Slashdot Mirror
'There's No Good Way To Kill a Bad Idea' (qz.com)
The world is filled with bad, baseless, factually inaccurate ideas that refuse to die. From an article: Philosopher Russell Blackford, a lecturer at the University of Newcastle in Australia, tweeted about this phenomenon earlier this month: "The momentum behind bad ideas can be enormous -- they can plunge on, gathering force, long after receiving devastating criticism." If you've ever found yourself unable to halt someone else's idiotic plans once they were already in motion, you're not alone. Whether you're a politician trying to make congress see sense or simply a manager trying to halt an atrocious team-building plan, there's simply no foolproof way to kill a terrible idea. Blackford blames the momentum behind bad ideas on cascade effects. Yes, individuals are prone to making poor decisions for emotional or biased reasons (known as "cognitive heuristics") and this irrationality is part of the problem. But there's also a broader sociological issue, in that others' opinions carry a huge amount of weight in influencing our views. A cultural consensus -- even without proper evidence -- can form pretty quickly. If one person convinces a second, says Blackford, then a third person will be far more likely to agree with the majority view. This effect exponentially increases with each person who agrees with the others. "We soon have a sociological effect whereby everyone knows that, say, a certain movie is very good or very bad, even though everyone might have 'known' the exact opposite if only a few early voices had been different," says Blackford.
Like, for example, unicode?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The previous story about "Modern Languages"?
People are stupid. Lots of people are stupider.
https://developers.slashdot.org/story/17/05/01/146201/power-of-modern-programming-languages-is-that-they-are-expressive-readable-concise-precise-and-executable
... Come up with a better idea.
We would see this all the time in the big company I used to work at. Management would get all fricking excited about the latest fad the consultant industry had sold them. 5S. ISO. Justintime. Lean. When the actual scientists and engineers heard the plan, they would sigh. Management has discovered the scientific method. Oh good. There was no standing against the tsunami of these ideas. They had been mandated to succeed. Metrics which reinforced the vision of management would be collected. Nay sayers would be reduced to ash. The corporation would dump money and time into the effort until it burned itself out. Promotions and bonuses for management. Wait six months. Repeat cycle.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Y = 1/(X-1) doesn't look like an exponential to me.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
This concept is also know as "escalation of commitment", where you feel you're welded to an idea and backing down will cause you to look bad. It's especially common in groupthink scenarios.
The Challenger disaster is one that comes to mind almost immediately. Plenty of people thought the launch was a bad idea, but groupthink set in and the launch proceeded.
I deal with this every day at work. A certain part of the product needs to be abandoned and re-architected, but the people who work on it bend over backwards to ensure its longevity.
*cough* Global Warming Alarmism *cough*
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Certainly not w/o the Secret Service getting really upset.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
We should make systemd produce logs in XML encoded with UTF-128!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I guess that the flip side of this is that there's also no good way to kill a good idea, too.
Deal with reality - the world as it is - rather than ideality - the world as you would like it to be.
Never wound a bad idea.
Kill it dead, dead, dead.
http://www.lockheedmartin.com/us/aeronautics/skunkworks/origin.html
You can't reason someone out of an idea they didn't reason themselves into.
I don't know about you, but to me, 174 Petawatts of untapped energy seems like it should be able to power the planet. Sure, one has to determine how one stores-up energy to use when the planet's rotation obscures the sun, but given that fossil-fuel-based power required all sorts of intermediate steps to get where we are today anyway, this does not seem like an impossible task.
There are more ways of storing potential energy than chemical batteries.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
...ideas you think are bad aren't really bad?
If you can't kill a "bad idea", that suggest that there are people who believe it to be a "good idea".
This whole exercise presumes that he is the one in possession of the Truth and that all others are idiots.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
It's not a sociological effect. It truly and thoroughly sucked.
âoeA lie will go round the world while truth is pulling its boots on.â
C. H. Spurgeon
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Wireless charging of devices
Not using nuclear power
Allowing the media to hype so-called 'AI' to the point where the average idiot believes it's real
Allowing Google to hype so-called 'self driving cars' to the point where people think it's going to be safe
Eliminating driver education and driver training programs in highschools so we artificially created a 'need' for so-caled 'self driving cars'
Allowing immigrants to get drivers licenses without requiring them to go through a comprehensive driver education and driver training program first
Allowing 49% of U.S. voters to elect a loud-mouthed pussy-grabbing failed 'businessman' to the White House
Continuing to use fossil fuels when it's clear they're bad for everyone and everything and they're running out anyhow
Allowing U.S. corporations to dictate how the Internet is managed
Allowing U.S. Intelligence to spy on everyone and everything, everywhere, for no gods-be-damned good reason
Smartphones that can't be properly secured against intrusion
Televisions and other electronic devices in your home that have cameras and microphones and are literally surveilling you in your house 24/7/365
'Internet of Things', et al
Allowing any U.S. citizen to prevent their kids from being vaccinated against diseases for any reason whatsoever other than medical reasons (allergy, etc)
Anchovies. Need I elaborate?
Veganism. Need I elaborate on that, too?
