Re: RE: RE: starship-design: Numbers needed for Colonization (was Antiproton-Ca

[Paul Anderson <madhobby@geeky1.ebtech.net>]

On Sun, 17 May 1998, Kelly St wrote:

> 
> No thats exactly wrong.  Children now can't do the kind of things workers and
> exploreres on a starship or space colony would need to know how to do.  Ok, he
> cracked the internal security for his kindergarden.  Could he design one?
> Could he do toxicitie research studies of alien microbes?  Or develop a high
> level AI?
> 
Who are you to say a child couldn't?  If given a chance, and not treated
as though they're half-braindead, children can do some incredible things.
The only seperation between a child and an adult is strength - a child can
learn just as much as an adult.  They usually don't have time to do it,
and our culture being prejudiced against youth, don't get the chance.  

> All the normal routine things that kids could do (run errands, do routine
> work, check E-mail for letters from certain people, etc)
>
No, you're wrong here.  That sentance should read "the things a kid would
normally be ENCOURAGED to do".  I know a fellow that when he was in
kindergarten he was programming assembler.  _I_ can't program in
assembler.  At 10 he was doing trig.  _I_ can't do trig.  Why was he able
to do such amazing feats?  Because he was given a chance to do them and he
was ENCOURAGED to do them.  The only problem with children is that it
takes time to learn things, and for the most complex things they're an
adult before they're done learning about it.  TTYL!


---
Paul Anderson
madhobby@geeky1.ebtech.net
"BETTER LIVING THROUGH RECKLESS EXPERIMENTATION" - Motto of The Mad Scientist
"Less talk, more synthahol." - Worf

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