darkmighty

> Many great solutions come from people with "crazy" thinking and I would expect they could have caused great damage (or perhaps have - jet engines) but otherwise we would be moving very slowly as a planet?

I agree. There's something I like to call Asimov's principle[1]: knowledge almost never does harm; the answer to poor or incomplete knowledge is almost always more knowledge (corrections, extensions, alternatives) instead of forgetting.

And there is the possibility of trying to forget in case a knowledge would be so absolutely harmful -- so the downside is practically bounded while the upside is practically unbounded. If you try to hide something harmful it's always possible it will be rediscovered later in very poor timing and the benefit of countermeasures won't be available. If we refrain from discussing AI safety in fear of derailing some holy discussion by the wise sages (what criteria would make anyone good enough to disrupt it?), it seems it'll be more likely when potent general AI emerges we're not ready.

If Einstein tried to hide the mass-energy equivalence, or say all of his theories because of mass-energy equivalence, then when someone later discovered it could be much worse -- if atomic bombs were discovered in the cold war (discoveries usually start unilaterally), one side could very well have started WW3 (in fact the US nearly started a war with USSR in the short period they were the sole possessors of the bomb). The fact is it is extremely hard to predict the impact of any individual action, while it seems quite safe to say that in general thoughtful action is usually benign -- this suggests a strong benefit to discussion and discovery of knowledge versus hiding in fear.

An important principle I would suggest instead is commitment to truth. You can make poor arguments, you can be wrong, but as long as you're committed to truth even the incorrect arguments might prove useful -- they might lead to stronger counterarguments, elucidation of fundamentals, etc.

To exemplify, one of the individuals that perhaps most advanced our understanding of Quantum Mechanics was again Einstein, which was a great critic of it -- his criticisms turned out to be all wrong, but they were so strong (intuitively seemingly right) they brought to light the most interesting features, 'weirdness' of the theory. Even for relativity one of the most useful ways of grasping the theory and its implications is by examining "paradoxes" -- which are essentially failed counterarguments.

This failure of commitment to truth is where climate change deniers ("""skeptics""") go wrong -- it's not trying to prove consensus wrong that's harmful, it is failure to adjust in face of mountains of evidence. Reasonable skepticism probably wasn't so harmful when its impact was less clear -- we've improved our models, measurements, etc to address it.

[1] He makes essentially this argument as a foreword to some of his short stories, can't remember which one exactly. I believe it was more or less along the lines of: science and technology (brought by knowledge, discovery) can often be used for great good or great harm, but to reliably avoid the great harm (that could also come from inaction) we usually need more knowledge, more discussion.

And note how my examples are for very impactful work in the brink of wars and political stability, and still discussion and knowledge seems to have been positive. How many people really should worry about the risk of triggering catastrophe from their daily jobs? Some of the points in the article might be applicable, in very restrict cases -- basically if you're dealing with catastrophic scenarios (how many people routinely are exposed to that?). If you ever find a flashing red button while alone in a power station, or find a break for a major cryptographic protocol, you want to triple check with specialists and be very careful. Otherwise it can turn into futile paralization by fear (which is harmful to yourself and others).

The comparison to colorblindness isn't precise: colorblind people don't have relative color perception. In terms of information content, over an entire song the information encoded in the scale is very small compared to the information encoded in the relative pitches of notes (in fact the ratio goes to 0 for long music). A grayscale image contains significantly less information, essentially a 2D chrominance array; the ratio of information is roughly constant and does not diminish for large images, or say a series of images (e.g. a grayscale movie). It would be more like applying unknown hue rotations [1] each time you look at an image.

[1] Example I found: https://cms-assets.tutsplus.com/uploads/users/1251/posts/259...

Nothing is immortal.

"Time fades even legend..."

Some things last more than others though, and I'm certainly not going to denounce propagating good ideas.

In portuguese there is a sonnet that goes

" (...) And I may say about love:

Let it not be immortal, seeing as it is a flame.

But let it be infinite while it lasts."

(Vinicius de Moraes)

I find the term is apt here, because 'space' is roughly defined as anything beyond 100km from Earth's surface (which they're aiming for). But reaching space is vastly easier than reaching orbit, which requires reaching a speed of about 28000km/h or 17000 mph, which they're definitely not aiming for!