HAES (Health At Every Size)
The 'Fat Acceptance' movement
So-called 'feminists' that aren't REAL feminists, just the ones that violently hate all men and don't care about 'equality' or 'fairness', they just want 'control'
To be fair about it: Sexists/misogynists/the 'patriarchy'. They make things at least as bad as the faux-feminists do
Continuing to believe in Things That Don't Exist (i.e., 'gods' and religion in general, ghosts, spirits, and so on). You're holding back Human evolution!
Denying that climate change is a Real Thing just because it doesn't fit your 'agenda' -- or because you're too dumb to understand the science behind it
Continuing to do stupid shit that is CAUSING climate change
***Add your favorite Bad Idea below***
The unkillable idea owes its invulnerability in large part to two phenomena: the sunk cost fallacy, and the Abilene paradox.
In short, once a group of people have agreed (even very reluctantly) on a course of action and expended resources in pursuit of the goal, nobody wants to openly admit it was a bad idea to begin with, and everyone will fight to defend it.
good and bad are matters of opinion. a majority of such opinion might become part of a subculture or country. Only a person biased against an idea that stands the test of time will say it's "bad and hard to kill"
Maybe in that scenario. I wasn't there so I can't comment further.
But I have been in situations where my peers put on a lot of pressure.
You either fall in line with the group or you are an 'idiot'. Management does take its cues from underlings - it just sucks when you are not the underling they listen to.
"available" does not mean "affordable".
I find it amusing that this article even Evokes Richard Dawkins, and yet fails to acknowledge that this whole thing is basically a rehash of Dawkins' meme-theory.
From the article supporting the claim... "Fewer U.S. citizens consider climate change to be a "serious threat" compared to two years ago..."
The question being asked was not is climate change happening.... it was do you personally consider it a threat... and to that most (US citizens) can honestly answer no.
Given the struggles with everyday life and the fact that slightly colder temperatures ushered in an Ice Age in North America only 12,000 years ago and we have been warming ever since and it's a good thing that did. If there is suddenly some new component to the warming it is still not a "serious threat" to most.
That does not mean that people reject obvious truth... just that they do not equate it to a dire risk to themselves or the planet as a whole.
This is a bad example of a "bad idea" that needs to be killed.
5 out of 6 people enjoy Russian Roulette & 6 out of 7 Dwarfs are not Happy
This is not new at all. The Abilene Paradox is one example that's been around for decades. This philosopher has not discovered anything.
Always thought it was interesting that many scientists who worked on the atomic bomb later said they had misgivings while doing it. Yet it was done anyway.
"Build the wall" is one such idea.
Sometimes Pentagon spending programs are like this. The design becomes such a convoluted mess that the thing serves no useful purpose, and yet they can't kill the thing.
Affordable compared to what? What's the cost difference between building a massive solar plant that stores energy in the form of some kind of superheated substrate to emit that heat back to generate power, plus the maintenance of that facility, compared to the cost to build and fuel a power plant that burns fossil fuel?
No one is expecting fossil fuel plants to just be switched off, what most expect is to build new plants of new types to replace old plants as they're increasingly nonviable.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
there's simply no foolproof way to kill a terrible idea
Sure there is. In business just ask for a fully costed proposal. (This also works for killing perfectly sound ideas, too.). if the proposer ever gets that finished, just tell them it's "interesting" and then shred it.
Outside of the company, in real life, you can associate the idea with something that invokes moral outrage: when someone blurts out a mind-numbingly stupid idea, just whisper in their ear "I wouldn't suggest that, you know the person who came up with it was a child-molester" (or Nazi, or whatever group is currently demonised).
If we're talking about FAKE NEWS, there really is no reason to try to kill it, so long as you are able to insulate yourself from the effects of other people's stupidity: buying gold, taking a contrarian investment, simply ignoring it or just get into the game and come up with something even more fake or exaggerated - it can be great fun if you don't take it seriously.
if you have an evil streak, you could even encourage the FAKE NEWS promoter that it is a really good idea and that they should invest in it - big time. Maybe even telling them that you know a guy and if they just give you a cash payment, you'll pass it on ...
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Indeed.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Red Forman had it right.
When someone creates or perpetuates a bad idea, you slap them upside the head and yell "Dumbass!"
Lather, rinse, and repeat as necessary until the stain of ignorance fades to an acceptable level.
Carbon taxes, atmosphere tampering, and so on. Just cannot stop these lemmings.
People are generally stupid. In groups, they become even more stupid, because they do not evaluate the ideas of others on merit, but on what they think the insight-level of the person is. As they screw up that evaluation as well, this whole effect has zero surprise value. Add to that that most people prefer to live in a bubble where they surround themselves with others with the same (usually bad) ideas, and you understand where the utterly moronic decisions some groups have made come from. It also becomes clear how to manipulate these groups and people that have no real skills beyond that manipulation can acquire immense power, which they then are unable to wield competently.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I'd really like to read it. Unfortunately the summary contained most of the information contained in this Quartz "article". Seriously, there was nothing there. It seems to have been made by tracking down a philosophy professor who made a tweet and asking him three or four questions.
According to wikipedia channelling Pew, 3.1% of Americans are atheists. We don't know how many atheists are stupid, but this gives a lower bound that at least 96.9% of Americans are stupid.
