You mean, shut us down because we are a danger to humanity? Hmmmm , but the ones being shut down are humanity. — Constance

No, humanity is the species, the concept. 10%, hell even 1%, of the current population would be a gain if they thought we would wipe ourselves out completely.

Asimov's Laws Of Robotics
The laws are as follows: “(1) a robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm;
(2) a robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law;
(3) a robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.”
Asimov later added another rule, known as the fourth or zeroth law, that superseded the others. It stated that “a robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.”

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

It is this last part that worries me.

jack-in-the-box toys — Dawnstorm

Actually you did here the same as I do when I am not sure and I don't want be to harassed by the grammar police. Rewrite the sentence to avoid the problem.

I don't know exactly how correct I am but I mostly use a rule for things like this that I learned somewhere a long time ago.

If the noun-phrase or compound noun has several heads that are of equal value, when it is obvious that as a whole it refers a single object that cannot be broken down into separate pieces without losing its meaning or is used as a noun to describe an object the S goes at the end of the line,

How many jacks do you see here?

I don't see any. I only see two box. But the toy's name is "Jack-in-the-box". A single word, proper noun.



Now there is a jack, but the name is still "Jack-in-the-box"

(or choose your trusted authority and do as they say) — Dawnstorm

Good idea, let's do that.

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/jack-in-the-box

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/jack-in-the-box

Merriam says that both work, but has this little caveat.
"These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'jack-in-the-box.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors."

This is sort of weird because I have not been able to find any use of Jacks-in-the-box on the most popular web sites, they all return Jack.

So what? — Jamal

Ouch! :worry:

passersby — Jamal

Perfectly good word there, fine example of where to put the S. :up:

The Secret Life of Words:
English Words and Their Origins
By: Anne Curzan, Ph.D

The Routes of English
By: Melvyn Bragg

These are good books to read, especially if you are not native speakers. They help to understand just how screwed up English really is. I have a few more, but they are on an old drive that I don't have handy right now and I cannot remember the names

You say this like it is a bad thing. — noAxioms

No, I stated it as a possibility without any inflection of good or bad.

Too much weight is given to a test that measures a machine's ability to imitate something that it is not. — noAxioms

Nowadays a chat with most young people would convince me I was talking to a computer, and most kids find the AI talk like they do so they would never tell the difference either.

If an AI was programed to test for signs of humans using something similar to the Turing test, would people be able to convince it that they were humans?

But how can we know that? — javi2541997

Twenty boxes containing ten apples in each. Could not be an apple in boxes.
Twenty boxes containing ten Jacks in each. Could not be a jack in the boxes.

The whole thing is the toy, one object. Each box constitutes a toy. If it has one Jack in it it would be a jack-in-the-box. If it has more than one Jack in it, it could not be a jack-in-the-box.

The problem is Jack-in-the-box is a clause being used as a noun. It has a subject and predicate. — NOS4A2

If the phrase is being used as a noun, then it has to be treated as such. It does not have a subject nor a predicate because it is counted as one word, thus the hyphens.
Being only one word the S goes on the end.

Ergo, plural would always be applied to Jack instead of box (right?). — javi2541997

When you talk about Jack-in-the-box, the subject is the box, because that is the toy. Because you are talking about a box with a Jack in it. That is the way to decide where the S goes.
As Quk points out, multiple Jacks in multiple boxes would be Jacks-in-the-boxes. But if there is only one Jack in each box then it is Jack-in-the boxes.

Of course, then again, because there is no motivational possibilities, lacking affectivity altogether, there would be no motivation to do harm. — Constance

I always considered that the primal controlling laws of robotics would be to blame for the downfall of man. Giving robots the order to do anything at all costs, including looking after humans gives them free rein to kill all except a few perfectly good breeders to continue the human race if it were necessary.
To stop global climate changes making humans extinct it would be perfectly reasonable for them to kill off 90% of the humans that are creating the problems or just shut down the actual causes of it. Could you imagine a world with all of the polluting power plants shut down, all of the polluting vehicles stopped. I would not take long for many millions to die.

Who was it who said...

Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; tiny minds discuss grammar. — Jamal

I don't know who said it first but there are several variations. My own is:

Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; tiny minds discuss themselves(usually on Twatter, Farcebook, Nit nok).

