Best answer and a good metaphor. Paying more only goes so far in attracting talent. You need the job to be manageable, the environment needs to be at the least not actively hostile, and the system the job exists within to not be completely broken.
We have no predators but we do have a lot of existential threats. The more we spread out the more chances we have of surviving. If we sit on our hands and stay put we’ll wind up like the dinosaurs one way or another.
There are other alternatives beyond "spreading out" and "sitting on our hands".
Solving world hunger does not need expansion. Stopping climate change does not need expansion. Preventing the upcoming antibiotics crisis does not need expansion. To the contrary, expansion makes all those things worse or has even started them in the first place.
Stopping world hunger does not need more food, or even fewer people. Humans produce quite enough food to feed everyone already. The problem is distribution.
This problem is twofold. First is that much food is produced far from many poorly nourished people. This problem is totally solvable by modern transport. There are enough charity donations to prevent hunger everywhere.
Second, and most importantly, it's the social structure what prevents ending the hunger where the hunger still is. People prevent production and distribution of food in order to keep the social structures where they are on top, or are fighting to be on top. They themselves are not hungry, and don't care about the rest much.
Odometers benefit from the fact that they’re supposed to be a permanent recording, I’m sure we could come up with a non digital way of making a permanent mark. I doubt even that would be necessary though since most people don’t cheat on their taxes and auditing a physical system is easier than tracking cash flow.
Odometers are based on axle rotations; you could game that by running larger tires than stock, for example. There are perverse incentives that are difficult to solve - GPS is imperfect and mandating it is also unappealing from a privacy perspective.
For most cars there isn’t much room to increase tire size but maybe you’re thinking of putting a lift kit on a civic, might be a bit hard to pass inspection.
That’s the current situation with the gas tax. Why are we trying to change it? Right now road usage is calculated based on observations made of the roads in question. You deploy some method of counting cars over a period of time and then make your estimates. Why do we need perfect surveillance when a rough count gives us all the data we need to know to determine service schedules? I’d bet that the current methods also cost a fraction of the amount it would to develop multiple apps plus car integration plus reporting systems plus training and salaries for the people that now manage that data and the ongoing maintenance of the apps and infrastructure. I’d also bet all those new costs would be pork for someone’s district.
I think even dramatically simpler might be an understatement. Neurons are cells, living organisms capable of growth, movement, and some fairly intelligent interaction with their environment. A transistor doesn’t even approach that, it’s more on the level of a single protein within a neuron and not a very complex one.
Asking basic questions might be annoying for a spectator who is already an expert and is just trying to find the latest tid bits of information in the field but for the vast majority of people the basic questions are the ones they want answered. Having a specialist engage in an open ended conversation with a non expert is often more interesting because it is a better approximation of the conversation the listener would have with the same person. I’m not sure what you mean by filler, to me shorter interviews have a higher percentage of filler since people usually have about 40 minutes of standard dialogue on hand. It’s only when you go well past the hour mark that you start to get the unscripted stuff that you wouldn’t normally hear without getting to know the person.
It’s only when you go well past the hour mark that you start to get the unscripted stuff that you wouldn’t normally hear without getting to know the person.
You see, for me this is almost always the stuff I don't care about. It almost always ends up either rambling personal anecdotes and the two of them sharing 'funny' stories or two people pontificating on subjects way outside their areas of expertise. Both of which are completely uninteresting to me.
Two blokes chatting bollocks about stuff they don't really understand is only fun if I'm one of them.
As an interviewee, I'm going to be exhausted after an hour on mic and talking about whatever random things come to mind--which are probably mostly random digressions that aren't very interesting. I have been taped for longer than that--with a break or two--but with the intent that the footage was going to be heavily edited.
I'm not even in the efficiency "play it at 2x" camp. But I pretty much have zero interest in hearing two or more people randomly ramble on. The fact that NPR/NPR-like podcasts and radio shows tend to have segments on even 1 hour shows probably says something about what pros find works best.
(I'm also a fan of shorter conference presentations although at large conferences, I appreciate that there are logistical issues associated with moving people between rooms too frequently.)
Everyone always thinks along the lines of current biological limitations when talking about space travel while ignoring the huge advances that are being made in biotechnology. Given another 100 years I think we’ll be pretty good at customizing our biology to suit our needs. Hell, we probably have the required technical ability right now, we just lack the theoretical understanding.
Every time I try to get a good picture of an eagle with my iPhone it turns out blurry and that’s in the daytime with them flying slowly overhead. It’s been a while since I tried the same with a plane but I imagine the results are similar. I don’t think the “cameras are so good now all blurry photos must be fake” argument holds water.
Ultraterrestrials would be interesting but they’d also need a really good reason for hiding. Now, if they no longer live here but are just coming back for a visit…