Neither the summary, nor the original article mentioned Ghostbusters (2016).
The article specifically mentions: The cascade effect can help explain why great movies such as The Wizard of Oz or Heathers can flop at the box office, while terrible movies such as Hangover III rake in millions.
Ghostbusters might be an interesting example because it got a huge amount of bad buzz, even though almost none of the people who "hated it" had seen anything from it before it's release. On release, it wasn't terrible, but it wasn't even "good," either. It was on the lower end of "meh." But that doesn't excuse the extreme amount of hate it got from its very announcement. That was very much a group-think effort.
It will shortly be possible to build a kind of philosopher-king AI which can evaluate the credibility of various models of what's going on in the world, and thus the credibility of various assertions about the world or about what is a good plan.
It could be given heuristics about evaluating the interests and allegiances of utterers of assertions, and factor those out. Disinterested parties are more likely to be more objective in their description of a situation and their prescription for fixing "bad" situations. Parties/sources with only passing beneficiary interest in the outcome, and with education in and demonstrated sound use of logic and probability, would be given more credibility, a priori, until proven wrong. etc.
The system would have to have a model of group-allegiance and group-think and group-speak etc. so that it could properly discount it.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Spoken out of admitted ignorance. Solar creates a lot of pollution in the creation of the panels (some of the chemicals used are very toxic) and energy storage is not trivial. If you want to get technical, fossil fuels are solar energy too, just chemically stored at a very high energy density compared to chemical batteries, and we use fossil fuel because it works at any time as needed.
It has been said before, but the problems with solar energy are significant:
Random, cloudy days that cut your generation potential by 50% or more
50x lower energy density when storing electrical energy in batteries than chemical energy
very high energy losses when compressing a gas to store energy
low energy density when storing energy kinetically
If someone tomorrow commercializes (i.e. comes up with a solution that can be manufactured in scale, not just some lab experiment) a way of storing electrical energy efficiently that comes anywhere close to fossil fuels, solar will take over the planet in a few years. If not, then it won't.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
Newsflash: Groups of humans making decisions generally fail to make said decisions based on logic, common sense, or scientific evidence. Every time I hear someone at the workplace talk of forming a building a committee to solve a "problem" it's generally a sign that a) whatever the outcome, it won't be the quantifiable as the "best" or "most effective" solution or b) The problem wasn't really so much of a problem, but an "idea" that one of those "idea" people came up with, but without a way to actually accomplish or implement it.
There IS a WAY to KILL a bad idea. It's called SCIENCE.
Hasn't worked so far. The religion of Scientism has greatly outpaced actual Science, with real scientists being silenced and the right to question conclusions or hypothesis thrown right out the window.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
that's the way to do it.
Just do something, anything! Shake it!
Actually doesn't most of the finance-based economy just hum along based on random "churn" and promises?
Have you ever stopped to think that probably 90% of the businesses you see at any given moment on the web and walking down the street are unprofitable from the get-go and destined to fail. Just slowly, while creating a few jobs here and there in the process. What does support all of this anyway? Raw, fallacious faith? Well if the placebo effect works, maybe just go with it?
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
The caveat here is that just because you don't like an idea as a politician (or individual) doesn't mean that is a bad idea, it is entirely possible that you are an idiot and it is you who are wrong. There is an entire section of the population who are like this. They have a set of beliefs that they FEEL are right, regardless of facts or statistics, and they believe that they hold the moral high ground, so they must be right and anyone who disagrees is not only wrong but evil. They live in their little echo chambers where all their friends parrot back to them the same beliefs, and they shout down the opposition wherever it pops up. If they don't get their way, they violently riot (i.e. if someone is going to speak who they disagree with, or if an informed jury of citizens decides in a way they don't like). I will let you figure out who I am talking about, but it shouldn't be difficult if you are paying attention.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
There is also the fact that it takes more energy to make a solar panel than the panel will get back in its lifetime.
That is incredibly false. Going on basic logical analysis alone, if what you say were the case, they would never have a positive monetary return on investment unless you were manufacturing them in a location with rock-bottom energy prices (say Iceland) and using them in places with sky-high energy prices (Hawaii?). Years of installations in a huge variety of situations shows that they DO have a positive monetary return over their life.
If you want actual data you can search EROEI ("Energy Returned on Energy Invested")
There is a way that often works: You join in and improve the idea until it becomes absurd and dies by itself. Then you blame the original inventor for the failure.
it takes more energy to make a solar panel than the panel will get back in its lifetime.
This is the perfect example of a bad idea that just can't be killed. It may, possibly, have been true back in the '80s. It is not true now, and hasn't been true for a long time. Modern solar panels produce much more energy than the total energy used to manufacture them.
Look up "energy payback time".
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Why is Unicode bad? (and, please, don't mention 8-bit are enough as a reason) I would agree that languages using 7,000+ symbols are a bad idea, but ideograms might have some advantage (which I cannot see right now). But that's not Unicode's fault. Bad rendering of characters happens not because of Unicode, but because we use different encodings instead of using "the one true way"...
There's no good way to kill religion, or even pseudo ones like scientology.
