Archive for March, 2026
Saturday, March 21st, 2026
Elon Musk is determined to create a viable human civilisation on Mars and is intent on going there directly as quickly as possible (notwithstanding his slight detour through the Moon.) I think this is a mistake. I believe that there are many advantages to the creation of a base on ...
Posted in Space | No Comments »
Thursday, March 19th, 2026
Plato’s allegory in Republic 514a-517a can be summarised as follows
Location
Outside the Cave
Inside the Cave
Light
Sun
Fire
Reveals
Real things
Shadows and Images of things
Models of real things
Shadows of models of things
Symbolizes
The Good
The Sun
Reveals
Forms
Real things as instances of the Forms
Real things as perceptible particulars
Perceptions of perceptible things
Population
Free men
Escapees
Revolutionaries
Prisoners
Cognitions
Philosophy
Hypothetical thinking
Expert opinion
Common opinion
Status
Knowledge (επιστημη)
Opinion (δοξα)
Realm
Intelligibilia
Sensibilia (The Visible World)
FM ...
Posted in Philosophy | No Comments »
Sunday, March 15th, 2026
Reading Nikhil Mahant, Why alien languages could be far stranger than we imagine I was pleased to note that he canvassed the possibility of communication systems that were, as he says, non-linear – but by which he really meant not language-like in the way that language is defined for philosophical ...
Posted in Language, Philosophy, Space | No Comments »
Saturday, March 14th, 2026
Current SETI efforts, with rare exceptions, concentrate on the detection of signals from ETI from deep space, and the response protocols adopted for success in this search reflect this concentration. The protocols in question can be found at the IAA site as
Declaration of Principles Concerning Activities Following Detection of ...
Posted in Space | No Comments »
Sunday, March 8th, 2026
Size
S Small r < 0.8rE, m < 0.5mE g[1] < 0.8
M ...
Posted in Space | No Comments »
Sunday, March 1st, 2026
The dispute over the criteria used for the categorization of celestial bodies as planets reveals either a confusion concerning the reason for a definition, or an unhappy compromise between independent reasons. The criteria adopted by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) are that the body
is in orbit around the Sun,
has sufficient mass ...
Posted in Philosophy, Space | No Comments »