Some insist that the “-s” belongs on the noun in the middle of the expression (runners-up), and those with the common touch are content to leave it at the end (runner-ups). — javi2541997

I cannot actually say that I have ever heard anyone say "runner-ups", but it definitely sounds wrong.
If someone is talking about the people that did not win the competition they usually talk about more than one person. If there were only two people the second place would be runner-up, so it should be obvious that when talking about more than two people that the emphasis goes on the runner. The phrase actually comes from dog racing when there were only first and second place prizes.

So have you ever been challenged for saying Jack + s in a box or Jack-in-the-box + es? — javi2541997

Jacks-in-the-box would imply that there are more than one Jack in one box, so it is grammatically incorrect as a plural when used for more than box.

Zeus was prone to eating his children too. It's a god thing. — unenlightened

From what I remember of reading about the ancient gods, they ate them in more ways than one.

Some say that it was a Christian society that brought about the enlightenment and the birth of science, and the very commitment to truth — unenlightened

While others say that the church tried to(and is still trying)to limit the knowledge available to the common people and to limit or control the research into certain fields that they consider to be the providence of their god. How many were condemned by the church for trying to explain the truth of the universe.
And as for truth about the churches themselves, I think that we will never know a lot of it unless we can find all of the old books that the leaders of religion stop us from seeing.

But what I do not understand is if it is used anyway or if we should correct it despite the fact that most people use the conjugation wrongly. — javi2541997

According to most of the theories of language development that I have read, this is what causes the changes. If enough people use a certain way of expressing something and it stays around for long enough it will become acceptable.
It might stay regional as in a lot of villages and small towns have different ways of talking or national like the US or India English. Rarely I think nowadays would you see a major change in any of the major languages except in the use of new additions (text as a verb, mouses) or trend words(groovy) that usually die off after a while.

I think that there are nearly 2 billion English speakers in the world, it would be difficult for them all to change to one way of speaking, and I don't just mean accents.

I remember long ago when I worked in England. We were doing some landscaping in a maternity hospital when a little dark women came charging at us shouting and screaming. We stopped what we were doing so we could hear her and got the shock of our lives.
"You must all stop making bang bang noises and away from here you need to go. I cannot hear the babies ticking in the mummy belly"

We ran.

Soon after that I left England and I am glad I did. If you listen to the way some of the kids speak in their utube videos you can hardly understand what they are saying.

I agree, annoying bastards. :lol:

I just read an article and it reminded me of something else that I really don't like.

Righteous deservers People that think that their rights go over and above the rest of humanities. Just stop oil, over zealous trans people, car parking space hoggers, queue jumpers, anyone that thinks they they deserve more just because they are who they are.

I was wondering why I had not thought of this when I posted earlier. I think it is probable because I rarely go out and about nowadays and have not had much personal experience with it lately. Funny how the mind works

Steven Pinker's Words and Rules: The ingredients of Language, — javi2541997

I read this when it was released, don't remember much about it now. I read another book or something that tried to explain some of the points he raised, but I don't remember that either.

What I do remember is that a lot of imported words were corrupted over time by early localized pronunciation and as the art of writing became more popular words tend to stabilize in the way they were written and spoken.

If I remember correctly, the explanation for words like think, thank came from the same Germanic roots and were mispronounced to hell in England until they got where they are today. Thank could not be used as the past tense of think because it was already in use, the same with thunk.
As Ludwig notes

whether from difficulties in pronunciation — Ludwig V

many words were not used because of the way they rolled off the tongue, "thinked" is not easy to say.

But what puts the brakes on theories like that is that

That's how we ended up with ice cream (originally iced cream). — javi2541997

we still say "iced tea".

I learned Spanish as an adult nearly 50 years ago, and believe me irregular verbs still give me problems.

And he can make that guitar sing like no other. :rofl:

If you watch his videos, quite a few of the band's members get a moment of solo playing, something a lot of the great artists don't do. Even with guests, he takes backseat quite often.

https://youtu.be/6Whgn_iE5uc

One of my favorites.

A little “young” for the above list, but I’ve added anyway because it FEELS like he’s been around since the Big Bang. — Mikie

Hey, he is older than Cat Stevens and only a couple of years younger that Niel Young.