/end dog whistle
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Socialism is "for the collective, at the expense of individual liberty".
No.
Socialism is worker ownership of the means of production.
Most people today seem to have long since lost track of what socialism is actually defined as, but if you're going to be pedantic, be pedantic and correct.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
"Take off and nuke them from orbit, it's the only way to be sure..."
SD
âoeWho knew something as harmless as willful ignorance could end up having real consequences?â
Socialism always leads to collapse of the economy, as people figure out how to game the system. Because it hasn't collapsed everywhere yet, actually goes exactly to the article's premise.
That's an assertion that has been made un-falsifiable by weasel-wording. You could say the same thing about anything. Democracy. Speaking French. Taxing liquor sales.
"Democracy always leads to collapse of the economy, as people figure out how to game the system. Because it hasn't collapsed everywhere yet, actually goes exactly to the article's premise." What, some democracies haven't collapsed? That just proves my point!
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
While, in the short term, killing a bad idea may be hard, in the really long run, the universe will eventually get enough chances, that it will kill off people with bad ideas. One might hope that would happen at a statistical level, more often than for people with good ideas, and perhaps leading to an evolutional disadvantage for bad ideas.
but, that's a pretty subtle thing for evolution to bother with. all it cares about is the continuance of genes.
still, on the surface of things, being prone to bad ideas, seems like it should make you more likely to get killed off ... ?
And in fact, it *does* power the planet. It's only our narrow focus on things that are literally "accounted for" in our economy that makes it appear otherwise. If we had to replace all the things that sunlight does for us with our non-renewable energy sources they wouldn't even come close, but that all happens off the books so it's invisible.
Now I worked for environmental organizations in the years of transition from crying indian environmentalism to "sustainability" based environmentalism, and I always had a problem with the new framing: non-sustainability is by definition a self-correcting problem.
So if we survive as a society, that society will eventually be powered by (and limited by) solar energy. The problem isn't non-sustainability per se, but the predictable costs of running unprepared into the limits of the processes we depend on.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I use this example when talking to people about anti-vaxxers. You can't just say vaccines don't cause autism. You are much better off talking about how bad the diseases are that can be cured by vaccines. Alternatively, you could talk about the research on the efficacy of vaccines in preventing diseases, or even just discuss the history of vaccines and Jonas Salk. What you can't do, is tell somebody "not X." All they hear is "X." Then I tell my friend who I am explaining this to, "Did you know that JFK was not a homosexual?" And whoever I'm talking to, no matter their political bent, instantly starts thinking, "wait... was he?"
By stating the opposite of a thing, you reinforce the original thing -- even if they weren't thinking about it in the first place! Imagine how much stronger that reinforcement is, if they already had that notion.
I forget where I first learned this trick. Probably on this godforsaken forum. But it always causes people to realize they have been arguing with others the wrong way. If you know somebody is wrong, you can deflect to something you know is right. You can ask them to elaborate on exactly how they know the thing they say they know. You can try to find common ground. You can state facts that support a counterargument, and let them connect the dots. But if you just say the opposite of their argument, you will not succeed.
It's a hard lesson to remember and use in real life, because human nature is to say "nu-uh." But if you can do a little verbal jujitsu, you are much more likely to succeed in getting people to see your point of view.
(I just noticed this whole post is sort of meta, since I'm disagreeing with the premise of the article without actually saying so.)
Yes, unicode is a horrible idea! Even extended ASCII is pretty scary. So don't be a slob. Clean up your posts! (Especially you so-called 'editors')
I've postulated that humans are only intelligent individually. In groups the group intelligence defaults to the lowest of the members. The larger the group making a decision, the stupider the decision is likely to be. Example- Congress.
Individuals outside the group can see the bad idea being accepted but the group can not.
Sure, one has to determine how one stores-up energy to use when the planet's rotation obscures the sun
Maybe a good idea is in order... But then who says international cooperation is a good idea these days?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
There you go. Either use some transliteration system or learn a proper language.
Me neither. If you want pictures (for people who can't read, perhaps) there's png.
Ovid didn't need unicode, and neither did Shakespeare.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
religious brainwashing early in life. Innocent children are taught that they should be unquestioningly accepting of wacky ideas just because their elders seem to believe them. Their natural scepticism is denounced as heresy.
The whole idea that anything should just be accepted as a matter of faith is a threat to democracy. Sunday school is clearly a form of child abuse. (even when it's done on Saturday)
Red Forman had it right. When someone creates or perpetuates a bad idea, you slap them upside the head and yell "Dumbass!"
The problem is that stupid people, and people with dumb ideas, really love that approach and will adopt it enthusiastically.
They have discovered that they can't convince people with logic and facts (because logic and facts don't support their stupid ideas in any way.). But slapping people and shouting "dumbass"? That is something that they can do! Repeatedly!
In general, you can safely assume that anybody who tries to shoot down an idea by "slapping people upside the head and yelling 'Dumbass'!" is stupid, and advancing a stupid idea.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
We could use the earth as a massive fly-wheel.
