Note that mankind cannot make Von Neumann probes. We're still having troubles landing serious equipment on the moon (see recent crash), let alone create a probe that would be able to harvest raw materials for making a duplicate probe, refining those to the ingredients needed, converting those to probe building blocks, assemble the new probe, provide it with propellant, program it, and launch it.
So I'm not sure why you'd think that a civilisation comparable to humans would be able to.
Also:
if you can build Von Neumann probes, you can construct a Dyson swarm. You just instruct the probes to create the components of the swarm from the raw materials in your star system. But that would massively boost a civilisation's energy budget. Therefore, it's quite likely that any civilisation capable of building Von Neumann probes will have built a Dyson swarm.
So, secondly, it's about as paradoxical as the lack of detected Dyson swarms.
I have no experience with sensitivity readers. I also have no problems with checking texts prior to publication to look for parts that are offensive to (minority/disadvantaged) groups. That doesn't mean the text shouldn't offend any individual - nor even that it shouldn't offend groups.
It does ensure that if you're being rude to some group in your text, you're doing that on purpose.
> Absolutely. Because if we don't draw line there, we'll see no end to history (and art is part of history) being rewritten and modified for increasingly inane reasons.
While I am sympathetic to this argument, the article also mentions updates to stories by Ian Fleming and Roald Dahl. I see those updates as something that right holders do to sell more copies of well-known works to modern audiences. For me, that's their prerogative: their rights, they(1)'re welcome to try and make money off of it.
In other words: do not commit censorship of existing works, but allow updates by anyone (modulo copyright(1)).
(1) who should have exclusive rights (and when) for commercialising works is another question.
No, it's the most important aspect for any new Google product announcement. It's not up to commenters to behave better, it is up to Google.
The comments cannot be considered garbage, since they ask the most pertinent question: why is this announcement worth talking about?
And yes, Google created this situation itself. And now it has to justify each new product's life span. Because we don't trust that at all. Unlike startups, Google can easily afford to run a product at a loss for years.
Yet we trust them less than startups with only a few months of runway.
I would recommend "The Number Devil" [1] for children (from 11 on) and adults alike.
It's a zany story, but in that respect it provides a refreshing intro into some math concepts.
In that vein, I also recommend "mathematical mindsets" [2]. A colleague developed a course inspired by this book. Though I only witnessed a tidbit, it radiated with the "new perspective/ new insights / gained understanding" that you'd get from the Feynman lectures.
Sidenote: neither is "now you know how all of maths work", but neither is Feynman thaf (foot physics). More importantly, all of them help you gain a new perspective on things.
So I'm not sure why you'd think that a civilisation comparable to humans would be able to.
Also: if you can build Von Neumann probes, you can construct a Dyson swarm. You just instruct the probes to create the components of the swarm from the raw materials in your star system. But that would massively boost a civilisation's energy budget. Therefore, it's quite likely that any civilisation capable of building Von Neumann probes will have built a Dyson swarm.
So, secondly, it's about as paradoxical as the lack of detected Dyson swarms.