If you're looking for a bit of an unconventional entry point, I recommend the seminal text 'Elements of Information Theory' by T. Cover (skipping chapters like Network Information/Gaussian channel should be fine), paired with David MacKay's 'Information Theory, Inference and Learning Algorithms'. Both seem available online:

http://www.cs-114.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Elements_of...

http://www.inference.org.uk/itprnn/book.pdf

They cover some fundamentals of what optimal inference looks like, why current methods work, etc (in a very abstract way by understanding Kolmogorov complexity and its theorems and in a more concrete way in MacKay's text). Another good theoretical partner could be the 'Learning from data' course, yet a little more applied: (also available for free)

https://work.caltech.edu/telecourse.html

Excellent lecturer/material (to give a glimpse, take lecture 6: 'Theory of Generalization -- how an infinite model can learn from a finite sample').

Afterward I would move to modern developments (deep learning, or whatever interests you), but you'll be well equipped.

It's probably impossible to satisfy the level of 'wonderfullness' you'd demand in a modern (even if minimalist) processor. There are a lot of competing demands on what it should do. RISC-V seems to have made good decisions w.r.t. modularity and efficiency at least.

Indeed, you have to look for niches -- and find the ones that are in

1) high demand (not just high demand in general -- high demand for new/better content by a new entrant);

2) low supply;

3) well paying customers.

I'm sure despite the flood those will still exist, as long as there's still a good amount of differentiation between people's preferences. A niche is a small subset of in the space of products that a small subset of customers have strong preference to. This needs preference differentiation.

This preference difference could be toward many features: cultural setting, story style, gameplay style, aesthetic style, etc.

There's perhaps a combinatorial advantage here: if sensitivity varies significantly across many of those parameters, just choose any unexplored subset, optimizing for 1/2/3 -- there are exponentially many in the number of distinguishing features (if you browse Steam tags you see this is potentially a very large number!).

https://store.steampowered.com/tag/browse#global_492

I'm also worried about direct interference between EEG and TMS (and EMI is quite common) -- I'd prefer they let the user perform the action physically instead of being electrical-in, electrical-out. The researchers come from an accredited institution, so it probably checks out, but seems like an obvious oversight.

But if those (timing) models are incorporated into current proprietary synthesis systems, can't they be reverse engineered with relative ease, anyway?

> What would need to be improved in the state-of-the-art of automated proof validation for the process to be less painful?

I think there are two parts:

1) Improve the theorem proving languages syntax so it's more intuitive, and so there is a wealth of "libraries" to build upon so you don't have to go from the basic axioms (of arithmetic or the reals for example) any time you wanted to prove something.

2) Provide some sort of computational intelligence to fill in natural gaps of proofs. I believe humans tend to leave a large number of more or less trivial gaps even in rigorous mathematical proofs that couldn't be avoided by language syntax. For this probably some kind of AI system would be ideal that tries to derive successive results and complete the proof automatically.

Set a criminal record expiration date depending on crime? Small crimes would expire quickly (but get refreshed/increased if you commit another small crime), more serious crimes would take longer to expire. Some study would be necessary on crime rate vs. time since last detention leave -- the principle being employers shouldn't need to unknowingly bear above a threshold of risk on their property/life (you need to balance doing good to ex-cons and protecting society).

Even better might be spending directly on ex-cons to better integrate them back into society (education, training, etc), instead of spending copious amounts on detention, security, punishment. The resulting decrease in recidivism probability is likely well worth it in most cases.

Also programs for locating at-risk for crime individuals and making sure they have better alternatives, to lower crime rate in first place.

The main problem is I'm quite skeptical that you could consider most criminals as "rational"/well informed of their possibilities and consequences of choices. Therefore increasing punishment probably doesn't change significantly their behavior, only might worsen the outcome once they leave detention in a negatively-reinforcing environment, not to mention consume public resources that could be better employed -- like targeted education clearing the minds of at risk individuals on what are the likely outcomes of criminal life compared to alternatives.

> Go far enough and you won't hit the galaxy you wanted to

This can be solved, in the limit of large distances (i.e. many galaxies away), by the aforementioned method of refueling/rebuilding/re-guiding along the way. But between each galaxy there's a vast, barren chasm to cross with little resources, I concur.

> Even on the crazy fringe frontiers of real science, I am not aware of any candidates for communication any better than EM.

