I have to say, it would be phenomenal if there was an HN equivalent to this opportunity (e.g. like Ask HN but in the other direction) that didn't simply promote a blog post elsewhere in order to spark intelligent discourse here. This would allow intellectual superstars in the computer sciences and entrepreneurial spheres to hold similar forums without (the likelihood) of offensive comments to infiltrate the conversation, i.e. "Do boobs look cooler in space?"
I'm not convinced that a more intelligent discourse is necessarily better. One major reason I like Reddit AMAs is that they are so informal that once in a while the host answers some pretty outrageous questions or feels free to joke around a bit. Questions come up that wouldn't come up in any other situation or interview, and the randomness adds value. The chaos is a feature.
There's no reason you couldn't do it right now with the existing infrastructure on HN. It wouldn't be as fancy (e.g. the AMA subject's comments highlighted) but it would be just as functional, down to the ordering of the questions in the comments.
I find the reddit interface extremely annoying with AMA... I want to see all the questions and answers, I don't want to see the random ones that don't get answered, etc. Just show me everything in a neat organized way. Love the guys that summarize everything at the end.
I agree. I'm unclear how it decides what posts get shown and what is hidden in the "Load more comments" tag. I've even found responses to questions within those "load more comments" section, which I find odd. They are also completely out of chronological order.
If you open a submissions comments you'll see in the top left corner under the submission text and the empty "your comment" box a little drop down that says "sort by" ...
The default sort order is either best or top scoring which will rank comment order by vote score, I generally sort by "old" (oldest first; chronological order.
If you have an account you can alter your default sort preference.
There's a plethora of brilliant and accomplished people on HN, I'd love it if they came out to answer a few questions.
They wouldn't even have to be "intellectual superstars", if all they did was build out idea/product/service X i would still find it a very valuable addition to HN.
A few years back someone wrote an article (to a science journal I think) asking if it was possible that the dinosaurs had high technology but all evidence of it had vanished in the millions of years that have passed.
Some dinosaurs were around for millions of years, which is a phenomenal amount of time compared to human history, and if humans go extinct anytime soon we may leave very little trace of our technology for a species 60 million years after us.
Two factors weighed against it: plant diversity and evidence on the moon.
The first comes from the argument that any sufficiently advanced civilization will travel around the globe, so fossil records will show the same plants everywhere. It's tricky to determine this but the evidence seemed against it.
The second is simply that any high technology civilization will eventually travel to the moon, which allows for a much more undisturbed record.
The second is simply that any high technology civilization will eventually travel to the moon, which allows for a much more undisturbed record.
If we didn't already know where the lunar landers touched down, do we really think we'd be able to find them again with just a telescope? That's a lot of area to search.
The point is ... there is no question that our satellites would have found such evidence by now. We may not tell the general public ... but we would definitely have a good idea of where to look for evidence.
A lot of meteorites would be necessary for this to happen. Of course depending on how big and widespread the evidence would be. Some "well-directed" hits, and our footprints and scientific things would be gone. If they had a bigger base, they probably dug a lot of underground tunnels which are a lot more resistand (one of the reasons to build them to begin with).
There's a pretty key difference. Deploying countermeasures against an extinction-level asteroid strike is a realistic possibility with current technology. An extraterrestrial human presence which could survive an extinction event just... isn't. Sad as it is to say.
My absolute favorite passage is "If the dinosaurs had a space program they would still be here"... Beyond the caricatural aspect of this phrase, i think it is a deep statement that needs to be understood by all humans. We had that exact discussion the other day with a bunch of friends/geeks; we tried to calculate the cost (to humanity) of all the "wasted" time designing,building,marketing,selling things that reduce the likelihood of the human specie survival beyond then next 500 years (an arbitrary large number). Seriously just think of bankers (very popular scapegoat these days - not that they do not deserve it) and the money (=time x effort) they wasted and how this time x effort could have been a far better investment in advanced space programs. Obviously, bankers are not the only negative contributors on the planet...
The bankers didn't waste money the gambeld and lost. The govs around the world wasted the money by spending on them.
The freedom to do these things led to the innovations over the centuries, its like evolution. Evolution is never the road to perfection but it adapts and gets better (slowly). If we would set everything else aside and only work on human survival we would in a short term make great progress but it would not be good longterm. Curiosity into all directions is better.
In all likelihood we wouldn't have gotten into or through the industrial revolution (hell, probably even the renaissance) without people performing many of the loan and financing functions modern day "bankers" fulfill. The current possibilities for space exploration likely wouldn't exist.
I know it's fun to hate on bankers these days, and that there are some good high profile examples of things going wrong, but try to keep some perspective. Just because you can paint everyone with some brush doesn't mean it's actually a good idea.
