Survey Says To UK — Repeal Laws of Thermodynamics

mostxlnt writes "As we noted, the new Tory UK government has launched a website asking its subjects which laws they'd most like repealed. There are proposals up for repeal of the Laws of Thermodynamics: Second, Third, and all (discussion thread on this one closed by a moderator). One comment on the Third [now apparently deleted] elucidated: 'Without the Third Law of Thermodynamics, it would be possible to build machines that would last forever and provide an endless source of cheap energy. thus solving both potential crises in energy supply as well as solving the greenhouse gas problem in one step... simples... eh?'"

Comments

4chan threw the vote

[Luke has no name]

No other way.

Re:When you open up the floodgates...

[Darkness404]

Not idiots, just trolls who want a few lulz.

Re:Brilliant

[Anonymous Coward]

Well what the hell did you expect? The site is little more than theater - nobody in power is going to take it seriously one way or the other, so why not have a little fun with it?

Re:When you open up the floodgates...

[Anonymous Coward]

idiots pour through.

Whereas most smart people in Britain would rather repeal the law that Americans don't get British sarcasm and wit, but sadly that also seems to be an unchangeable law of nature...

"Tory" government!?

[91degrees]

Here was I thinking we had a coalition of Tory and Libs.

Repealing the Second Law

[Angst Badger]

I actually thought about this once, not that I have any illusions about being able to do it; it was just a Gedankenexperiment. My conclusion was that if the Second Law was eliminated, the odds are good that somewhere in the universe some process would enter a feedback loop, producing ever more energy at an ever accelerating rate, and the first we'd know about it would be when the shock wave washed over us at a substantial fraction of the speed of light.

The universe as it stands may be a raw deal, but most imaginable tweaks to the laws of physics make it even worse.

Re:Repealing the Second Law

[Tablizer]

The universe as it stands may be a raw deal, but most imaginable tweaks to the laws of physics make it even worse.

The Winston Churchill rule: This is the worse universe, except for all others.

How will you know?

[SuperKendall]

Well what the hell did you expect? The site is little more than theater

It is because people like you are making it one.

What if it's real? Why try to kill something that might actually help before it has a chance to show if it's theater or not?

Why is it so hard to believe that a group being voted in on a wave of people finding the government unreasonable, might in fact want to git rid of some of the more egregious laws that have sprung up? It seems pretty obvious if you get rid of very unpopular laws you (and your group) are going to win more elections. So the thought that it's theater did not occur to me, if for no other reason than politician self-interest - and do you really want to bet against THAT?

Re:How will you know?

[Miseph]

Being theater is not mutually exclusive to being taken seriously. Just because they couldn't really care less, doesn't mean they are somehow above throwing the people a meaningless and symbolic bone to appease them. Never forget: good theater keeps the lights on and the players employed.

Re:How will you know?

[FuckingNickName]

Well, I could give you mounds of evidence, but here's what stands out:

Clegg, the overt organiser of this circus, has sold out his Party to a power shak^Hring agreement, abandoning pretty much every core platform on which they established their vote. More insidiously, he's accepting arrangements which make it look like the LDs are pushing for their manifesto when in fact they're doing precisely the opposite. For example, his Party has steadfastly put voting reform to Proportional Representation at the top of the political agenda for decades, but now he is proposing the Alternative Voting method - a "compromise" system even less Proportional than FPTP which will inevitably be voted against in any referendum, ensuring the status quo.

The LDs have always been the "Party who cares"[tm], i.e. proposes more than just slight tweaks, and they've always been laughed at because, "They'd never really do that and can only say that because they'll never get into power." Well, now they do have a certain degree of power. And they're doing none of what they said. Instead, as just illustrated, their method will be to listen, propose a "compromise" which no-one wants at all, then wait until it's not imposed and nothing changes at all. The exceptions will be where laws were already going to be tweaked, in which case this site will be used as an excuse (digital economy, personal welfare).

tl;dr We are living in a representative democracy, not a direct democracy. There is neither the framework, education, means nor (most importantly) interest to listen directly to the people. Even referendums are barely an exception as they're worded precisely by the government and (hi, EU!) sometimes just repeated until the population is worn down and the right answer is obtained.

How is this news?

[deblau]

I mean really, it's not even tagged "Funny". Probably because people trolling what appears to be a legitimate attempt by an oppressive government to actually be, you know, less oppressive, really isn't funny to begin with.

Same goes for the previous "story", whose title is not just grossly misleading, but plain wrong. Curiously, these two stories have the same editor. And yes, I'm willing to risk my karma to point this out.

Re:Brilliant

[JackieBrown]

So did I the first time I heard it. I knew there was a trick since the person had a giant idiot grin on his face while he cited the number of fatalities caused buy it.

This is one of those tricks that idiots hear and like to repeat because it make them think they are looking clever. Have you ever know someone who memorized the answers to one or two incredibility difficult equations and kept spouting it out? My favorite are people who run their emails through a thesaurus so they can use bigger words even when they do not know what those new words mean.

I think that we can all agree that we should work together.

becomes

I deliberate that we container all enunciate that we should vocation simultaneously.

Re:When you open up the floodgates...

[delinear]

It's far from a "real opportunity to be involved in politics", unless by that statement you mean it's "an opportunity to have their views ignored by politicians". If our government (and I'm aware that it's a different government, I've seen enough to know they're all basically the same) could ignore the views of 750,000 - 2,000,000 people who turned up in person to protest the Iraq war, what makes you think they won't ignore people who are only posting on the internet? We already have the precedent of government ignoring mass e-petitions on the number 10 petition site, so far as I can see this is no different, they'll cherry pick the laws they want to repeal, find a handful of petitioners and use that to justify that they're following the will of the people, meanwhile they'll conveniently ignore any large petitions to repeal laws they actually want to keep.

Re:When you open up the floodgates...

[John Napkintosh]

It's far from a "real opportunity to be involved in politics", unless by that statement you mean it's "an opportunity to have their views ignored by politicians".

Worse than that, it's an opportunity for politicians to selectively "hear" opinions which support a particular effort or view, and ignore the rest. If everyone were being ignored uniformly, that would at least be fair.