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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Uh, even in the unlikely event that we do end up regressing to a mideivalish society, I highly doubt it would be permanent. People would be smart enough to eventually reinvent the wheel, so to speak. Seriously, that kind of stasis isn't exactly a natural state for us.
At a certain point it seems like we're all speaking in hyperbole and it becomes white noise in this thread.
Nothing lasts forever; we'd build a new civilization sooner or later, and then probably wreck it again. It's been theorized by some that the reason our galaxy/universe isn't populated by sufficiently advanced aliens flitting around between their interstellar empires using FTL ships and wormholes is that the threshold for an intelligent species to grow mature enough to survive its own stupidity is too high.
The reason why the prepper survivalist nutballs will live is that their paranoia will have been correct.
edited 28th Apr '16 11:28:28 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Ah, the Ron Swanson school of politics. "X is inefficient and a waste of money, and I will prove it by de-funding it as much as possible."
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.The Dennis Hastert child molestation case, explained
. Mostly for the sake of breaking from presidential campaign coverage. I find it somewhat ironic that this is the same politician who wanted to put away sex offenders for life.
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You are correct that the hypothesis is fundamentally untestable until/unless we encounter another intelligent civilization, whether it's alive or extinct. Still, intelligent life has had billions of years to populate this galaxy, so its continued absence from our neighborhood is at the very least an anecdotal datum in favor of it being somewhat rare (or very good at hiding). The question of why it's rare is wide open.
It goes back to the Armored Closet Gay mentality. In elementary school phrasing, "it takes one to know one".
edited 28th Apr '16 11:46:00 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"A trend I've noticed is that alien fiction tends to rely heavily on FTL technology to make interstellar civilization possible.
Maybe the reason for the absence of aliens in our backyard is that FTL just can't be done.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.
That is a reasonable hypothesis, but it also means we humans are unlikely to ever venture more than a handful of light-years from our home-world, and thus we shall remain alone in the galaxy for all intents and purposes. It's also off-topic, unfortunately.
edited 28th Apr '16 11:53:04 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"The statute of limitations seems to be the key here. As some wags pointed out, you can get arrested for a 30-year old parking ticket, but if you raped someone 30 years ago, you're free and clear. GG legal system.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Why is statute of limitations even a thing? What purpose does an expiration date for prosecution serve?
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Two Questions: the monetary shenanigans came about from trying to buy off one of the victims or other people involved, right? Isn't there some kind of loophole in the statute of limitations if there's an ongoing effort to conceal the crime or am I just remembering Hollywood Law?
edited 28th Apr '16 1:27:18 PM by sgamer82
I think you're right: if there is an ongoing component to the crime that would itself be prosecutable, it can exempt the original crime from the statute of limitations. However, the crime that got Hastert jailed was misuse of government funds; the fact that the misuse was to pay off a former victim is apparently not enough to get the original crime prosecuted.
The judge in this case gave Hastert a maximum sentence because of the rape, even though that wasn't what he was convicted of.
edited 28th Apr '16 1:25:58 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"There has been speculation that below-FTL space-faring civilizations are feasible.
The Space thread would probably love that post.
And yeah, the statute of limitations is to ensure that you can't be prosecuted for shit that happened thirty years ago, so long as you've not continued the crime. It's an attempt to ensure fairness. But, like all laws and rules, assholes can benefit from it. Which is probably why murder doesn't have a statute of limitations, as I understand it.
Though Klein also notes the party might not actually have gotten more conservative (as Boehner himself was a hardcore conservative), the issue is an increasing number of Republican legislators, despite being as conservative as Boehner, refuse to accept even temporary compromise on bills or politics (which Boehner was willing to do, and Ryan is, and this is what will screw Ryan's career)
Or: GOP's screwed as long as it values ideological purity at all costs over long term ideological victory.
In other rape-related news (A Rare Sentence if I've ever heard one), Oklahoma's Criminal Appeals Court ruled that oral sex isn't rape if the victim has passed out from drinking.
Worth noting is that it's a male perpetrator and female accuser - what do you think the odds would be of it getting cracked down on severely if it were male/male?
"Why would I inflict myself on somebody else?"

Climate change won't wipe humans out... People forget just how adaptable humans actually are and that we have had extinction-level events in human history... For example, the Black Plague killed 1/5 to 1/4 of the world's human population and ravaged human society. The issue is that an extinction-level event will basically cause a New Dark Age, and that humanity won't reach the heights that we have gotten to as a society again. Instead, our current society will become the mythical Atlantis with towers that touched the sky, carriages that moved on their own with magic, and was even able to visit heaven itself.
Humanity will survive global climate change... as a permanent medieval feudal society. Fighteer's got the right idea on who will survive it, though.
edited 28th Apr '16 11:19:06 AM by GameGuruGG
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