Harrison Danneskjold

Sorry; I didn't think you were. Those who're engaged in the dishonest search for space problems don't usually ask about their solutions. I was more mentioning why I think we've all heard so much about this non-issue. Space harpoons sound fantastic on so many different levels. I love it! Of course. When the space immediately above Earth starts to become crowded enough that collisions could happen I imagine people will start coordinating their orbital traffic in a much more structured way. It's not really a different kind of problem than coordinating the traffic of car

Have you ever read Robert Zubrin?

"I don't want the Polar Bears to go extinct; I love Polar Bears! Especially with ketchup!" -Rush Limbaugh with half his brain tied behind his back to make it fair

Also - welcome to OO!

At the moment it is a contrived problem. While it's true that we're steadily increasing the number of satellites launched per year and that eventually this will become a problem, one has to remember that there's plenty of empty space in space. Since the volume of a sphere is 4/3 times pi times its radius cubed, the Earth (which has a radius of roughly 4,000 miles) has a volume of 268 billion cubic miles. According to a quick google search there are roughly 21,000 artificial objects orbiting the Earth. Let's arbitrarily say that we'll only ever put satellites at an altitude o

Not necessarily unowned, no; I'm not even sure how to go about determining that. But in northern Minnesota there are empty lots for sale all over the place (presumably because our environment and government are both hostile to human life). Furthermore there is plenty of wilderness that obviously isn't being used and theoretically should be fair game for anyone to put to use if they wanted to. There's a good chunk of empty wilderness about fifty feet from where I'm at right now. As for the cost of putting it to use that really depends on what it's to be used for. There are plen

If you mean the "I don't know where you found that premise" bit then yes; I thought it was funny and it made me all warm and tingly inside. It's unfortunate that you weren't able to get a kick out of it (since I really was trying not to be mean or nasty about it) but since I don't think it was either of those things I'm not really sorry. It is a bad premise which you should drop and I'm not sorry that I thought of a punchy way of saying so. I read the word "viable" and I still disagree. How can anyone prevent you from setting up your own lunar empire, with your own materials and

That's awesome. I really don't know. What? Or you could take off on your own and become one of the forest people. It wouldn't be easy, but it wouldn't be impossible either; you could think of it like a camping trip that never ends. Plus you could ditch the institution of clothing and devise your own language, which is how I'd endure such a camping trip. Actually, I think I might rather die, but that's not the point; the point is that it is always an option if you ever get THAT sick of having to deal with other people. Nothing more than the fact that it is rig

NO! I CALL DIBS ON THE MOON! I know there's an American flag there right now, and I know what that historically has always signified, but I swear it's just a placeholder until I get up there.

No. It would if that were a valid analogy but it really is not, because ... HOW????? How could that ever happen??????? Antarctica, Alaska, the ocean floor (or surface!), the Sahara desert, vast swathes of (the admittedly uninhabitable) northern Minnesota, every single thing above the Earth's atmosphere and let's not forget the miles upon cubic miles of senseless dirt beneath our feet; in the name of Galt, how could any combination of people ever restrict you from accessing any of that? Unless they collectively owned every single centimeter that exists within this universe,

You can only live on or through that specific patch of land with the owner's permission; yes. But that's no different from employment (which requires the employer's consent), trade (which requires everybody's consent) or any other form of human interaction. Comparing your relationship with your landlord to slavery while omitting the fact that you are free to pack up and do business with any landlord you like (or go find an empty patch of land to make your own) is like referring to employment as "wage slavery" because you have to obey whichever boss you've chosen to work for. Just as

First of all I'd like to apologize for rambling on about aspects of my own work which, on further reflection, don't even connect to what Jordan Peterson said about "hierarchies". I might try taking a proper stab at it sometime soon. I don't currently think so. I would actually agree that there are certain scientific fields that Objectivists are irrationally dismissive of (Relativity and Quantum Mechanics both spring to mind) but I'd lay a large part of the blame for it on how the media tends to describe such fields. If I read a news story headlined "scientist PROVES the existenc

I disagree. We do still have the mightiest military on Earth (at least for now); if we put our mind to it I seriously doubt any combination of nations could stand up to us. Furthermore, Kim Jong Un has showed us exactly what he'll do if he's left to his own devices - he'll keep trying to develop a nuclear ICBM with which to destroy America. He hasn't exactly been secretive about it. I would rather we didn't let him rule for however many more years he'll need to actually become a threat to us. That is quite possibly the single worst strategy we could pursue. Yet it seems like that's e

So, in today's world, not very many.

Potentially, but IQ is also a double-edged sword in a certain way. There are three basic methods of mental functioning: rational, truth-oriented thinking, drifting (or "going with the grain") and evading. Both the rational and evasive forms of thought are "active" and their effectiveness is at least partially mediated by IQ. So although it's true that someone with a higher IQ could potentially be more effective at the proper cognitive method (like John Galt) they could also be more effective at evasion and self-delusion (like Robert Stadler). And I don't think IQ scores real