federal Reserve's purposes and methods supposed to help students learn to think? A student figuring those things out is probably learning some things about thinking, but "teaching this stuff" is bypassing the thinking part, it's just feeding information.
Call me a technophobe, but I don't really think most of the ideas in the OP would actually be good. A cloaking device might be cool, but just think of the consequences of everyone wandering around hidden. Cuts back on a lot of interaction, and ruins what is our greatest hobby; people watching.
So how are time travel and faster than light travel theoretically possible? Because out current theories tell us they aren't.
And no, scientist have not teleported an atom, they have teleported the state of an atom (and to do that, classical (i.e. slower than light) information transfer is needed). So the remote atom has to be there before and the local atom is still there afterwards, which is a different matter than the teleportation shown in science-fiction movies.
If everything works perfectly, teleporting the state of an atom is functionally equivalent to mapping the state to a photon, sending that photon somewhere else and then map the state back to an atom.
So the only thing that could be achieved with this on a macroscopic scale would be creating an exact copy of something in a remote location and then transfer the state of the local object to the remote object.
If one can achieve faster than light travel, then one would be going backwards in time, yes? Einstein's equations allow faster than light travel via Alcubierre drive. Obviously building an Alcubierre drive is way beyond our tech level but the key word here is "theoretically".
Yes, like I said, it's still a long way to teleporting humans (I believe these difficulties will be overcome someday in the very very distant future), and most likely information would still not go faster than light, and the individual atoms composing the person would not be physically transferred. Whether or not that qualifies as teleportation is in the field of philosophy IMO, but it is theoretically possible.
The article you link to gives several reasons why such a drive is theoretically impossible. There is a difference between "hypothetically possible" and "theoretically possible". A drive like this is the former not the latter.
Even if it was theoretically possible, it would be more a manipulation of spacetime to put two locations closer together (similar to a wormhole) than actual faster-than-light travel.
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