Is it possible to somehow reference any number one wants (no matter how large), or is there a certain point past which naming or referencing conventions fail and it's simply impossible to sufficiently define a number other than the fact that it's "very large"?
I think that what you are asking is if the set of numbers is countable.
The question is: Which numbers?
Obviously all integers can be represented: Just write them eg. in base-10. Likewise all rational numbers can be represented: Write them as two integers in base-10. This is because these sets are countable.
All real numbers cannot be all represented because it's an uncountable set. (This is relatively easy to prove, even.)
"From the creator of the zeitgeist film trilogy"? Sorry, I pass. I don't care if this is the cure for cancer and AIDS and the ultimate perfect solution to eradication of war and poverty, if it advertises itself with those words I do not care. It's crap, whatever it says.
Would this, in any way, allow for multiple versions of the same game?
I would also like to see this in the sense that a version of a game that's considered "technically inferior" to the version in another platform could nevertheless have its own TAS.
For example I once suggested that a TAS of the N64 version of Doom would be cool, but the idea was shot down because the original PC version is considered better. I think that a TAS of the N64 version would have its own merits (and could perfectly well coexist with a TAS of the PC version, if that becomes possible some day.)
11 seconds of my life I'm never getting back. I'll continue to vote no on any and all Atari submissions because they're an absolute waste, and in no way do they demonstrate the raw capabilities of making entertaining movies that TAS tools provide.
Voting no on principle (especially when you announce in advance that you will always vote no on principle) is your prerogative, but it's not desired. It's much more desired if you evaluate each submission on its own merits and then give your solid arguments why you voted no. Choice of console is not a good reason to vote no.
Also, I could be convinced that the moon tier is infact 2 tiers of sorts, where the moons are significant in some way, and the 3rd tier is more of an average/borderline level publication
Can I assume that "moon" is just a temporary name until a better name is devised? Because the moon has been traditionally used (and is still used) for publications that are somehow notable (regardless of what kind of runs they are.)
Didn't see anything to criticize there. However, it's a bit unclear to me whether it's intended for every single run to be categorized into those three tiers, or whether just some runs (those that match the descriptions) are given a tier, and then there's "everything else" (as a fourth, implied "tier").
After all, there are non-speed-oriented runs that nevertheless cannot be considered star- or even moon-worthy (and wouldn't match the requirement of completing the game as fast as possible of the "vault" tier either.)
Representative democracy has, and always will be, a way for the very rich to construct an oligarchy while making the people think they have control over it.
Who is to blame? The voters.
I tire of hearing this year after year, if in a representative democracy every voice has the same value, why didn't they immediately end the inequality that plagued them?
Please explain to me how what I said is false.
In a properly working democracy (that's the vast majority of civilized modern democracies) anybody can become a candidate and anybody can vote for them. Unless the voting system is rigged (which it isn't in the vast majority of democratic countries, not counting those totalitarian third-world countries where elections are just a facade for the western world), every vote is counted and has the same value. You seem to disagree. Please explain how this is not so. (The only way this couldn't be so is if the voting system is rigged. Please provide some evidence of this.)
Now, a completely different question is why the majority keep voting for those who they know are corrupt. As said, it's not like alternatives are impossible: Anybody can become a candidate. Thus if your friend has better ideas to run the country, he/she can become a candidate and you can vote for him/her.
The answer to the previous question is because of two reasons: Laziness and psychology. The majority of people are lazy when it comes to politics and don't even bother finding out what's wrong with their traditional choice and if there could be better alternatives. Also, many of those candidates and parties are masters at convincing people that they aren't really that bad and that alternatives would only be worse. (In other words, it's safer to keep the status quo than to try to radically change things, as it could screw up everything.)
But that's not a fault of the democratic system. That's a fault of human psychology. And it's not something that can be changed by changing the voting system. Unless you want to go back to dictatorship and totalitarianism where voting is skipped altogether.
Representative democracy has, and always will be, a way for the very rich to construct an oligarchy while making the people think they have control over it.
Who is to blame? The voters.
Unless the voting system is actually rigged (which doesn't usually happen in modern civilized societies, no matter what some people might want to think), the people who get in power get there because people vote for them. They don't get there by buying themselves the position.
