A cool device. Seems like its completely autonomous. Seeing as we used to have tails in our evolutionary past, I wonder if this could be fitted like a myoelectric prosthesis around the coccyx or something and function like a biological tail.
Attempting to replicate a tail seems tangential to the purpose of the device. The human coccyx is a poor location to anchor anything given how the vertebrae are not equipped to handle force, and there is effectively zero musculature to support it. The harness on the back appears much more practical.
Let's assume that for some reason attaching sensors/stimulatirs to the coccyx area lets us control tail like robots. Then the sensors could be attached in that area, and the actual tail could be mounted anywhere else, perhaps even remote to the astronaut's body.
I'm not sure that I buy that first assumption though. Measuring signals might be possible, and it might be possible to learn how to move the tail based on signals produced during conscious attempt to move the tail. But I don't see how it would be possible to send signals back to the brain.
That's an assumption that isn't rooted in anatomy. You need nerves to measure signals on. Look up the comparative anatomy of the human cauda equina vs that of a dog. Where you're thinking of plugging into the body, in a human you'd be left with the filum terminale, which is going to sorely disappoint if you are looking for nerve signals.
To get any meaningful spinal communication in this hypothetical scenario, you'd be looking higher up in the sacral region. Unless this hypothetical also includes some magic star trek technology, you'd be invasively implanting electrodes there, which sounds like a fantastic way to trigger fecal incontinence and chronic pain.
I get the fun idea of returning humans to our primate origins, but modern human anatomy has left us effectively nothing to work with. It's an anatomical dead end.
Completely naïve guess, but maybe it'd make sense to tap into the hip muscles to hint the controller system what you want the tail to do. In zero g, a slight rotation in the pelvis won't cause too much movement, but I think it would feel fairly natural to trigger a tail swing with a hip motion.
I think the tail attached to the back might be physically awkward or impractical. After all, there's probably a good reason that all animals with prehensile tails have it attached to the pelvis. But then again, it may just be an artifact of it being an extended spine.
Unironically, I think this is a fantastic idea that might actually catch on if/when humans start spending extended time in zero g environments. Tails do have a lot of advantages for navigating and manipulating 3D space.
Unfortunately, I don't think we'll be able to actually solve the problems with this design until we're actually in space regularly.
Right, thanks for the proper information. I guess you need to go pretty far into our past to get to a tailed ancestor, quick google says its 25-30myam, pre-hominid monkeys. Back scratcher manufacturers aren't going out of business anytime soon.
The final / functional version should be; as it stands though, it's a prototype / concept. It'll need a lot of sensors and fine-tuning to work as intended though.
I can’t speak to the accuracy of this, as it was just something I was told from a co-worker (in the US), but he had 9 kids and told me he paid 0 income tax and got $15k back on his taxes, due to his kids.
He (probably) wasn't doing that for $$$ reasons, he (probably) was doing it for religious reasons. It's not a rational trade at all. As religiosity dies down, the government will have to rely on making it rational to have kids again instead of relying on priests pounding their pulpit and telling young people it's their duty.
'I am the flail of god. Had you not comitted great sins, god would not have sent a punishment like me upon you.'
Considering how total the destruction was that the Mongols visited on the conquered, it is almost believable. And likewise, them not invading Europe was considered to be divine intervention.
The Mongols believed the world was meant to be theirs, by divine right. Saying No to a Mongol when he asks you for something (eg your land or daughter) was considered a religious offense.
The idea that divine intervention places limits on rulers, like Genghis Kahn, could be supported by Genesis 20:3–7, where a king is prevented from sinning through divine intervention.
Even if they did keep that paperwork, they should be punished alongside the manager who asked them to do it. They knew it was unethical and did it anyway. They should have refused. Risk of being fired is not as big of a problem for a programmer as it is for almost anyone else.
I've got mixed feelings. I would be interested in hearing the whole story first. The "hey, I can program the trains to break if we're not the ones to run maintenance, should I do that?" or the "yeah, I guess I could make the trains break if we're not the ones to run maintenance" are both pretty clearly unethical.
However, the "yeah, sure I can add in a GPS locator module" and the "yeah, I can add analytics that reports when the train is in a maintenance hanger" and the "the catastrophic program halt code module used in cases of extreme failure is located here, but why do you want to know that?" all seem less than unethical.
Theoretically you only need one unethical line of code, so how it got there, I think, is pretty important to know before passing ultimate judgement.
EDIT:
Of course for something like train control software, you really should have a process or at the very least responsible engineers that would notice a middle manager with limited technical skills asking suspicious questions and then pushing up a PR that is self approved.
I would be more than willing to entertain an ethical debate along those lines. Although, like I said, I think it's important to understand the whole story because the specifics really do make a difference.
I don't think that's a good way of thinking about it. Just because programmers might have better job security doesn't mean other motivators for not wanting to get fired exist.
Which also applies to everyone else. The programmer job security just makes that easier in most cases.
Which is not really my point as to why they should be held responsible. The reason is the real world consequences of their actions and the scale and ease of introducing negative consequences by tech creators.
FYI the most expensive cheese in the world comes from a certain kind of donkey. I only know this because I am a moose enthusiast, their cheese being the second most expensive.
I never really thought about all the cheese that could be made. The logical end question then is, can you make cheese with human milk? dog milk? rodent milk? is the only thing preventing this just the ick/cultural factors?
What does moose milk taste like? Are there potential for different varieties?
If someone is wondering why: much of Siberian land is difficult to develop due to permafrost. 65% of Russian territory, which comes up to 11.1 km2, is permafrost. Almost all of it is owned by the state/military and they probably couldn't give less of a fuck about any negative consequences.
You're wrong, concentrating on just STEM leads to media illiteracy. I would even say it's highly conductive in breeding bigotry. Studying the humanities is essential in understanding the human condition, as well as making sense of the mass of information and cultural heirtage everyone finds themselves in.
I didn't say Humanities were worthless. I just said there are no provable results there. "Is X ethical?" - no one can prove it but we will discuss it as long as someone will pay us to. Since there are no firm truths, anyone can get a degree (or more) without actually gaining the skills you refer to. In fact actually gaining the skills you allude to makes someone LESS likely to get funded or famous. It is extremists filled with certainty who rule these subjects...
that's bullshit. Classic liar's paradox and the solution is that sentence is ungrammatical in a strong sense of universal grammar ... which I can't prove, and I'm not philosopher enough to concern myself with lists of formal fallacies to make up for it
There absolutely are provable results, you make observations, conslusions, you must show how those are linked with logic. "Is X ethical" is just one of milions of possible questions in the class of sciences called humanities, of which ethics are just a small subset. However, when doing any research including interacting with live humans, you must understably prove ethical conduct.
So is X ethical? Can you give me the cold hard proof that smoking is moral (or that it is not)? What about paying taxes that will be used to build hospitals but also to bomb people?
Remember, not an opinion or an argument, a cold hard, proof no one can argue with.