There is one, and it is essentially

> people carrying things around on Segways

Electromagnetic radiation must obey the inverse square law. It spreads spherically through space, so required power for a given SNR raises with distance squared.

Moreover, there are severe interference issues. Once you have several systems communicating on the same bands you get more noise in the relevant frequency bands.

Unlike waves which don't self-interact (i.e. obey the superposition principle, are linear), matter is coherent. If you shoot a hard drive at a distance galaxy (with greater than escape velocity), it may take significant time to get there, but you can travel arbitrarily far for essentially the same energy, as a first approximation.

Of course, as a second approximation there is necessity of guidance/control (because of finite motor precision, target uncertainty, etc), but also the possibility of harvesting energy or photon momentum from stars en route.

Aside from the expansion of the universe there's no theoretical limit as to why a sufficiently advanced probe couldn't propagate information arbitrarily far (if it "refuels" periodically, then its total energy usage is proportional to distance, i.e. linear, but launch cost stays bounded).

In the worst case (perhaps for cosmically large distances) it'd need to colonize a planet en route to rebuild a pristine copy of itself.

"Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway."

–Andrew Tanenbaum, 1981

https://what-if.xkcd.com/31/

"The only way to actually reach the FedEx point is if transfer rates grow much faster than storage rates. In an intuitive sense, this seems unlikely, since storage and transfer are fundamentally linked—all that data is coming from somewhere and going somewhere (...)"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneakernet

That sounds fair, but it seems would argue just as well for the boredom of being eternally in a 'state of peace', no other activities suggested. If this peace is forced upon you, isn't it just a forced eternal torpor?

And you've just shifted the problem of describing what is great about heaven to describing what is great about 'being in God's presence'. And I assume here you'd use words 'blissful', 'undescribable', etc. which are exactly the trouble words Orwell highlights.

I think what's missing here is the real perspective that hapiness is an evolutionary mechanism. All forms of contentment are made to get us to do things, be sucessful animals, reproduce as much as possible, etc. Some forms of displeasure are absolute (e.g. chronic pain), but most forms of hapiness are relative. It wouldn't be useful if hominids were in permanent depression for not having air conditioning in their huts or tasty food every meal. For nature it's ideal if you have a stable baseline that directs you toward achievable goals, and be neither permanently blissful or depressed.

That's not to say that, objectively, we couldn't come up with a pretty good scheme where people are actually healthy, happy and content a lot of the time, and which isn't entirely trivial. I have friends that more or less fit in that description. Some small problems colour their lives but generally they're in a pretty good state, compared to what I can imagine is achievable. Giving tem one bajillion dollars probably wouldn't change that state much, it could even make it a little worse by completely ridding them of problems.

By that I mean to say, there are things we can do to make the world better without getting into an actually miserable eventless existence. Physical pain, in particular chronic pain is an example of a bad state in an absolute sense. Total social isolation is equally bad. You can provide reasonably challenging work, etc. We also have plenty of depressed people with access to extremely favorable living conditions but lacking certain stimuli that makes us happy.

And I think we should strive for that environment. There's a possible conclusion from the essay that either we're going to reach a state of permanent, problem-free torpor from complete lack of resource constraint; or we'll have to force ourselves into a generally harsh lives with a few joys here and there.

I think this doesn't have to be a problem: I believe we can realize a future where everyone is in excellent health, with pretty good access to food and diverse sources of pleasure, entertainment, art, etc., have good social contact, is challenged at work or education, and which it is is fun and worthwhile. It doesn't need to last forever to be excellent. I'd merrily live for 1000 years in this world.

I make no claims about the necessarily political and economic systems to achieve this goal (and those are of no importance comparing to approaching it).

I don't have time to explore this topic in depth right now (way too much on my plate already, and I'm not that fast or brilliant), but I suspect there's literature on this topic. Something I could find is this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firewall_(physics)

Basically, my intuition is more or less in line with this firewall phenomenon and that no particle crosses a true event horizon, even in their own frame, and no certainly no singularity.

The main problem is it's self-managed work. Given lack of advisory and guidance, or the structure of conventional workplaces and school, many people will mismanage their work-life balance. Even with structure I have problems sometimes managing my overall workload and side projects.

