Which makes it worse in many ways. The entire tech, business, etc world has adopted the same censorship regime without government orders. So who is giving out the orders?
> One of my physics lecturers at university made the offhand observation that the distinction between physics and mathematics is a twentieth-century idea:
It's actually a 19th century idea. The discovery or acceptance of non-euclidean geometry in the 19th century untethered math from physics or physics from math.
> and it seems to be disappearing in the twenty-first.
It can't disappear because math is no longer tied to the physical world. Math is simply theorem generation regardless of whether the axioms and theorems apply to the physical world.
The math used in physics is only a tiny subset of possible math.
> Or we could build our roads so that people can't comfortably drive 100MPH with zero feeling of danger.
What about emergencies? If cops, firefighters or ambulances need to get somewhere quick?
> I've seen people drag racing on residential streets because they are 50 feet wide with clear zones on each side.
People drag race in residential areas because they feel they can do so with impunity. If politicians decided to take on this problem head on, we can solve it easily. Make drag racing and noise pollution with cars/motorcycles/etc in residential areas a serious crime ( that includes prison time ). Problem solved.
When I was stationed in Sacramento I saw a few neighborhoods that tackled this physically and it worked more effectively than I had assumed. They installed double and sometimes triple undulations think smooth short speed bumps that exponentially amplify lift when traveling over them over the speed limit. If traveling over them at the speed limit they are barely noticeable. Speed in a vehicle low to the ground most of the modded street race cars and it will wreck the under carriage, suspension, other things. I've seen it rip the exhaust system, undercarriage lights, spoilers / diffusers right off. Emergency vehicles did not appear to be affected.
> They installed double and sometimes triple undulations think smooth short speed bumps that exponentially amplify lift when traveling over them over the speed limit.
You must have dumb drag racers where you live but then again, most drag racers are dumb to begin with. Our drag racers remember where these speed bumps are and just adjust to them. You literally hear these morons slow down and rev up again in the middle of the night.
Frankly, it's the noise that's the biggest issue with me. I wouldn't care that much if they raced quietly. I'd prefer extremely heavy fines, loss of license and even prison for anyone causing excessive noise pollution in residential neighborhoods. Especially at night.
Multi-use paths, bus lanes, and bike lanes are excellent for emergency vehicles. Also, generally speaking, emergency vehicles aren't supposed to speed. A lot of ambulances have speed governors to prevent going too fast. Also, a lot of the streets where you would use traffic calming are your destination. By the time you hit the traffic calming you are already there pretty much.
Ambulances do not go 100mph, and cops almost never do that unless they are chasing somebody who is also going very fast
Drag racing is unfortunately impossible to stop with force because we lack the political will to do anything like that in California. Narrowing streets and making it difficult to race or do donuts is more politically realistic
Or perhaps we could figure out a way to provide an accessible, legal venue for those activities. Like how skateboarding was a crime for a while (or still is??).
I used to volunteer at a race track. The amount of bureaucratic shit to even get your car on the track makes it not worth it to most people, myself included.
Used to find back corners of industrial parks to have fun. Cops were cool with it. More than a few were there off duty doing the same.
I've gone to drag strips and autocross events in more than one US state and the extent of "bureaucratic shit" was roughly "Do you have a driver's license and a helmet? Is the car leaking fluids? Sign here that you won't sue us." I have the impression things are a bit tighter for road courses.
I dealt with tech inspections and people would try to go on the track with worn out brakes and suspension all the time. Which is dumb but. So are people.
Even getting to that point means you've gone through the local amateur licence process, shown up to training days, etc.
You have to prove to a bunch of gatekeeping boomers you deserve to race.
A quick look around the web suggests you can do high performance driving events on serious race tracks with no experience at all. You may be required to do some laps with an instructor in the car and they have tight restrictions on passing. They'll probably want to check that your car isn't falling apart for obvious reasons.
If you want to do wheel to wheel racing with other drivers, then there's a license requirement involving a couple days of training with a four digit price tag.
Maybe we have different thresholds for what counts as "bureaucratic shit", but there seem to be some good options to drive fast under controlled conditions and compare your results to others. The most exciting and dangerous versions of it have some gatekeeping and I imagine most of the participants prefer it that way.
There are plenty of legal venues, and they are popular and widely used. The problem is that the value participants get comes from doing it in the city. It's not the same if they aren't rebelling
But Bob was paid. That's the point. Also most of 'intellectual' property is owned by corporations, not the creators.
If Bob prints a book and you take it without paying for it, that's stealing. If Bob prints a book and you buy it from Bob and you make copies of it and give it to your friends, that isn't stealing. And it shouldn't be classified as stealing, morally or legally.
The only reason it is considered illegal is because greedy corporate interests decided to make it so. Historically, people bought books and copied it and spread it around. That was the norm until fairly recently.