I was thinking about this issue recently in a workshop and I think one major component of this problem that doesn't really get talked about is the idea that the brain is designed to make associations. When you link two concepts together the brain creates a link, and the more times t you hear that link, the stronger it becomes, INCLUDING when someone tries to refute a relationship; the brain still links the two concepts. It doesn't really have a mechanism to de-link concepts except through the passage of time. It seems to me that instead of trying to de-link concepts we should instead just provide counter-narratives that ALSO stipulate a relationship, and to not talk about the fake relationships as much if at all. Anyway, that's my two cents.
There are ways to kill bad ideas, but it just is no longer socially acceptable to kill the originator in a novel and particularly gruesome manner. My favorite was always hanging, drawing and quartering.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
APK's hosts file spamming proves this. Although it looks like he remembered a password to an account an now likes to post statements supporting himself and his ideas on computer security that were woefully deficient 20 years ago let alone today. Add in his new whining that he gets censored by the /. gods and those who troll him and at least it provides hours of humor.
Some ideas are great in the context of where they apply, but are terrible if tried outside of that context. People tend to think that if X was a good idea for problem Y then it must also be a great idea for problem Z. Some ideas don't scale well. Some break down if you try to expand them to new applications. Solar panels might be the perfect solution to powering your cabin far from the grid. That doesn't automatically mean that they should power everything in the world. Maybe they should, but maybe they should not. It's when tons of money are thrown at something before it's time or to a poorly managed project (Solyndra for example) that they really break down.
There are two different kinds of "bad ideas". Some have been tried and failed, others we have not found a good way to test yet.
The reasons that failed bad ideas are still believed is poor education. We don't teach people about science, so they don't understand how to test ideas or waht an idea failure looks like. Nor do we teach them how tell the difference between good information sources and bad information sources, so they trust Jenny McCarthy, Donald Trump, Glenn Beck, and Rod Blagojevitch.
We don't show people how to check sources, nor do we even educate them about the clear signs of falsehood (my favorite is telling people what your opponent thinks, rather than what you belief. Obvious sign of a liar (unless they first prove they can read minds. ).
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Wouldn't that make us all dizzy?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
That's the definition of socialism, yes.
AND there is no greater "ownership" for a worker than owning your own business.
Whether "owning your own business" is "worker ownership of the means of production" depends on what your business does: whether it produces things, or just sells things other people produced (if it just sells things, it's not "means of production"). It also depends on whether you employ other people to produce things-- in that case you,, as the business owner, are a capitalist, unless the people you employ are co-owners (in which case your business is a collective).
...The greatest form of "socialism" (using your definition)
Not "my" definition. I didn't invent the word. That's just the definition of the word.
is small business in a free economic market.
Yes, in general, the capitalist economic model works extremely well in the situation you posit: individually-owned small businesses in a free economic market, where the people who own each business are also the people who work in that business, and "small" in this case meaning no individual business large enough to drive the market.
In this case, where there really isn't any distinction between owners and workers, though, there isn't much need to distinguish capitalism from socialism. It's the case where production requires large investments in capital and factories with workers, that you have the 19th century conditions in which these economic terms were defined to make sense of.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
... the gods themselves contend in vain, Schiller said.
But maybe not. I just finished Hanah Arendt's famous Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, about the abduction and trial of the former SS officer who was in charge of "evacuating" Jews to the death camps. Eichmann claimed -- probably truthfully -- to be horrified and distressed when he saw what was happening in the extermination camps. But his horror was greatly mollified at the a conference in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee in which many important and respectable people discussed the Final Solution frankly and unabashedly, as if it were no big deal.
Arendt also points out something interesting about Denmark, a country which was under total military domination by the Third Reich but in which society from the King down resisted the expulsion of Jews. Not only were the Germans unable to expel even stateless Jews from Denmark, confirmed SS officers posted to Denmark would suddenly become unreliable on the Jewish Question.
This suggests to me that when you feel like you're powerless against stupid or even evil ideas, there is always something you can do that can be very powerful: you can set an example.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Or the moon.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
That's optimistic. I'd add "divided by the number of members".
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I suspect you're trolling but since you were the only one to reply...
me >> I would agree that languages using 7,000+ symbols are a bad idea
you > Either use some transliteration system
They use that for input, and Japanese use a smaller set (hiragana) to translate Kanji for the youngums. Very effective, but that's not the problem Unicode solves: it aims at designating -- in a way a computer can understand -- all the 5,000+ (7,000+?) Kanjis. It works well for that, IMHO. I don't even have to worry about wasted space if I use UTF-8, AFAIU...
you > or learn a proper language.
I suspect Chinese e.g. is easier than English (e.g. they don't use a "future tense") -- only the writing system is somewhat unpractical.
And what would be a proper language, BTW? Certainly not English, nor Russian or German! Spanish? Not that easy, too. Even if it's just about character sets -- and not the entire language issue -- there are languages which use less symbols than English.
1.21 Gigawatts should be enough for anybody!
They didn't need computers either. So obviously you should stop using yours.
... use fewer symbols.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Well, if the probability of a new person being converted is proportional to the number of people already converted, that is also an exponential process:
dN/dT = k N.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
That possibly-human-poster is most likely factoring in the energy contained within the mass of the solar panels themselves, and the idea of harvesting it with anti-matter
And... let me put a big checkmark by that one.
that just won't die is the Internet of Things (IoT). Not sure how this keeps gaining momentum.
