Another cuppee style hypothetical. (mostly an excuse for a trusty old witticism but ...)

We time travel into the future by the traditional method where the transporter of sci fi lore has been invented. Someone is marketing their cure for all diseases system where you are transported and fixed. Cancer gone, heart disease fixed, virus infections gone, vaccinations added, cosmetic surgery can be done, excess fat removed, muscles toned, unwanted addictions and habits gone, mental disorders corrected, brain function improved etc etc.

To make it easy it's easily affordable and never fails. Anyone refuse?

A big concern would be ending up in a brave new world. But the biggest factor would be leaving family behind. Then again, that's going to happen some day anyway. So as long as I was going to a much better place with a big gain in longevity and I didn't feel like I was running away from a fight that needs fought and I couldn't wait until the very last minute of my life....

Perhaps the entire human population should time-travel into the future so that everyone can take advantage of all the medical breakthroughs that would surely happen!

Forget the time travel bit. Lets just assume the future has arrived while we were busy doing other stuff. Anyone refuse?

i am unsure on your premise here?

- Is this possibly a scam here or is it assured
- is the offer a solo use for me alone or for the entire world as in my acceptance means it is now available for the population

And my sci fi nitpick, says i am not really aware of any 'transporter of lore' that served as a time machine. There was generally a line in the language used, unless I am not thinking of a duel function machine???

Also I think you posing this 'ethical dilemma' question which I was going to pose here at some point. I was actually thinking of creating a thread and posing a new one every so often to see how challenged people are with these.




In the above book I just finished reading, which I call a MUST READ for anyone who does not understand how big this break through was (arguably far bigger advancement than penicillin was for mankind) (lead to MRNA vaccines and has the potential to end all pandemics) the ethical questions are posed about designer babies where all the things you say can be edited out of the genome before the child's birth.

Would you deny this tech to your child and allow them their challenges in some belief that greatness comes from challenge or that needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one and as such society needs diversity and 'your child', 'all children' not to be near perfect clones of one another.

It is almost certain that while the West debates over the ethics of this challenge many nations who do see those ideals as important as 'population optimization' will jump and start using it NOW. Yes it is ready to use now.

Wouldn't we just be shot on sight? I mean, we'd be veritable plague rats.

That is a potential. But I think it is more likely that they have catalogued and cured any and all ailments we might carry with us as opposed to isolating it out of existence.

But chez would have to clarify that aspect of his hypothetical?

There's no trick. There's no scam. There's not even any time travel into the future apart from the traditional method of existing.

It's just a transporter as seen for example in star trek. With the medical add on to filter out cancer cells etc etc

Again. No trick, no scam, esily afordable and totally relaible. Anyone not take the cure for all diseases treatment?

Preventing preventable and premature death is pretty much an essential feature of the human race and it's basically what distinguishes us from every other species. Looking in on us and not privy to what we're thinking and talking about, an observer would likely conclude that's all we're really doing. So if there's one thing we can count on humans doing it's just that.

I was just joking. As history goes, it's we who would be in danger medically anyway, like an isolated tribesman who gets in contact with a more advanced society for the first time (which given the context of the hypothetical is not an issue).

But no, to answer the question I have no particular interest in the proposal. I have no ailments or history of ailness, and I'm perfectly content with myself. Boring, I know.

And of course we can also consider the similar extension

Define a standard set of consistent Axioms for arithmetic called A. Create a new set of Axioms called A'' which consists of:

A''
1. All the Axioms of A
2. The additional Axiom that the Axioms of A are consistent

Is the new set of Axioms A'' consistent or inconsistent? If inconsistent, show the inconsistency, if consistent explain why and explain the differences between A, A' and A''.

I think in the spirit of nature and true science you should not take the cure. As we know weakness is very bad in the bigger picture of things and I feel like all illness and disease is a symptom of being weak in some way so its almost anti nature to use the transporter. Man is so obsessed with immortality but really lacks the necessary acumen to fully comprehend just what that means although if nature agreed upon one who could theoretically live forever then that would be different.

Almost all ethical challenges to genetic engineering used to eliminate diseases, maladies, etc. are based upon implementation problems, chief among them inequality of access. In the real world, those are real problems that may create good cause to limit or prohibit this type of genetic engineering. But they are not reasons why genetic engineering is inherently unethical. If we craft a hypothetical where access to the genetic engineering is equally available to everyone, the only real ethical argument remaining against it is that there is something inherent to being human about suffering from physical diseases and disorders and that we have an ethical duty to maintain what makes us uniquely human. This is certainly not a utilitarian argument, nor is it deontological. Even Aristotelean ethics probably has trouble going this far. I think the argument must be religious, i.e. that we are acting like "God" and improperly tinkering with the way we were made.

