Earth has captured a second moon, says NASA

Originally posted by googlefudge
You could even give it a nudge and drop it into Earth's gravity well and make it an
actual moon so that we can access it more easily....
~100 to ~800 thousand tonnes of materiel for building space stations out of already
in orbit that we don't have to lift into space [at ~$10,000,000 per Tonne] is a potential
multi-trillion dollar saving in launch costs.

I am not convinced.
Firstly, the cost of nudging it and then mining it for useful materials would probably exceed the launch costs of the equivalent material. Secondly, by the time all that is done, the launch costs will be considerably lower. Launch costs will likely be below 1 million dollars per tonne within the next 10 years or so.

This page lists Falcon Heavy as having a launch cost of 2.2 million dollars per tonne:
http://space.stackexchange.com/questions/1989/what-is-the-current-cost-per-pound-to-send-something-into-leo
And that is likely before reusable rockets are taken into account. SpaceX has already achieved an approximately 50% success rate at first stage return although they are yet to prove they can reuse them.

Originally posted by DeepThought... DeepThought's ontological argument: "If there were no gods then there would be a god vacuum and since nature abhors a vacuum there must be at least one god." ...

You jest. And besides, nature is okay with vacuums.

Originally posted by humy... It is clear (to me) how Occam's razor applies to the god hypothesis.
The hypothesis that there is a God is not just one hypothesis but can be validly viewed as being many in disguise including, depending on exactly which religion you would regard as most valid, there exists an object (called God) that simultaneously has all the characteristics of :
...
3, having a mind ... ...

All the other bullet points came from myth and legend.

Here's the thing: you have a mind. But we cannot find it. What would Occam say?

Originally posted by apathist
All the other bullet points came from myth and legend.

Here's the thing: [b]you have a mind. But we cannot find it. What would Occam say?[/b]

"we cannot find it" in what sense?
Although we don't know exactly what it is, we each sense that we have it via introspection and we know (or at least I do) it is a process of the brain.

So, it's in the brain (but no particular part of it; just the brain)

Occam's razor isn't relevant here because Occam's razor only tells use which theory out of two or more competing theories is the most probable but, once we have good evidence for just one of those theories, that theory should be assigned the higher probability not because of Occam's razor but the evidence.

Originally posted by sonhouse
They are playing loose with the term 'moon'. It's a big rock maybe 200 feet across maximum.

They think it is not in a permanent orbit either.

How long does it have to be hanging around before it's considered "permanent"? It's already been here about 100 years. It may yet pile on enough aberration of orbit to 'kick out', but after 100 years, this seems unlikely. it may also eventually 'settle down' into a regular orbit. The reason it's so far out is probably a result of its low mass.

Just because the orbit is irregular, doesn't mean it's not permanent.

Originally posted by Suzianne
How long does it have to be hanging around before it's considered "permanent"? It's already been here about 100 years. It may yet pile on enough aberration of orbit to 'kick out', but after 100 years, this seems unlikely. it may also eventually 'settle down' into a regular orbit. The reason it's so far out is probably a result of its low mass.

Just because the orbit is irregular, doesn't mean it's not permanent.

The thing is 2016 HO3 is not orbiting the Earth, it's orbiting the Sun. It's in what is called a 1:1 orbital resonance, so although it stays near the Earth and it's orbit is affected strongly by the Earth these are largish perturbations on it's orbit around the Sun. Which is the opposite of the situation with the Moon which is orbiting the Earth with large perturbations from the Sun.

To be called a permanent companion it would have to either have been a near-Earth orbital companion or be predicted to be a companion over a sizeable fraction of the age of the solar system, so at least 1% of 4 billion years - in other words it would have to have been there for an amount of time at least of the order of the time elapsed since the dinosaurs became extinct.

There is an animation on the Wikipedia page at the bottom in the section labelled "gallery" about it that explains what is happening quite well provided one reads the text in the animation as it appears.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_HO3

Originally posted by humy
"we cannot find it" in what sense?
Although we don't know exactly what it is, we each sense that we have it via introspection and we know (or at least I do) it is a process of the brain.

So, it's in the brain (but no particular part of it; just the brain)

Occam's razor isn't relevant here because Occam's razor only tells use which theory out of t ...[text shortened]... theory should be assigned the higher probability not because of Occam's razor but the evidence.

The razor is just a fun rule of thumb that as often as not turns out to be worthless. More interesting to me is the existence of your mind. We cannot find it by reductive science methods. We can find your atoms and molecules and organs and lobes. No mind anywhere. It's like you don't really exist.

Originally posted by apathist
The razor is just a fun rule of thumb that as often as not turns out to be worthless. .

In what sense 'worthless'? Occam's razor used correctly which partly means recognizing when it does and doesn't apply (and I will publish the laws of probability for that in my book ), it tells us which theory has the greatest probability due to it being the least assumptive theory (note how I don't say "simplest theory", which wouldn't be correct! ) out of a set of two or more competing theories.
Just like with the principle of indifference, it can be massively misused or misunderstood but there are answers for that ( which I will publish in my book ).

More interesting to me is the existence of your mind. We cannot find it by reductive science methods.

What is "reductive science methods" as opposed to just "science methods" ? Give me a specific example of just one of these "reductive science methods" .

And what do you mean by "find it"? I know it is there by introspection; why do you think that isn't enough? Why the need for something more? In contrast, I don't know, for example, atoms are there by introspection hence the need for something more (a science of indirect observation in this case) to indicate to me they are there.