'Intellectual property' is theft. It is a fiction invented by the parasite class. Just think about it.
Bob's pay rate was agreed upon based on getting X number of sales, not one book.
You are promoting the parasiting off Bobs labor. You can try to justify it, but Bob worked expecting to get paid from those transactions, and they were taken away away because it was technologically easy to do. Bob/society expected payment to occur.
The same thing applies to computer science. Try figuring out even the basics, like merge or quick sort, using pseudocode in a traditional algorithms book. It's an extremely difficult and time consuming nightmare. But watch a video of how merge or quick sort works, then you gain geniune understanding within minutes.
No it wasn't. The roman republic won the 1st punic war. The carthaginian empire was older for sure but not much more powerful.
> and Rome really had no business thinking it could have won either of those wars.
Rome was the rising and expanding power. Carthage was an old has-been. Rome had every right to think it would prevail. Hence why Rome started the first punic wars.
> and only survived by outright refusing to give up, and then somehow pulling it out of the bag at a key moment.
It's like you gleaned your information from sensationalizing documentaries or a kid's book.
> Rome could have very easily failed and become a Carthaginian vassal state.
The odds of carthage invading and holding rome is 0.
> There would have been no Roman Empire
So western europe could have skipped the dark ages and gotten access to the ancient greek culture ( which is the foundation of european civilization ) sooner?
> and the history of Europe would have been a continent dominated by a North African empire.
Assuming that carthage could have held rome or made any progress against the huns, germanic or slavic tribes up north. If anything, the downfall of rome would have precipitated the rise of northern europe which dominates europe today.
Rome didn’t even have a navy when it started the first war with Carthage, who were the dominant naval power of the Mediterranean at the time. During the first war Rome had the navies that it managed to build wiped out more than once before the Battle of the Aegates, which it probably wouldn’t have been able to rebuild from if it had lost. They’d been fighting a losing war for nearly 30 years at that point.
Rome also lost every major engagement in the second Punic war prior to Scipio’s campaign through Iberia and North Africa, which very nearly never happened at all. Cannae was probably the most comprehensive military defeat ever at the time, and is still one of the most famous routs in history.
It is possible that Rome could have survived if it lost either of those wars, but it certainly wouldn’t have risen to be the most dominant empire in European history. Rome could have very easily fallen after Cannae if Hannibal had been reinforced, which he very nearly was.
Speculation about what would have happened to Europe without the Roman Empire is just that, and I’m not trying to say it’s a good or bad thing, it’s just fascinating to think how close it came to being something completely different during that part of the republic era.
"Rome was the rising and expanding power. Carthage was an old has-been. "
This sounds like "reading history with a benefit of hindsight". Rising powers may, in fact, well lose their challenge against the old has-beens. Germany and Japan in the 20th century were those rising and expanding powers, but ultimately reaped catastrophic defeats.
Rome survived and won mostly due to their enormous capability to reconstitute their forces after major losses. That was an untypical capability in the premodern world, where a single battle gone wrong (e.g. Gaugamela) could topple an entire empire.
But major losses they did have and the fact that they could still hold after Cannae was a bit of a miracle. They even recruited slaves into the army, a feat that could have easily backfired against the weakened Roman elite.
> We're not the only intelligent life on earth. We cant even define intelligence or measure it meaningfully.
If we can't define or measure intelligence meaningfully, how can you even claim we are 'intelligent' to begin with?
> Elephants, crows, dolphins, octopi, chimps, orang utan are all clearly very smart
The have levels of intelligence, but they are clearly not very smart. You couldn't even teach them the multiplication table or the basics of number theory.
> and more intelligent than a human child.
No species you listed is smarter than a human child.
> Besides being biologically irrelevant, the separation between humans and animals creates this weird divide where we constantly assume that we are the only intelligent life.
At the very least, we know that mammals with brains have some level of intelligence. Nobody claims humans are the only 'intelligent' life on earth. The claim is we are the most intelligent. And probably the only creatures intelligent enough to ponder about death, mortality, identity and soul.
> Maybe one day we'll understand better what other minds are like and we'll understand better how we are not alone or special.
Or maybe elephants, crows, dolphins, octopi, chimps, orangutans will better understand what other minds are like and they'll better understand how they are not alone or special? After all, they are 'very smart' according to you.
I think your statements are written in a very confident manner that comes across as trying to win, but this is a nuanced question.
> how can you even claim we are 'intelligent' to begin with?
because I can claim it. You're focusing on semantics and attacking the fact that a set definitions can't be done. I think debating the nature of whether semantics maps to a valid conceptualization is probably not very productive.
No one in this thread has introduced this notion or tried to debate it.
> probably the only creatures intelligent enough to ponder about death
I would invite you to draw your own conclusions from this video, taken from Spy in the Wild. It shows monkeys processing the death of another monkey. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaIH5tLmC8U
> After all, they are 'very smart' according to you