The idea that adversity and struggle are important to building character, etc. is not really convincing because people face adversity and struggle in myriad ways that are not physical conditions. It would also imply that those of us who have been blessed to not suffer from a severe physical malady are somehow less fit, and taken to its logical conclusion would suggest we should actually genetically engineer INTO people severe disorders so they can learn from overcoming them. That is preposterous.

So my position is that there is no good secular argument against the concept of genetic engineering that is limited to editing out diseases and genetic disorders, but there are a host of implementation problems that stand in the way of us allowing that to happen in an ethical way. There's also a fair number of ways in which it could slip into a horror show of eugenics, that we can craft our hypothetical to ignore but in the real world might be a problem.

I'll just go ahead and answer this as a means to bump this thread, as I don't have anything else.

A,A' and A'' must all be consistent. As we discussed A' is not w consistent, but A'' is. The difference between A and A'' is that Godel sentences like "A cannot prove this statement" which are unprovable in A are proveable in A''. But of course A'' cannot prove Con(A + Con(A)). So the next question, which again really isn't a riddle but a fundamental property of logic is:

What single axiom can you add to A that allows us to prove A is consistent, but doesn't get stuck in the loop of being unable to prove that A + Con(A) or A+ Con(A)+ Con (A+ Con(A)) etc is consistent?

Biologists Raise Alarm: Brain Damage Caused by Even Small Amounts of Plasticizers

The plasticizers contained in many everyday objects can impair important brain functions in humans. ... Their study shows that even small amounts of the plasticizers bisphenol A and bisphenol S disrupt the transmission of signals between nerve cells in the brains of fish. The researchers consider it very likely that similar interference can also occur in the brains of adult humans. They, therefore, call for the rapid development of alternative plasticizers that do not pose a risk to the central nervous system.

...The harmful effects on the brain mainly affect the delicate balance between different neuronal functions...

A physics debate between a science youtuber and physics professor led to a 10k bet.

A wind powered vehicle that inventors claim can travel faster than the wind.



The 10k bet witnessed by Bill Nye and Neil Tyson.



I haven't watched the full video, but I don't see why it would be impossible. I thought this was fairly well known that you can sail faster than the wind in 2 or 3 dimensions. So maybe I'm missing something.

That had appeared on my recommendations a while ago and I got around to watching it today. The difference between this and sailing is that to sail faster than the wind requires the use of the different dimensions - it is not (typically) possible to sail faster than the wind while travelling directly downwind. This was specifically a claim about a vehicle travelling faster than the wind speed, while moving directly downwind and with no (other) external power.

It's a challenging concept to get your head around and even with all the explanations the comments are (maybe not surprisingly) still filled with people saying that it's somehow a scam and it's not possible. I think the key concept is realising that the "additional" energy is obtained by harnessing the relative speed difference between the air and the ground, not between the air and the vehicle.

I think it is easier to get one's head around when you realize you can use a variant principle to travel directly against the wind (albeit now your propeller is the collector, not the wheels). In that example it becomes pretty clear that the vehicle must draw power and use it, it is not a passive slave to the wind.

A sailboat can do something similar, but like sailboats that travel faster than the wind downwind, it must angle relative to the wind direction to do it (and zig-zag to get to a point directly upwind).

But can be very hard to properly translate mathematical concepts to language. Consider that we've been flying airplanes for a hundred years, but outside mathematical models, there doesn't yet exist a a broadly agreed upon explanation in English for how an airplane is able to stay in the air. Every now and then, some expert offers one, and then another expert disagrees with it. https://www.scientificamerican.com/a...ay-in-the-air/. Clickbaity title on the article, but the text is good.

This was taken from the Guardian and is some sort of Oxford admissions exam for the philosophy department (not sure what that means or if it makes sense).



Joe has hidden a prize hidden under one of the blue squares.

Joe tells Mary the which numbered row the prize is in and tells Jane which numbered column it is in.

Mary announces that she doesn't know where the prize is but also knows that Jane doesn't know either.

After that, Jane says I now know where the prize is. If nobody made any mistakes, where is the prize?

Jane would definitely have known from the start where it was if that was it.

Correct. And I fail for not reading the whole thing as the article explains exactly what they use it for

See 2 more questions will follow ups for each. here.

Joel David Hamkins is also famous for being the highest rated rated poster on MathOverflow. No small feat given multiple Fields Medalists and all sorts of top notch mathematicians are active there.