rgro wrote: > I would be the one saying that, someday, someone will figure out how to > get 1,260,000 pounds (the max takeoff gross weight of an Airbus A-380) > of metal, people, and other materials to fly 7 miles above the earth's > surface, for over 8,000 miles without falling to the earth. You would > be saying that this violated all the then-known "laws" of physics and > engineering, talking of monkeys, etc. etc. A nice little fantasy, but utterly irrelevant and uninteresting. Hindsight is always 20/20. Let me give you an equally irrelevant and uninteresting fantasy to illustrate:
You would be the one saying that, someday, someone will figure out how to make zombies by hooking dead bodies up to a lightning rod. (There's really no need to continue this story, is it?) rgro wrote: > To be more precise (in the context of aviation), no immutable laws of > physics, etc. were really violated, but theretofore unknown laws > (aerodynamics in particular) were discovered by a few of those same > intrepid monkeys pounding away at their typewriters. Absolutely not. Aerodynamics has its root in observation (of e.g. birds), trial and error, and 'the gradual collection of knowledge about various subjects, and eventually combining it all into one working framework' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerodynamics#History). -It was *not* stumbled upon by people blindly flailing around in the dark-, as you seem to imply. rgro wrote: > And they took those new "laws" (which, of course, continued to evolve) > and combined them with the old "laws" to create something that has, > since, defied all the best knowledge of that former time. Are you saying that the fact that people before us knew less than we do now, means that now all we have to do is make random stabs in the dark, and that will somehow give us profound knowledge that defies everything we know today? That seems a little bit optimistic to me. rgro wrote: > However, in the more macro-context, say a few hundred years, I'll take > that bet any time! I'll direct my estate to accept the contribution > from your estate. So you're willing to bet that some day somebody might find out something new about something? I don't know, It feels like this discussion has run out of steam somehow. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Soulkeeper's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=35297 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=94770 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