> Yes, unicode is a horrible idea [unicode.org]!
Your link talks about security, not encoding. E.g. that "inteI" might look like "intel" is not a Unicode problem: it's an Arial problem. See:
proportional, probably some kind of Helvetica: "inteI" versus "intel"
fixed-width: "inteI" versus "intel"
One can even argue it's a Windows (or Microsoft) problem. Or even a site (Slashdot, in the present case) issue, for it determines which letter should be used. I just prevented the problem by telling Firefox not to use Slashdot's specified font. Unicode is not to be blamed here.
Likewise for the RN sequence -- "rn" -- being similar to "m". It is naive (to say the least) to consider the encoding as the problem.
The same occurs for characters that look the same but are from different languages (the given example is some king of Russian "M" and the Latin "M"). Well, go to Russia and ask them to change their letter (this is a joke!) -- this is not a Unicode problem, but rather a recognition that two alphabets may use the same shape and the malicious manipulations that such similarity allows.
Here, though, it's possible to remedy the situation by establishing a two-level standard like:
Latin M (U+004D), visual representation "1234" (which is rendered as "M")
Cyrillic M (U+041C), visual representation "1234" (the same code)
Have in mind that it's somewhat hard for all the stakeholders to convene that both letters, Latin and Cyrillic, actually have the same shape.
The document then proceeds to describe various confusions which can be caused by compositing characters in a particular way (or with deletions). In some instances, it may be possible to make improvements to Unicode so as to avoid such confusions. A simple way would be to make some compositions, which would look perfectly possible, to explicitly invalid in future versions of the standard. Even in that case, it can be understood that these are not structural problems in Unicode, but instead transient problems which need to be addressed.
Rendering, of course, is not to be left for the application to do but rather to a single, well-maintained system function. This is fundamental.
Also, it is worthy noting that special typefonts might be chosen to avoid those problems. For URL addresses (for instance), a simple typefont with only Latin (or Cyrillic, or Chinese) defined characters could be chosen -- thereby avoiding the "similar letter shapes" to some extent (letters from other scripts would be rendered as rectangles).
...cannot hope to change an opinion that wasn't arrived at rationally to begin with.
> ... use fewer symbols.
Thank you for the tip.
I'll profit the opportunity to reiterate my point about English not being easy... 8-D
XML is a good example too of a misguided idea developing into a full blown drug resistant life form.
You're not particularly wrong. Stock ownership could be a route to socialism if it ended up merging the capitalist class (the people who own stock) with the worker class (the people who do the work). I remember a (satirical) science fiction story from back in the 50's pointing that out.
In America, at the moment, it doesn't happen to be going that direction. Most of the capital (that is, ownership of the physical means of production) is held by a relatively small proportion of the population. For example, just grabbing some numbers out of the internet, 10% of the population owns 75% of the wealth, and we can assume that for this 10% of the population, that ownership of wealth is in the form of investments in capital. And let me assure you, that ten percent are, for the most part, not the workers.
"Worker ownership of some, but a share significantly less than a 50%, of the means of production" would not be called socialism.
Great, that pretty much means that we've had socialism running as intended since the first IRA/401K.
If the only people who owned stocks were workers with IRAs, that might be true. But they're not. They're not even the majority of stock owners.
--again, I should point out that this is just the definition of what socialism is. Socialism is an economic model; it's about who owns (and more to the point, who controls) the engine of the economy (which was assumed to be the factories: the physical means of production).
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Maybe there is no *ethical* way to kill a bad idea. But I'm sure there are plenty of unethical ways.
False flag
Corruption of leaders
Extortion, bribery
etc...
People have been very creative in the past about this sort of stuff...
No "good" way, or just "no way"?
Remove the funding for the project making use of the bad idea. End of story.
Government has been doing it forever for *good* ideas, surely it'll work for the bad ones as well.
Oil was not an affordable energy source when it was new. It has a very expensive infrastructure that has been built up over time. Coal was cheaper but it also came with very expensive side effects. Cheap as they are, people still complain about the high costs because they're still paying for them, we still have people who die every year because they could not afford the heating oil or coal for their house in the winter, and the power companies keep building new coal or oil based plants to meet the demad.
It's like after the zombie apocalypse. Sure, scavanging and eating food from cans leftover in grocery stores is cheap and affordable, though dangerous. But at some point you're going to have to start growing your own food, reforming societies to allow for more efficient growing and distribution of food, and so on.
There are significant problems with fossil fuel based energy as well. It's a finite resource, distribution tends to be over further distances, pollution is high, extraction is becoming increasingly more difficult.
Now balance out the pros and cons of each.
Its the same with a 'good idea'... poison the purveyors. Make the people pushing the idea or supporting it look incompetent, then portray them as reprehensible. Then show how the idea is pushed by those who are reprehensible and you have tied the idea to reprehensible people hance the idea becomes reprehensible through association.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
I don't know about you, but to me, 174 Petawatts of untapped energy seems like it should be able to power the planet. Sure, one has to determine how one stores-up energy to use when the planet's rotation obscures the sun, but given that fossil-fuel-based power required all sorts of intermediate steps to get where we are today anyway, this does not seem like an impossible task.
