|
|
|
|
Magnets
New Member
1 Post |
 Posted - 10/08/2004 : 22:50:20
|
|
The website http://www.iinotia.com covers a bunch of topics. You can't read them all in a day.
|
|
|
Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26031 Posts |
Posted - 10/09/2004 : 17:34:45 [Permalink]
|
And covers at least one of them badly. I didn't read past the bit on electricity, as this:If you ask the electric company about solar energy they will tell you a million reasons why solar is not price competitive. is just crap. The proponents of solar energy will also tell you that it's not competitive — yet. The author of IINOTIA appears to just want to rant. There are millions of other websites doing the same. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
 |
|
|
Ricky
SFN Die Hard
USA
4907 Posts |
|
|
Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26031 Posts |
Posted - 10/09/2004 : 18:19:42 [Permalink]
|
| It's worse than that, Ricky (and forgive me for the lack of welcome, Magnets). Space mining would only use the intellectual capacity of those theorists and engineers who design and create the equipement necessary for the job. Space mining won't suddenly make the collective world IQ jump at all. It's spectacularly romantic to think that it would. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
|
|
|
Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 10/09/2004 : 18:30:11 [Permalink]
|
Space mining could, one day, prove to be a massively profitable industry. But first you'd have to spend the trillions to make it viable and develope the technologies.
And yeah, compared to the scope of the "intellectual capacity of the human race", it would only use a very narrow range of specialties. |
Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
|
|
|
|
Ricky
SFN Die Hard
USA
4907 Posts |
Posted - 10/09/2004 : 18:33:20 [Permalink]
|
quote:
It's worse than that, Ricky (and forgive me for the lack of welcome, Magnets). Space mining would only use the intellectual capacity of those theorists and engineers who design and create the equipement necessary for the job. Space mining won't suddenly make the collective world IQ jump at all. It's spectacularly romantic to think that it would.
From the article, I think the author is trying to point out that we have the IQ, just not enough ways to apply it:
quote:
We currently send our kids to school, college, universities and more get advanced degrees and doctorates. Then we have them manage McDonalds restaurants, Wal-Marts and NASA where the future was THEN, not now. There are exceptions within NASA such as robotics on Mars, but giving up even temporarily on the breakthrough propulsion physics project is beyond comprehension. NASA, or Congress, should fund advanced research in physics to the point companies are begging for bachelor's degree college students with a promise to pay for advanced study. The jobs simply have to be available - and they are not.
So the problem isn't that we need to increase our knowlege, just increase the jobs that use that knowlege. |
Why continue? Because we must. Because we have the call. Because it is nobler to fight for rationality without winning than to give up in the face of continued defeats. Because whatever true progress humanity makes is through the rationality of the occasional individual and because any one individual we may win for the cause may do more for humanity than a hundred thousand who hug their superstitions to their breast.
- Isaac Asimov |
|
|
|
Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26031 Posts |
Posted - 10/09/2004 : 18:57:43 [Permalink]
|
Okay, but once the technology is in place, the need for the intelligence drops. Not completely, but to a lower level of figuring out how to improve the processes already in place.
Sheesh, the vast majority of people involved in the Apollo program - or even the Shuttle missions - are just workers who do what they've been told to do. The author still, in my mind, is chasing a fantasy in which PhDs outnumber waiters (not that waiters don't need smarts, but that's what the author of those pages seems to think).
A friend of mine has a bachelor's in history. It apparently qualifies him to either work at Kinkos or other "menial" jobs, or, if he got his teaching certificate, he could teach history in grade schools. Obviously, if my friend had the money, he could get a higher degree and perhaps do more with it, but he doesn't. Would the author have the government criminalize such degrees (if you're too poor to continue to PhD), in a misguided attempt to elinimate intellectual waste? |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
|
|
|
Ricky
SFN Die Hard
USA
4907 Posts |
|
|
Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26031 Posts |
Posted - 10/09/2004 : 20:19:04 [Permalink]
|
I believe that the author's idea that the government can create jobs for all of those with higher degrees is a fantasy, since desire will always meet or exceed capacity. In other words, if PhDs start finding ready jobs, many more people will go for their doctorates, and once again there will be a glut of scientists, a dearth of jobs, and a bunch of people with eight or more years of university education asking "you want fries with that?"
I cannot think of a single "industry" (even so loosely defined as to include pure mathematics) which has a majority of the people participating in it at the extremely-high end of educational levels. Even philosophers depend on thousands of minimum-wage shlubs printing their articles or stacking their books on retail or library shelves. For every PhD position created - whether by government or private industry - there are probably enough lower-level jobs supporting that one doctor that all of them, taken together, will also require at least one more janitor. At lower level of college-plus education, this problem isn't eliminated, it's just somewhat smaller.
And so, there will never be "enough" jobs for those with higher education, and there will always be people working jobs for which they're vastly over-qualified because they can't find work which suits their education. Unless the government is mandated to decide who is allowed to go to college, and also to decide who gets what job, no solution to this problem will ever work. Not that I'm advocating such a draconian system, it's just the only solution I can see.
|
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
|
|
|
Dr. Mabuse
Septic Fiend
Sweden
9696 Posts |
Posted - 10/10/2004 : 17:37:44 [Permalink]
|
My initial thought when I saw that link was "this is just someone plugging his own site".
So I didn't comment on it, in hope that the post/thread would be forgotten.
Then I went to the site to check it out, and it confirmed my misgivings: it was. A not-so-good at that.
It could still be a great site though for someone who'd like to exercise his new skeptic skills. |
Dr. Mabuse - "When the going gets tough, the tough get Duct-tape..."
Dr. Mabuse whisper.mp3
"Equivocation is not just a job, for a creationist it's a way of life..." Dr. Mabuse
Support American Troops in Iraq:
Send them unarmed civilians for target practice..
Collateralmurder. |
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
Topic Locked