It's certainly not Youtube at fault here, but it's definitely a valid issue every independent worker has to face. Discussion and exchanging solutions is a good thing.

Well you've convinced me that, if Hawking's model is as you say, it's obviously incorrect :P

I don't know if this is just a mathematical simplification that doesn't impact conclusions about existence of EHs and singularties, but it all looks fishy.

That's about as boring arguments as I expected. You're giving a standard way out that religions use, which is to base your claim on an unfalsifiable mechanism: if you believe it unconditionally it'll work, if you don't it won't, etc. I could replace your instances of "psi powers" with "Gnomic magic", "fairy dust", or the most absurd thing you could come up with, and you likewise couldn't prove me wrong. Nevermind that there are literally billions of cameras and microphones around the world those days waiting to capture something like this.

> He believed that psi is an emergent phenomenon (like consciousness and intelligence)

I find usually those people tend to avoid the actually really weird/provoking questions staring right at us -- like how does a bunch of neurons firing electrical signals produce our consciousness and all personal experiences, why is our universe and lives like this in particular, or how to reconcile with death and finiteness -- in favor of comfortable wishful thinking, mysticisms and obscurantism (Penrose lately seems to have fallen into this modus).

In the context of SF, Philip K. Dick's claim "It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane" comes to mind (which I deeply disagree with, but understand).

What do you mean by at the same time? Those two photons reach Bob at exactly the same instant?

We had already agreed that General Relativity should imply Bob never sees Alice reach EH, regardless of quantum effects (at least not in finite time). We also agreed that Bob does see the BH evaporate (in finite time to any desired fraction), as seemingly dictated by QM. Thus it cannot be that the two are observed simultaneously!

Moreover, there cannot be a chain of events whereby Alice evaporates into photons (emanating from EH), and those photons (originating from Alice's mass-energy) hit Bob before the photons of Alice when she was near, but did not reach the EH yet (again because Alice cannot be observed to reach EH). It would violate causality.

It can't be that both Alice falls into the EH and we receive Alice's energy from evaporation: either the BH does not evaporate or Alice doesn't cross the EH (even in her own observation). Assuming Hawking radiation really does exist, then some kind of evaporation would need to occur as objects approach the EH, it cannot come directly from the EH boundary.

Could it be that Alice herself is seen to evaporate -- the evaporation might stem directly from Alice, before reaching the EH? My claim that the EH/singularity never forms would be valid.

I could be terribly mistaken of course, but your arguments did not convince me unfortunately (quite the contrary).

I wonder if what I'm missing could be related to the expansion of the EH as a body approximates.

> No, we aren't. The hole isn't formed at infinity. The time that is being talked about for observers at infinity (or more correctly, very far away) is the time it takes light rays, coming outward from the object that is collapsing into a black hole, to reach those observers. The curvature of spacetime near the horizon is such that it takes longer and longer for those light rays to get out to the observer far away, the closer to the horizon they are emitted. At the horizon, outgoing light rays do not move outward at all, due to the curvature of spacetime there, so they never reach the observer far away--hence that observer never sees the horizon form. But, as I said, that is an optical illusion caused by the curvature of spacetime.

I think you have a misconception about GR here. In GR, spacetime isn't just an "optical device" that delays rays cast in an absolute reference. In relativity, the behavior of light rays is actually closely related to interpretation of time and space. You can't separate the two. In fact, the definition of (relative) local time is given exactly by the rate a "light clock" ticks when communicating periodically to a "light clock" located elsewhere. Approaching the event horizon, the rate of clock ticking goes to 0 relative to an outside observer (to the the limited extent that coordinate frames can be defined in GR). So classically you can't say that to the outside observer the BH forms in finite time, I don't think. What matters in the end is what the observer sees, which, according to you, would be (for Bob, far away):

Alice falls into BH -> Alice approaches EH -> Alice's BH evaporates -> Alice finishes falling into the BH

That's not possible! The light rays from evaporation, which happens, in Alice's own frame, after she falls into the BH, cannot precede the light rays from her fall. So she cannot truly go past the EH.

> This is the same fallacy as the fallacy that nothing can actually fall into a black hole because it looks like it takes forever from the outside. Oppenheimer and Snyder published a mathematical model way back in 1939 that shows how a black hole can form in a finite time from the gravitational collapse of a massive object, as seen by an observer falling inward on the surface of the object. The collapse appears to take forever as seen by a distant observer, but this is an optical illusion caused by the effect of spacetime curvature on the paths of light rays. This has been studied for decades and is thoroughly understood.