There are more ways of storing potential energy than chemical batteries.
It has been working so far. Even coal, natural gas and petroleum are stored solar energy.
I was thinking JavaScript myself, but yes, you have the idea.
No, it sucked, hard. It was terrible, and the criticism was first based on a leaked synopsis (which turned out to be accurate) and actual trailer footage, and later, after release, the actual movie. The idea that it got an undeservedly bad rep due to "groupthink" is the bad idea that can't and won't be killed. Thanks for making my point.
But a good system can use scientific process, observation, measurement, bias-detection, logic, probability, model formation etc. so that if all it is getting in input is garbage, it will know that and refuse to output based on it, other than to say "It's pretty much all garbage. - except for this little bit here - there seems to be a grain of potential truth there. - no, squint more - just there."
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
But a good system can use scientific process, observation, measurement, bias-detection, logic, probability, model formation etc. so that if all it is getting in input is garbage, it will know that and refuse to output based on it, other than to say "It's pretty much all garbage. - except for this little bit here - there seems to be a grain of potential truth there. - no, squint more - just there."
It still all depends on what you feed it. If you feed it incorrect data or lies as base assumptions, like for instance CO2 released by humans has had a significant and dangerous effect on global climate, you'll get incorrect and illogical outputs that, given the inputs, looks sane but is in reality hogwash.
It got a bad rep BEFORE RELEASE due to group think. It was mostly "WOMEN ghostbusters? What a stupid idea, I hate this SJW shit."
It got a bad rep AFTER RELEASE due to people seeing it and thinking "huh, that was kindof a bad movie." It had it's briefly funny moments, but it was actually the worst kind of movie you can release: the bland, boring one. Not bad enough for you to laugh at it, but not funny enough for you to actually laugh at it. It was just pale and forgettable, and the only memorable thing about the whole situation was how much people foamed at the mouth at the mere mention of it.
Great Scott!
Finally an explanation of why Windows is still so popular!
Philosophers spend their lives arguing about ideas. "Killing" one is anathema to them.
If you want to know how to kill an idea, good or bad, don't ask a philosopher. Ask a politician. It's their business.
The usual answer is: don't argue against it. Argue for it. "In order to stab someone in the back, it is first necessary to get behind them."
Talk enthusiastically of the bright new future this idea will lead us to. Wax lyrical about the peaceful, happy world it will result in. Then just happen to hint, without doing anything so crude as actually saying, how all the favourite projects, jobs and wishes of the person you're talking to will be steamrolled in the process. Continue to talk about the need to shore up support and win over doubters, "such as people who want (third thing)". Then walk away and go to spread the good news, in the same way, to others.
This explains why the idea of hydrogen-powered fuel cell cars won't die. The idea is objectively moronic. The car is expensive, the fuel is expensive and mostly fossil-sourced and has to be stored at high pressures and will escape through solids and embrittle steel on the way out. There are less than 40 hydrogen stations in the US. vs the uniquitous gas station and omnipresent electricity.
Moronic. And yet more than one auto manufacturer is still working on them.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
When quizzed about why they hate GMOs, the most common answer is that they have heard that other people are afraid of GMOs:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
Using sustainability as an absolute criterion is another bad idea. Applying it as a rule would mean that environmentalists would have to support Glen Canyon Dam if it were being built today.
No one is expecting fossil fuel plants to just be switched off, what most expect is to build new plants of new types to replace old plants as they're increasingly nonviable.
I think you're very mistaken there, many people expect exactly that.
Like GPL?
This seem like a good idea - I'm sure everyone will agree.
These problems can be summarised into two: energy loses (reduced generation, storage) and energy density.
Energy density in storage is only really a problem in the following situations:
For renewables, the first two don't really apply. We don't transport the storage, it's connected to the generation and the grid. Renewables already take up lots of space (generally), and proportionally the storage is less than the generation. The third one applies to both batteries and fossil fuels, but to different extents (batteries can be recharged, but not forever; fossil fuels are single-use). And with the third one, what matters more is not the energy density of a single charge that matters, but over the entire lifetime of the storage medium.
Energy loses are a much more significant concern. The only way we can deal with this at the moment is to over-provision and store (build more panels, combine solar with wind, etc.; and remembering that storage has its own loses). That said, it might be the case in the near future that over-provisioning renewables works out to be more economical than building and supplying a fossil fuel plant regardless of the drawbacks. The South Australian power debacle shows that renewable energy is more economical in good times to an extent which allowed short-sighted people to forget to plan for the bad times.
Solar and wind aren't quite there yet. However, I don't know why people forget there are other alternative renewable power generation methods. Geothermal and hydro power stations are available, reliable, and able to ramp up and down with demand. They have drawbacks, just as everything has drawbacks. But I think they've been brushed aside to our detriment.
Two men claimed to have walked into a bar. Only one had the bruises to prove it.
You perfectly described the Minimum Wage. Hurts everyone but the very wealthiest and the unions in real terms, but the common ignorance that it helps people keeps itself alive...