If some politician or party is known for its abuse of power, corruption and favoritism of the rich and their buddies, why do they stay in power? Because people vote for them. What does that tell about these people?
But what else do you suggest should be done? Back to totalitarianism, where the person with most power gets to be on top without asking the people?
Also consider that literally millions of people are vaccinated every year (the total amount of people having been vaccinated during the entire history of vaccines being probably impossible to estimate with any kind of accuracy, but I would bet it's in the hundreds of millions). If there were any significant risks to vaccines, then we would have thousands and thousands of people every year getting those problems. It would be like a pandemic. Do we?
No.
You are probably much more likely to be hit by lightning than getting anything nasty from a vaccine, yet you don't hide in your house your entire life for the fear of being hit by lightning. Yet vaccines are somehow different to many people.
(Again, it's the exact psychological effect here: Suffering an accident, such as being hit by lightning or run over by a car "is not my fault", while deliberately taking a vaccine "is my fault". So even if there's a one in a million chance of getting something from a vaccine, that's intolerable. People just can't grasp probabilities.)
Besides, what kind of side-effects are we talking here? Pain at the place where they gave you the vaccine that lasts a few days? Perhaps some nausea caused by that? What? Of course you may get something like that. It's normal and not very dangerous. Of course if you can't tolerate pain then you might over-react.
A significant portion of people will refuse to take the vaccine. They prefer taking the 1% chance of dying than the 0.1% chance of getting the disease.
Maybe they'd prefer to take the higher chance of a relatively quick death to the lower chance of years of living with
Warp wrote:
a severe chronic disease.
But that's not, in fact, how the human mind thinks. You might try to rationalize it like that, but it's not actually what goes on.
The difference in thinking comes from the notion of getting a bad outcome because of what you actively did, vs. getting the bad outcome passively, ie. not as a direct consequence of what you did to yourself. The human mind prefers intuitively to take a higher chance of a danger caused by something that's not "their fault" (in that they didn't actively do something in order to cause it to themselves) than a smaller chance of harming themselves by actively doing something.
The intuition is that when it's something external, something you didn't do to yourself on purpose, you are less at fault (ie. you don't have to blame yourself) than if you did something and that caused the harm (in which case you can blame yourself.)
In other words: A flu virus infected me and I died = not my fault.
I deliberately got myself a vaccine and got the disease = my fault.
=> Therefore the former is preferable, especially if the difference in odds are something that the human mind cannot easily grasp. (After all, we don't really grasp very well the difference between 1% and 0.1% probability in an intuitive manner.)
That's the underlying psychology behind the choice, and often no amount of explanations about probability is going to help overcome that.
(Technically speaking, someone preferring the 1% chance of death is technically suicidal: They don't care if they die or not. Logically it would be better to take the 0.1% chance of getting the disease and only then commit suicide if you get it. The chances of not dying are much better. However, the same psychological phenomenon is fully active here: It's the concept of making "passive" suicide by inaction ("not my fault") vs. an active suicide ("it's my fault") and therefore the former is preferable.)
It's better to teach your immune system the infecting pathogens before the real mccoy steps in than afterwards.
Better to not risk anything unnecessarily.
Precisely, which is why it's better to get vaccinated.
(Yes, I know that's not what you meant, but that's what makes it more the ironic.)
Vaccines are a safe way to get immunity against a disease without actually contracting the disease. Diseases are always dangerous, and there's no such thing as a "safe" or "good" disease. Even if the disease itself might not be fatal or produce irreparable damage, it nevertheless weakens your immune system for the duration of the disease, making you more open to opportunistic infections.
(A very common case is someone getting a common cold, which in itself isn't very dangerous, but due to the weakened immune system the same person getting a bronchitis as an opportunistic infection, which in turn exposes your system to even more serious diseases...)
Does this mean that not a single case of someone getting a nasty side-effect from a vaccine has ever happened in the entire history of vaccination? Of course not. There have been cases. However, those cases have been extremely rare, and very often it has been caused by something else than the vaccine itself (iow. it's not the fact that you get vaccinated that causes the nasty side-effect, but something else; for example, you could be allergic to some component of that particular brand of vaccine, or you might have an undiagnosed disease that clashes with the effects of the vaccine, or whatever. Nevertheless, these are way, way rarer than people actually dying of the diseases for which vaccines exist.)
