@foyrkopp
@lemmy.worldTo clarify:
Even if an unambiguous majority of Texas would say "we'd like to turn Texas into an independent country", you'd rather force them to stay by force of arms?
Scientists are human and fallible.
"Professional Science" is just as vulnerable to "eh, I know what I'm doing", bias, politics, funding, feuds, ignoring details-that-dont-fit and shortcuts, as the rest of the human experience.
That's why we see "breakthrough discoveries" falling apart to scrutiny on a regular basis and new facts/theories are only gradually accepted into the "body of accepted knowledge" after lots of peer reviewing, reproduction, general chewing-it-over and when the old "that can't be true" generation has retired/died.
On the other hand, quick and dirty gut-check experiments and goofing around with a new idea are a valuable way to easily check for falsification and narrow down what actual, rigorous tests might have to look like. They're also a major source of lab accidents.
In the context of the Manhattan Project, the demon core is a perfect example of this.
All the advances in execution methods haven't been made to make it more humane to the victim - they've been made so it seems more humane to everyone else.
AFAIK, statistics-wise, the execution method with the lowest quota of horrible mishaps is the guillotine. A sufficiently fast 4t weight to the head would probably be even quicker for the brain to go, although it'd also require more cleanup.
(Yes, even overdosing on narcotics has more mishaps - and there are little to no narcotics abailable for executions, because the producers don't want them to be used for that.)
All of the more reliable methods are... grisly, and civilisation doesn't want grisly. We want to press a button and the victim goes to sleep to never wake up, because that makes it easier on us.
I had something vaguely similar happen to me.
We got called out of the line for a manual luggage inspection because, as a surprisingly bored security agent informed us, X-ray showed a knife of about a foot length in our luggage.
We had no idea what they were talking about.
We were half-way through unpacking the whole pack when my SO lit up and asked "could it be my ice skates?"
Agent took a look at the X-ray, nods, and lets us pack it back up without any further checking.
Overall, turned out harmlessly, but the sheer confusion of where that supposed knife had come from, combined with how blasé that security person was about the whole affair from start to finish stuck in my mind.
C3 talks are available online for quite some time after the actual event, so you might still be able to watch it then.
Good thing you're not.
The only thing you'd achieve would be causing her to have to deal with this BS while her husband is in jail.
Frankly, this is not a question for the Internet - it is a question for you.
You can certainly find someone to try have a relationship with.
But: What do you think about non-vegans? Do you see yourself unreservedly loving someone who eats meat, even though you (presumably) think it's morally wrong?
Because that will definitely leak into your relationship as a whole.
Anyone who hits enter on a dd command without triple-checking it gets exactly what they deserve.
Alien intelligence is not required to follow human reasoning.
The Lords of Alpha Centauri could run a long-term social engineering program on Earth because they believe capitalism, conflict and social darwinism are objectively Good for You and we need to be purged of the folly of humanistic ideology before we can be allowed to join the galactic civilization market.
Or because they find our struggles entertaining.
What I can tell you is that no rational spacefaring civilization would need to resort to social engineering if they just want to kill us. Just toss a bit (or a lot) of spare delta v on a sufficiently large asteroid (or five) and humanity goes the way of the dinosaur.
(Different story if they want us dead, but want to make it look like suicide because of the space police.)