But isn't equating the two observers incorrect? That is, when speaking of 'formation time', we are speaking of the formation time by observers at infinity, free from the effects of local curvature. What I understand is that all observers must agree on reality, thus on whether the BH forms at all: if the infalling observer makes it through an EH and into a singularity, then those exist (by definition) as unique reality. But evaporation seems to complicate this classical GR view understood for a while: since now outside observers see finite-time quasi-evaporation, infalling observers must observe this phenomenom while infalling, and actually before reaching the EH.

There's no way I can see that:

1) EHs and singularities (i.e. Black Holes as a steady-state phenomenon) exist;

2) All observers agree on reality of their formation and evaporation.

I defiantly conclude they don't exist (or I'm missing something major) :)

That is, black holes in nature would be something akin to a extremely time-dilated "Object trap" without singularties (although perhaps it must gain an apparent horizon?).

There are variations on this that are more problematic (which I've never seen solutions to).

1) It looks like it takes forever, to an outside observer, for anything to reach the event horizon. So if no matter appears to reach event horizons, how can they (event horizons) form in the first place (i.e. exist in our universe)?

2) While it takes forever for matter to fall in (again to outside observers), it takes finite time for black holes to evaporate via Hawking radiation. So not only do black holes would take forever to form, they seem to have to extinguish before being able to exist (again in the sense of event horizons).

I'm not a physicist, but my speculation is that Black Holes don't really exist, they're just a limit of a process that approaches but doesn't converge to a singularity, which I think is unphysical.

It's about balances of power. There's unfortunately a strong tendency for corporate power to overwhelm all other institutions, given how centrally organized, self-optimizing, evolving it is. Government ideally should offer a balancing power, an equally intelligent, evolving structure safeguarding individuals (and humanity vs economics). The problem is corporations have found ways to control governments and will use their power to terminate impacts on their productivity, which will inevitably include human rights, quality of life, human values.

The only solution I can see is through legislation, strictly forbidding and creating institutions to prevent corporate interferance in government.

Some measures:

1) Outlawing lobbying more broadly, improving campaign financing, etc.

2) Reforming the government to promote greater adaptability and efficiency, mimicking how companies improve themselves through competition.

There are quite a few examples of countries with good control over corporations (Japan I think is quite strict at least in terms of election financing and advertising), and good alignment of government and human values. But many others, notably by the US, turn more and more the opposite way towards corporate/economic absolutism.

It's been said before, but people put a little too much fear into AI takeover when gigantic, scalable, self-improving systems with trivial values (economic output) are already almost taking over the world.

Fear The Corporation.

The big problem with rockets is actually that you have to carry your propellant with you, and progressively waste energy accelerating your own propellant. Finite time or limited thrust don't actually affect this (increasing the exhaust velocity does though -- at the cost of energy efficiency). It's the infamous tiranny of the Rocket equation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsiolkovsky_rocket_equation)

To get near 100% efficiency, it follows from the kinetic energy formula and conservation of momentum the body you're pushing against must have a much larger mass than you[1].

So discounted exotic phenomena, the only way to travel efficiently through space is to push off a very large mass, departing at full velocity, or in the case of near-Earth travel, simply push Earth.

The space elevator is essentially an elaborate staircase. It is in a stable equilibrium, and climbing it doesn't steal energy from the counterweight (which in fact doesn't move in fact because it is in constant tension); you're just pushing Earth away.

In the grand scheme of things the very low efficiency of maybe 10% (in my guesstimation) to LEO isn't so bad (not even the maybe ~5% interplanetary efficiency); especially considering the costs of space systems in general in comparisson to fuel cost. This small fuel cost makes reusable rockets quite an attractive option near term (as noted by SpaceX).

But long term, that's quite a steep inefficiency. If we were to endeavor large scale colonization or exploration of exoplanetary resources it seems to me either a kinetic launch system or at least a space elevator variant would be a necessity.

[1] Derivation: M1 v1=M2 v2 => v1^2 = (M2/M1)^2 v2^2; M1 v1^2 + M2 v2^2 = E => M2^2/M1 v2^2 + M2 v2^2 = E; M2 v2^2 (1+M2/M1) = E => K2 = E/(1+M2/M1).