Vaccines have saved millions and millions of lives (and this is most certainly not an exaggeration) and eradicated some diseases completely. The direct correlation between stopping the vaccinations for a common disease and the subsequent spreading of such a disease like wildfire has been observed in practice several times.
I also have to say that believing in something superstitious isn't necessarily wrong, because for example the belief in God is a superstitious belief.
You probably don't even understand what's wrong with that logic.
I just have this belief that inserting things inside my body that don't naturally belong there (like smoke and injections of diseases, for example) is generally bad, but I'm not saying that vaccines are always dangerous. There are several cases where vaccines are good for you.
The bacteria and viruses are not going to ask you if you want them inside your body or not. Your immune system exists to fight them off, if it can. It's better to teach your immune system the infecting pathogens before the real mccoy steps in than afterwards.
(There exist people who has this belief that getting immunity from the real disease is somehow "better" and "more natural" and therefore "safer" than getting it from a vaccine. This is pure superstition based on implied or explicit beliefs like "mother nature" who "protects" us as long as we don't mess up with her ways by doing things in an unnatural and artificial manner.)
That's a very good point. It is indeed so that even if you aren't in the risk group, by refusing to take a vaccine you are potentially spreading the disease to others who are.
There's a small percentage of people who cannot be given a vaccine because of medical reasons (eg. because of an allergy.) These people are often protected if everybody else around them is vaccinated, as the disease doesn't spread. However, if some people refuse to get vaccinated, these people will be at a higher risk.
You might not die from the disease, but you might infect someone who does. But of course you can rest easy because you will never know it was you. After all, it could have been someone else.
I haven't had the flu or any major sickness (outside of mono in early 2011) since I was in grade school well over 5 years ago (probably 7 years now since my last stomach flu).
I've never taken any vaccine either, except once when I was about 5, which made me sick instantly. For me it's probably 15 years since my last stomach flu. I also have no allergies. I've read that vaccinations can sometimes cause allergies.
You are not helping his case, but that's probably a good thing here, quite ironically...
(I really have to wonder. Both of you sound like you are proud or something that you have avoided the big evil that's vaccines, and have got scot free so far. It really sounds like those people who say things like "I have been smoking for 30 years. No lung cancer. Clearly it's all BS."
What exactly is it to be proud of about not having taken any vaccines? Are you trying to prove something, or what?)
I would know the thought-process since I refuse to take flu shots and other vaccines as well. And guess what...I haven't had the flu or any major sickness (outside of mono in early 2011) since I was in grade school well over 5 years ago (probably 7 years now since my last stomach flu).
You seriously think that vaccines are useless because you haven't had any major sickness?
Well, I have to thank for confirming my claim in practice. The human brain works in astonishingly stupid ways oftentimes.
Your hypothetical scenario is flawed and there's no chance that would never happen. ie, kills young instead of old, etc.
Please educate yourself before spouting nonsense you don't know anything about and make yourself sound stupid. It's called cytokine storm, it affects most strongly precisely healthy, young people with strong immune systems, and it was a major cause for the high death rate of the 1918 flu pandemic (also called "Spanish flu").
This system was established in the 90s and turned out to be very successful. In 2008, a popular initiative trying to revert this policy was rejected by 68% of the voters.
I just love how the human mind works. The therapy is actually pretty effective -> we must ban it!
The human brain is actually really, really bad at properly estimating things like risk factors. For example, assume the following hypothetical situation (which actually isn't all that far off from reality):
- Assume a new strand of flu starts spreading over the entire world. The death rate of people who contract this flu is 1%. (Some strands of flu can really be pretty deadly, especially when they cause an overreaction of the body's immune system, which was the case eg. with the Spanish fly pandemic. Ironically, strong healthy young people were more likely to die than old and/or weak people.)
- A vaccine is developed that protects against the flu. If you don't take the vaccine you are pretty much certain to catch the flu.
- It is later discovered that something in the vaccine has a 0.1% chance of causing a severe chronic disease.
A significant portion of people will refuse to take the vaccine. They prefer taking the 1% chance of dying than the 0.1% chance of getting the disease. It doesn't matter how much you explain the math to them. It won't help.
