@Nate: Any particular shade?
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Originally Posted by Gatac
Okay, point by point...
- Point taken.
- Who says the space cats didn't create the emu egg? Their ways are wise and terrible. In a wider point, why does being the creator matter? For the sake of the argument, we assume that the space cats have some sort of interested in unbroken emu eggs and have the power to punish you if you go against their wishes. The scenario does not require that they actually created anything.
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You mean aside from their total lack of relevant technology or indeed plain old conventional wisdom? Or the fact that their sublight craft would take 45bn years to get to Sirius, let alone our system. Finally, they're cats. Why do the hard work when someone else can, and then you can simply steal it off them at minimal effort?
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Originally Posted by Gatac
- While I don't claim to be a biblical scholar, I must admit that I don't recall any part of the bible that says "Thou shalt not create an artificially intelligent machine". Everything more metaphorical than that is, I would argue, subject to the interpretation of the reader. (A notorious problem of text in general.)
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Provided you don't understand the context and background to the text, yes. Factor those in, however, and the choices of meaning narrow a lot. Fact is, there's a lot of people you would upset over this, either for being unnatural or unnecessary, or too expensive for the bother, or simply opening too many uncomfortable parallels with fiction, or because of the ethical implications.
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Originally Posted by Gatac
- There's a couple things even I don't want to know about the sun.
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Having (not) gone for a look, I can tell you with complete (lack of) authority that it is in fact (not) pushed about by a Scarab beetle.
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Originally Posted by Gatac
- Okay, Samurai were a bit luddite-ish, but I don't think they were stupid. If they'd had the tech to build reliable autoloaders and the infrastructure to support them, they'd have done so. Autoloading rifles, by the way, are an integral part of modern military tactics. In a wider context (considering the idea of an autoloading machine gun, as it was originally constructed by Hiram Maxim), it forms the basis of what we today consider an effective infantry fighting force. Even if there'd been no autoloaders, we wouldn't have stopped at muskets. Consider that Germany spent much of WW2 fielding bolt-action rifles, which - while nowhere near as impressive as autoloaders - would totally devastate an army dependant on single-shot breech loaders. Don't even start on muzzle-loading muskets - helpless case, especially when we assume muskets use the (much inferior) black powder rather than the smokeless powders used from the 19th Century on.
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Still, what benefit did all these developments in weaponry from the time of Napoleon onwards give us that was positive? There is an argument that weapon development is a direct cause of the horrors of WWI...
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Originally Posted by Gatac
- Dude, microchips are directly at fault for affordable personal computing, the internet and the rise of IT. I don't see Evolution getting much better at making your head spin with implications.
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Well, in broad terms, yes, but I was referring more specifically to ethically and morally...
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Originally Posted by Gatac
- Considering that my understanding of Kant's "phenomenon" is that we can't perceive things as they actually are, I see no way anything can ever be explained without resorting to your observations of the world rather than some mystical knowledge of the true nature of reality. Everything we know, we perceived first. The challenge seems meaningless to me.
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Exactly. So are our perceptions right? How can we tell? The point was that we are far from omnipotent...