As M1->infinity, all the kinetic energy goes to K2 and none to K1 (which is why you don't give Earth any meaningful energy by walking).

If you want to say something changes at a certain rate, you need to introduce a dependent variable under which it changes. If you look at landscape, and saying elevation changes, you don't need the coordinates as variables to associate height with and compare the different (x,y,height) data points -- only a set of {height1,height2,...} would be sufficient. But to do calculus by taking the small differenes (x-x',y-y',height-height'), i.e. looking at rate of changes of height w.r.t. something , you obviously need something (e.g. coordinates).

Ultimately as with most physical phenomena the most profound explanation is that "It's a simple way to describe how things work". That and anthropic necessities.

Relationships between events are almost certainly an anthropic necessity. First without change at all, of course there would be nothing of interest. Second an universe that's simply a random-looking collection of events {A,B,C,...} without some close functional relationship (e.g. {A,B=f(A),C=f(B),...}) also cannot allow a conscious subsystem (because conscious subsystems are defined as a particular kind of changing system, i.e. with close functional connections between the events that temporally evolve). There's an infinitude of mathematical constructions that may harbor consciousness, so some things are arbitrary.

Our arbitrariness is that there appears to be this continuous dependant real variable (time) which permits localizing events in a complicated way described by general relativity and quantum mechanics, and describing relationships between them (temporal evolution).

I'd chose a logistic-like curve to fit (since extrapolating to infinite population the ratio should approach 1 and 0 population it should approach 0).

I understand the consideration that this Universe is all that exists. But isn't that... weird? That there's no 'why' to this particular existence? We could be much more complicated if you consider all possible things that could exist. Is it simply senseless to ask 'why this'?

This view is argued here by Sean Carroll: https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.02231

Personally, I'm not convinced, although I see the merits of the argument.

Of course as you noted, if you simply assume a parent system you get into an infinite that may or may not be reasonable (the parent system must have a parent, and so on, an infinite stack of parents; this infinite stack of parents also lies in another infinite stack, and so on). I think the only possible alternative to brute fact is to just assume everything exists, to different extents. Then after a lot of handwaving you can sort of explain why the universe is kinda simple.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_universe_hypothes...

I haven't picked a side, but I have to say I'm more weirded out by the proposition that this is everything that exists than the proposition that essentially everything exists.

If we're going to live in underground habitats on Mars for humanity-backup, isn't it easier to just build underground habitats on Earth?

A few hundreds of meters down and the nuke risk is negligible. You can stockpile enough for hundreds of years at ~0 shipping cost. You can set up fortified ducts/purification systems to get oxygen from the surface -- with backup allowing a small population to live long enough for the surface to get tolerable.

Heck, even a full blown self-sustaining underground habitat doesn't seem out of question, since there's water readily available, plenty of perhaps geothermal or nuclear power power, and construction minerals. Destroying the Mars habitat might not be too much more difficult comparing to destroying this colony. If it has less than 10,000 or so colonists the US gov. or similar might even have a chance of keeping its location in secrecy.

Sure it doesn't cover all possible scenarios, but in terms of backup a conflict-resistant habitat here on Earth seems like the best bang for your buck.

Welcome to Zion.

As far as I hear from industry specialists (but don't know first hand), the 'node' terms have become little more than marketing. I believe in 2002 it was still a useful metric of feature size, hence why 9nm would be still ahead.

More like, philosophy is the extreme version of the 'Uncategorized' box of science -- it's almost the leftover pile which gets slowly picked up and put into neat boxes of knowledge. Mechanical nature of life was once philosophical musings, now is biology. Atomic nature of matter were philosophical musings, now physics. Nature of consciousness is now philosophy, will sooner or later become neuroscience and artificial intelligence.

Philosophy isn't useless. It is a ground for preliminary discussion before the matter is ready to shift into more solid ground -- mathematics, logic, or hard sciences.

That it suffers from (a degree of) infinite dwelling on pointless topics is inevitable, because it is very hard to judge what will one day be useful or legitimate of discussion; making the false positive nil will increase the false negatives too much. Plus if philosophy decided on a too strict topic regime, soon another field would be born to house the outcasts of academic philosophy, thus becoming the new leftover pile of reason.