That's just how the human brain works.
Problems with the schools? Increase funding!
Too many people homeless? More government subsidized housing!
Too many drug addicts? More cops and more government sponsored treatment facilities!
There are some problems that money doesn't solve, but that doesn't stop some politicians from trying it anyway.
And what would be, in your opinion, a better solution to those problems that a government can implement?
Sure, giving free food, medicine and housing to poor people is only fighting the symptoms, not the problem, but
a) the symptoms do need attention; they cannot be ignored, and
b) fighting the symptoms is more urgent because the proper solution is very unclear and regardless of what it is, requires time and significant changes at a fundamental level.
Sure, poor and sick people are, technically speaking, a burden to the society. However, in a civilized, working society people look after one another, and help others in need. They don't just selfishly abandon them to their fates. The government is in the best possible position to help those in need because of all the resources and means they possess.
While that's not the ultimate solution to the problem, it's still something that must be done.
The need to specify how energy/geometry is at one slice, plus how they are changing, is what prevents you from getting a single answer from your original question -- it depends on too many things.
So, if I understand correctly, a proper answer to the question would depend not only on the distance between the two planets and the rate of expansion of space, but also other details such as the geometry of spacetime between the two planets (which might eg. be curved) and the exact manner in which spacetime is expanding (among other things)?
The core purpose of the government is to serve the citizens of the country, to protect their rights, freedom and safety, to always do what's best for the citizens. For this purpose it's the duty of the government to impose rules and laws on what's appropriate behavior and what isn't (ie. the kind of behavior that goes against those things that the government ought to protect and ensure) and do what's necessary to make sure that these rules are not broken, and to punish those who break them.
The rules should also be fair, and always conform to the basic tenets of human rights (such as the ones delineated by the universal declaration of human rights). Fair enforcement of rules and laws means that punishment should be proportional to the severity of the crime. Excessive punishment for a minor crime or way too lenient punishment for a major crime goes against this principle.
The government should also limit and restrict exploitation of citizens by other citizens (and from the government itself, of course). This means that strict rules and regulations must exist to stop, for example, private companies from exploiting employees or customers in a manner that's detrimental to the best interests of the citizens and the country.
For some reason many people in the United States want big corporations and rich people to be exempt from these rules and regulations, even if their behavior is detrimental to the citizens or even outright criminal.
You got it wrong. The graph I showed you doesn't contain only one line for General Relativity, but a red blur that represents a lot of models that make good predictions. Some of them put the cutoff at 2c, others at 4c, we don't know which is correct, because the evidence isn't strong enough to do that. The values of 2c and 4c aren't precise anyway, I just looked at the graph and guessed close values. If you really want only one value, I think the red line is the one with most acceptance, so look at where that line gets flat, just don't take it as a sure answer though.
I'm still not quite sure I understand. Wouldn't it be enough to plug the numbers in the GR equations and calculate the result? (I know that when talking about GR, it's not always a simple task. I myself would even dare to try, as the math involved goes well beyond my understanding. However, it sounds like there should be one exact solution, and not a range of possibilities. A bit like there's only one exact solution to the Schwarzschild radius for a given mass, for instance.)
Didn't you read my explanation, Warp? The question you are asking is if light emitted at some point will *ever* reach us at some point in the future, so of course it depends on how the universe is going to expand in the future. If you imagine your snail on a rubber band, it has a huge effect on the progress the snail makes if you stop pulling on the band, or if you start letting it contract, for example.
Of course the rate of expansion affects whether light reaches the other object or not. That's not what I was asking. I was asking about "the largest recession speed observable could be anything between 2c and 4c." I don't understand why that depends on anything else then the recession speed itself. Why isn't the maximum observable recession speed a certain fixed value?
Also note that in my original question I'm talking about a hypothetical situation where the expansion of the universe is such that the two objects are receding from each other at a constant speed (that's larger than c). (I suppose this means that the expansion of the universe would have to be asymptotically decelerating for that to happen.)
If you don't like the expansion of the universe for this because it's too hypothetical (the universe does not expand like that), then take the ergosphere of a rotating black hole instead, if you like. (AFAIK the same phenomenon can be arranged there.)