^^^ that panicky shotgun blast deserves a thoughtful reply. I'll give it.

Originally posted by sonhouse
We can be pretty sure there is no bible god, the three Abrahamic religions were strictly man made. There was no god in the inception of those three religions. But this is the science forum and religion should not even be brought up here.

Didn't Einstein say he didn't believe god played dice with the universe or something like that? Wasn't he refering to a scientific principal?

Originally posted by joe beyser
Didn't Einstein say he didn't believe god played dice with the universe or something like that? ...

I am not in the slightest implying here you just implied you would believe the contrary to this below but I think I should still point out that:

Einstein made many quotes with the word "God" nearly all of them grossly misunderstood by many if not most theists into thinking he would approve of their religion. Einstein didn't believe there was such thing as a personal god. The word "God" to him meant "everything" or "the cosmos" and not some kind of conscious or supernatural entity. Thus, whenever he spoke of "God", that never indicated he believed in a personal god.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Albert_Einstein
"...Albert Einstein's religious views have been studied extensively. He said he believed in the "pantheistic" God of Baruch Spinoza, but not in a personal god, a belief he criticized. He also called himself an agnostic, while disassociating himself from the label atheist, preferring, he said, "an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being".
...
...
On 22 March 1954 Einstein received a letter from Joseph Dispentiere, an Italian immigrant who had worked as an experimental machinist in New Jersey. Dispentiere had declared himself an atheist and was disappointed by a news report which had cast Einstein as conventionally religious. Einstein replied on 24 March 1954:

It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.[18]


.."


http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/17/science/17einsteinw.html
“...A letter the physicist wrote in 1954 to the philosopher Eric Gutkind, in which he described the Bible as “pretty childish” and scoffed at the notion that the Jews could be a “chosen people,” ...”

Originally posted by humy:
In what sense 'worthless'? Occam's razor used correctly which partly means recognizing when it does and doesn't apply (and I will publish the laws of probability for that in my book ), it tells us which theory has the greatest probability due to it being the least assumptive theory (note how I don't say "simplest theory", which wouldn't be correct! ) out of a set of two or more competing theories.

The least assumptive theory is often not the best theory. In those cases, surely the razor is worse than worthless – it reduces the probability that we spend our time investigating the better theory!

What is "reductive science methods" as opposed to just "science methods" ? Give me a specific example of just one of these "reductive science methods" .

Newtonian physics (the clockwork universe!). Methodological reduction is the scientific attempt to provide explanation in terms of ever smaller entities. The whole is the sum of the parts. It’s a mainstream idea that has yielded incredible advances in our ability to understand and control our environment. I’m sure you know about this already.

And what do you mean by "find it"? I know it is there by introspection; why do you think that isn't enough? Why the need for something more? In contrast, I don't know, for example, atoms are there by introspection hence the need for something more (a science of indirect observation in this case) to indicate to me they are there.

Consciousness is a great mystery. Science (especially reductive science) cannot find it. That’s why the study of mind is more philosophy than science. I think you already know that, too.

We don’t have a clue, for example, whether mind can arise from other types of substrate beside a CNS. And there is no scientific theory explaining why a CNS may produce consciousness. The whole subject is such a huge mystery.

Originally posted by humy
... Occam's razor ... tells us which theory has the greatest probability due to it being the least assumptive theory ... out of a set of two or more competing theories.

Excuse the ellipses. I know that humans value beauty, and its normative to find the less assumptive theory to be more attractive. But what makes you think that nature conforms to human ideals?

To put it another way: what makes you think that reality is more likely to be best described by less assumptive theories?

Originally posted by apathist
Excuse the ellipses. I know that humans value beauty, and its normative to find the less assumptive theory to be more attractive. But what makes you think that nature conforms to human ideals?

To put it another way: what makes you think that reality is more likely to be best described by less assumptive theories?

Think of it in risk terms. Each assumption in a theory has some chance of being wrong. The chance of the theory being right is the probability that none of the assumptions are wrong. So theories with lots of assumptions are more likely to be faulty than ones with fewer assumptions, simply because they rely on fewer things that can be wrong.

about Occam's razor:

For now on, lets call Occam's razor the shorthand name I invented for it in my book (yet to be published ) of 'oc-razor'.

Suppose you are told their are two theories labelled theory A and theory B. You are told they are exhaustive and mutually exclusive therefore one must be true and the other must be false but you are not told which. You are not given any more information of clue to what each theory is.

I would say, under these circumstances, until if or when you have more relevant information, you should assign the probabilities (using the principle of indifference) as precise probabilities of;

P(A) = 1/2
P(B) = 1/2

Now, suppose you are then given just one additional pieces of information; you are told the number of assumption A relies on to be true is more than B makes. You are not told what any of these assumptions are.

I would say, under these circumstances, until if or when you have more relevant information, because more assumptions means more assumptions that could be wrong and it only takes one of those assumptions to be wrong to make the theory false, you should assign the probabilities as imprecise probabilities of;

P(A) < 1/2
P(B) > 1/2

That, of course, implies P(B) > P(A), thus conforms to oc-razor.

But, if you are told what those assumptions are, that complicates things because now you may be able to assign probabilities to some, not necessarily all, of those assumptions. But oc-razor still applies because, if you assign differing probabilities to those assumptions, the application if oc-razor isn't a function of the comparative number of assumptions competing theories make but rather which is the least assumptive theory, meaning which you should assume has the least probability of having at least one of its assumptions wrong.


In case you are not familiar with the term 'imprecise probability';
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imprecise_probability