7 ms·

Yes, it takes forever to get anywhere at Warp 9. (-: More seriously: Your very point is already made near to the beginning of the headlined article, in the bo

by JdeBP 2y ago

Yes, it takes forever to get anywhere at Warp 9. (-: More seriously: Your very point is already made near to the beginning of the headlined article, in the book quote. You might want to read beyond the headline question, otherwise you're just repeating what the article already says.

chongli 2y ago
I did read the article and it is not making the same point I’m making. It takes the position that humans are extremely slow, relative to the speed of light. I’m taking a different position: that humans are extremely fast, relative to the domain in which we operate (the earth, our cities, our neighbourhoods, our households).
- JdeBP 2y ago
  The paragraph beginning "And yet c is also slow." in the article is pretty much what you said. If you now want to make the point that humans are fast on human-centric scales, which you did not really make above, you enter a whole other discussion that involves biology, and humans not really being very fast at all compared to some other creatures. You have, after all, to introduce non-human entities, rockets, to show examples of humans being "fast". And really fast rockets aren't examples of humans being fast, as they are good examples of humans becoming dead, from the accelerations involved for starters. Take a human out of a rocket system, and it can go much faster. Human-ridden rockets are in fact slow, too, even on human-centric scales, compared to the things that are extremely fast in the human-centric world. So that argument falls down. Which leads to part 2, pointed out in a top-level comment by Animats, at https://profmattstrassler.com/2024/10/03/why-is-the-speed-of-light-so-fast-part-2/ https://profmattstrassler.com/2024/10/03/why-is-the-speed-of... which goes on to explain that humans are by necessity slow. There are even biological discussions of the same idea: why humans are slower than, say, houseflies. We're slower than c for physics reasons, and we're slower than things on our own scale for biological reasons. We actually are not extremely fast. We aren't as fast as our machines, nor even as fast as some other creatures.

by JdeBP 2y ago

chongli 2y ago

I did read the article and it is not making the same point I’m making. It takes the position that humans are extremely slow, relative to the speed of light. I’m taking a different position: that humans are extremely fast, relative to the domain in which we operate (the earth, our cities, our neighbourhoods, our households).

JdeBP 2y ago
The paragraph beginning "And yet c is also slow." in the article is pretty much what you said. If you now want to make the point that humans are fast on human-centric scales, which you did not really make above, you enter a whole other discussion that involves biology, and humans not really being very fast at all compared to some other creatures. You have, after all, to introduce non-human entities, rockets, to show examples of humans being "fast". And really fast rockets aren't examples of humans being fast, as they are good examples of humans becoming dead, from the accelerations involved for starters. Take a human out of a rocket system, and it can go much faster. Human-ridden rockets are in fact slow, too, even on human-centric scales, compared to the things that are extremely fast in the human-centric world. So that argument falls down. Which leads to part 2, pointed out in a top-level comment by Animats, at https://profmattstrassler.com/2024/10/03/why-is-the-speed-of-light-so-fast-part-2/ https://profmattstrassler.com/2024/10/03/why-is-the-speed-of... which goes on to explain that humans are by necessity slow. There are even biological discussions of the same idea: why humans are slower than, say, houseflies. We're slower than c for physics reasons, and we're slower than things on our own scale for biological reasons. We actually are not extremely fast. We aren't as fast as our machines, nor even as fast as some other creatures.