Carlos Santana should be on the list maybe, he is close to 80.

It would be a shame to lose him, great music over so many decades.

Lost this week.

Jane Birkin - Je t'aime.

https://youtu.be/JIQiGN-vO-g

They sneaked this into the 9th Grade end of year dance, Oh the memories of being 15!

Influencers.
No matter what they are trying do influence you to do, they are all a bunch of self interested assholes.

Actually, button pressing and channel changing à la the metaphor is about ending one's life. — Nils Loc

Never heard that before. Button pressing is usually about annoying people and channel changing is a method of avoidance.

A more direct, sober, offensive question is under what circumstances should suicide be condoned? — Nils Loc

Suicide is a private choice, I don't think it should be condoned nor condemned. I someone has a valid reason for not wanting to continue eating, few will try to stop him. But when they talk about not continue the road of life nearly everyone will condemn the idea.

People need a lot of things to make life livable, every attempt should be made to insure that people's live have as many as possible. If, after trying to help resolve the situation that has caused the wish to end it all have failed then it should be left to each person to decide how they continue.

Personally I would hurt more knowing that I was the cause of much suffering because I interfered with someone's suicide than I would by not sticking my nose in to try and stop them.

They are the proof of our free will. — Nils Loc

No, they are proof that we can build things.
Clicking on the buttons only allows you to change the channel, not allow you to see what you really want to see. You can only decide, impose your will, about what is offered.

I had my gall bladder removed about 20 years ago, Things tasted the same afterwards but the desire to eat certain things was gone. No idea why and it took me a couple of years to note the change.

Sounds like you are talking about something more than the television.
But no, there is no remote to the channels of life.

There is no "best weather to order pizza". It is always the correct time, place, reason and even weather to order it.

Because of length contraction the faster you go the shorter the distance between two points. So something that is 1 light year away to us is less than 1 light year away to an object moving at near the speed of light. — Michael

Ok, so a rock traveling at the speed of light comes from a star a million light years away to here. At the same time that it leaves, there is a super massive solar flare in the star. The rock arrives here a few years later but we will not see the flare for a million years.

Logically, if that is true then the object must have moved above the speed of light to be able to reach here before the actual light from the star's flare when it left did.

Does light, traveling at the speed of light not get affected by time dilation?

And I do understand the formula that is used, but how can you explain the illogicality of it?

how would the electron on the Sun know which electron on the Earth to interact with, such that shadows appear as they do when we are walking along? — wonderer1

They would not know.
Photons travel the whole distance between point A and point B. This can easily be proven just by intercepting them at any point between A and B, Point C. Then try to intercept them at the same time in a different place along the same line, point D. There is nothing to intercept at the point furthermost from the source because it was already blocked.

Time dilation aboard the ship. Lorentz factor. From the standpoint of Earth, yes. Hopeless. From the speeding ship perspective the clock ticks slower. — jgill

Your still wrong!
It still takes the same amount of time for you to travel 1,000,000 light years while traveling at the speed of light that it does for the light to do so.
That is the definition of light year, how far light travel in one year.

there is something wrong with the math here.

Suppose we are that highly intelligent species with advanced technology, and we wish to travel to a star and its planets a million light years away. We are capable of bringing our speed in short order to very, very close to light speed. So we hop aboard and take off, and it takes us less than a year to reach the star. However, Earth is long gone, not even a scrap of matter remaining. Of what value is our journey to those left behind? — jgill

The star is a million light years away, that would mean that traveling very, very close to the speed of light it would take us more than a million years to get there.

Do you wish that UFOs, Alien Abductions, and Alien Visits were, in fact, REAL, meaning our planet has been visited by aliens from another star system, and that aliens may be present on our planet right now? — BC

I would be kind of doubtful to say I WISH it were real. But I would not be surprised if it were.
What I do find almost impossible to believe is that there are beings here that came all the way from the stars to do us harm. If the were going to do that i think that we would already know about it.
If they wanted to take over the world and enslave us and then trash the place I doubt they would come and look around first then sit and wait for reinforcements to arrive. If they were a race of conquerors they would bring the bloody tools with them. I am pretty sure that they would bring along some super EMPs to knock us back into the stone age and the they would just have to load us on the trucks.

