The studies referenced are about calculations, reading comprehension and work performance, not critical thinking.

The article is, like many, a bad one. It generalises what it should not.

Thank you for the very long and detailed reply! I do understand that our current understanding of spacetime makes it impossible to do interstellar travel.

I have a background in physics, and although I ended up switching to a different field, there is some fundamental aspects of the field that it helped me understand. The most important one is that it is not an absolute truth, it is the best truth we came up with based on our interpretation and modelling of reality. So I am always careful with tossing around words like "impossible".

Yes, all those hard limits make it impossible for our generation, the next, and probably 4, 5, 10 or 20 more down the line to even consider it. I unfortunately do not remember enough of my uni days to give out examples, so perhaps you can help me here... Brilliant minds in the past have proven that some things considered impossible by the understanding of physics at the time were actually possible.

Now, yes, anything with spacetime manipulation today is conjecture and science fiction, and again, I'm not saying we'll be travelling to even the closest neighbouring star system anytime soon. What I am saying is, we don't know that much about spacetime yet. We know some, we have proven some, but not much. My point is: We have found so many ways around impossibilities that I doubt that (if our civilization doesn't collapse under its own collective stupidity) we can't find ways around these ones too, wether it's in 200 or 2000 years.

Edit: Of course there are some things we'll probably never do. We'll probably never go below the absolute 0, we'll probably never go close to the speed of light either. But that doesn't mean we can't work around these hard limits to achieve goals that they are gating.

It is a weird phrasing then!

Disclaimer: I'm nowhere close to being a professional in the field. If you are or simply know more than I do, please correct me.

But interstellar travel doesn't have to be based on higher speed, just like we didn't expand our energy production by mining and burning coal faster. We found ways that produce much, much more energy in the same time without needing to keep improving our fuel production. Why wouldn't we be able to find ways to travel much, much further in the same time without improving our speed?

We know spacetime can theoretically be manipulated: anything with a mass does to some extent. Why wouldn't we be able to harness that someday?

What do you mean, primarily? You don't need a primary language. You can have it translated in every official language in the EU. It can be translated at scale very easily. As an EU wide project it is absolutely no trouble at all.

If Linus had only ever made git, he'd have gone down as one of the greats.

As opposed to also having made the most used kernel in the world?

Yes, but as long as we don't self-destroy, I'm pretty certain we'll master it. The achievements of humanity are already remarkable. I mean, being able to split atoms and safely harness the produced energy is pretty incredible. Fusion, which seems impossible in many aspects, is closer and closer to our grasp every day. I am convinced that interstellar travel in a reasonable time for humans will be achieved eventually. But of course not in our lifetime, far from it.

If that is the idea then I'm behind it! Unfortunately too many bigots out there for me to assume that.

Scaring scientists away is a good thing? Or do you mean that's more scientists for the rest of the world? Or are you simply a bigot implying that chinese-descent scientists surely are spies? So many interpretations possible :)

I suspect Macron is much more driven by ambition than Obama was. I doubt he'll just retire.

Macron is particularly young for a president. His political career peaked really quickly, and it can't really go higher. But I suspect he has other ambitions now. Retiring so early doesn't make sense for someone who's driven by ambition.

That's the criticism in this picture. The sign is vehicle-centric where it should be explicitely pedestrian-centric.