Certainly not necessarily so, but unless we're something special it stands to reason that at least one would. — Michael

Correct, but maybe they went exploring in the other direction.

Of course it's possible, and one explanation for the Fermi paradox is that we are one of the first intelligent species in the galaxy. — Michael

It would also make sense if we were the last and missed the others by a couple of million years. Just because there is a great possibility that there is intelligent life out there does not mean that they have the technology or reasons to "come calling".

But given that the oldest planet in the Milky Way is 12.7 billion years old and the Earth is only 4.5 billion years old, it would appear reasonable to infer that there were advanced civilisations long before us. — Michael

Maybe they all went extinct by screwing up their planets like we are doing.

Just considering species born in the Milky Way, as I said before, the conjecture is that a species would explore all of it. Assuming the resources are available and they don't die out first, it's unclear why they wouldn't. — Michael

Again, in all of that time they might have come and gone hundreds of times but we know nothing about it. How many plan trips to Disney world and never get there? Maybe when they arrived it was a barren world that they just put on their list of future resources and then died out. Is there any proof anywhere that they earth was not visited? Fermi's question about the absence of living beings coming visiting from other planets was not even original. It was just a slightly different version asked long before him about the absence of light from the stars.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olbers%27_paradox

Actually, lots of people do. It's called the mediocrity principle. Of course others also propose the Rare Earth hypothesis in opposition. — Michael

The most stupid of people believe in the most extreme ends of any possible concept. The people that actually try to use their intelligence are usually somewhere in the middle. The people with some sort of special (academic, scientific) interest in the subject tend toward the direction their knowledge leads them.

One of the arguments is just that a sufficiently advanced civilisation would colonise their entire galaxy, even if just with unmanned probes, whether for research or to find resources. — Michael

Not necessarily so, just because we would do it does not mean that they would have the same motivations we do.

At 10% the speed of light it would take a million years to cross the Milky Way. If intelligent life is common you’d have expected someone to have done it in the last few billion years. — Michael

Let us suppose that there is a group of beings out there.
First of all, why would they have to be more advanced than we are. True, there are many older galaxies out there that could have developed highly intelligent life forms along time ago, but there is also evidence that many galaxies have already died out. Anyone of the many galaxies could have life similar to our own at with the same level of technology, thus unable to come visiting.
Second point, a million years ago when they set out it would have been impossible for them to even guess that we might appear on this planet. So why would they head in this direction instead of one of the other millions of possibilities in all of the other galaxies?
And there is always the possibility that they came a long time ago but unless you have knowledge the rest of do not, we have no idea what happened back then. We just don't know whether they came a couple of million years ago, said "what a shithole" and never came back
It might also be possible that we will have to wait for a long time for them to come, if they have a reason to do so.
Last point, no one said that intelligent life is common. The possibility of life developing and advancing in technology is not zero though. Developing the level of technology needed to travel the universe is not as common as developing the hammer, that should be obvious. And we should also take into account that some very intelligent beings maybe out there that do not posses the ability to develop any technology and those that might just not to want to do it

I seriously believe that there are other places where life exists in in the universe. It is, just by the "known" size of it almost a statistical impossibility.
The question would be, how many of these life forms could actually be capable of developing technology?
Even if we count only 1% of the visible galaxies, and only 1% of their star that have planets, and only 1% of those planets that could support life in some form, and then only 1% of them that might have beings capable of developing technology there are still a great quantity of possible places for aliens to come from.
https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/space-science/how-many-galaxies-in-universe/

Even counting the minimum amount of galaxies they mention in the article 100,000,000,000 (one hundred billion) that is a lot to think about. But if the other estimate 1,000,000,000,000 (1 trillion) makes it practically impossible to ignore.

It is estimated that the average galaxy contains about 100,000,000 stars.

Anyone want to do the math?

The main argument I see is not if aliens exist, but why would the come here? Any ideas about that?

And life goes on, until it doesn't.

It is wrong to take it out of the context of the entirety, something that so many people do nowadays to argue that they are correct about something.
I have never heard the song, or at least have never paid attention to it while hearing, maybe posting the lyrics would make it easier to comment on how the write intended us to interpret the meaning.

And what decides the value of what we give? — TiredThinker

Mother Luck or Mother Nature if you prefer.