Oliver Day (SYMANTEC/SECURITYFOCUS):
http://www.securityfocus.com/c...
"The host file on my day-to-day laptop is now over 16,000 lines long. Accessing the Internet -- particularly browsing the Web -- is actually faster"
"More recently, projects like Spybot Search & Destroy offer lists of known malicious servers to add a layer of defense against trojans & other forms of malware"
OReilly hosts security -> http://oreilly.com/pub/a/windo... & speed -> http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/...
Steve Gibson endorses hosts https://www.grc.com/sn/sn-045....
Aryeh Goretsky/ESET/NOD32: hosts = good security http://it.slashdot.org/comment...
Malwarebytes hpHosts' hosts/RECOMMENDS me!
Brocke Wilders of WILDERS' SECURITY does inferior clone of MY work http://www.wilderssecurity.com...
APK
P.S.=> China = imitation = flattery too http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/04/26/boffins_supercharge_the_hosts_file_to_save_users_plagued_by_dns_outages/
I'm going to continue using the Host File Engine. Your software is well written, functional. The Host File Engine performs exactly as promised by mmell
his hosts program is actually pretty good by xenotransplant
his hosts tool is actually useful for those cases in which one does indeed want to locally block stuff outright while consuming minimum system resources by alexgieg
I've never tried to belittle (APK's) work, I've flat out said it's good by BronsCon
take a look at the APK hosts file engine by SuperKendall
APK is kinda right. I've tried his hosts file generating software. It works by bmo
I like your host file system by Karmashock
I find your hosts file admirable by vel-ex-tech
* My code's liked + recommended & hosted by Malwarebytes' hpHosts!
APK
P.S.=> No wonder a "ne'er-do-well" DO NOTHING like you gossips UNIDENTIFIABLE ANONYMOUS behind my back - you can't manage the above & you KNOW it... apk
Nice troll. 5/10.
Replying to myself, I just thought URL names should not be registered on a content basis.
Thus, instead of IBM.com being formed by the three Latin letters "I", "B" and "M", it should correspond to what is recognizable by vision -- that is, the shape of "I", "B" and "M".
The problem is how would one know whether "M" is the Latin version or the Cyrillic one? Answer: there is no way to tell!
We usually take hints from neighboring letters, but in some instance it fails, just like it happens with the ROSA Linux distribution: in Russian it is spelled POCA, which can be read as Spanish "little" or "few". This is a good example that shows Unicode is not to blame, but the lack of context instead.
I wonder if some markup code stating the language in use could be employed for disambiguation...
Making narcissism normal was a pretty bad idea.
"environmentalists" is not a monolithic block with identical views. Everyone who who self-applies the label or finds the label applied to them has at least some unique perspective, and while certainly there are people, even lots of people that agree with each other, there are undoubtedly various camps that people may or may not belong to.
I could see some valuing the dam, both due to historical drought issues and and in terms of offsetting power production that might otherwise be considered for a nuclear application.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
> Whether you're a politician trying to make congress see sense
> or simply a manager trying to halt an atrocious team-building plan,
It was a decades-long struggle to establish that female employees are not required to be their male boss's sex partners. The next struggle is establishing that male employees should not be required to be their male boss's beer buddies. "After hours team building excercise" is a euphemism form cruising the strip joints and crawling the pubs, and getting home 2:30 AM totally plastered.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
... that is Daylight Saving time.
How the fuck does this drivel of an answer get modded informative. No wonder I left fucking slashdot it's full of fucking idiiots.
Well, at first it got the usual amount of hate a lazy 80's remake gets, but it wasn't until Paul Feig decided to strawman sexism in response to this criticism that it became so extreme. Barbara Streisand, eat you heart out.
Science advances with every funeral.
Geothermal and hydro are both niche applications because they just don't have the potential to generate that much power. With geothermal you are limited to areas where you can access close to the high temperature mantle, most locations don't have access or it is prohibitively expensive or difficult. With hydroelectric you are similarly limited by the water flow available both in volume and drop in elevation, there simply aren't that many sites available to develop into Hoover dam-like applications of flow and height (and thousands of acres that you can flood upstream without consequence).
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
Fossil fuels are a finite resource in the same way that a dead whale is a finite resource to a colony of ants. Sure, it will eventually run out, but in the mean time it will last generations, and when it does run out, it will not be sudden. When resources start getting short, then let market forces move the energy base to other fuel types/solar/wind etc. That will happen on it's own with no intervention or interference by government or activists. It is not about pro/con, it is about what is feasible. I bet you $5 you live in a grid tie house. For a mere $25,000 you could have solar panels installed and a lead acid battery bank take up one of your rooms and then you could be living the dream of independence from fossil fuels... Why haven't you done this? Because it is not a good idea, it is expensive and right now, electricity is readily available from the meter relatively cheaply and reliably. Yet you are arguing that we as a society should do exactly what you are unwilling to do with your own money.
In terms of pollution, that has for the most part been resolved in the US (in terms of real pollution, if you are a CO2 is pollution nutbar, please stop breathing i.e. polluting). However, China is polluting all over the place, and real, serious pollution. Please go over there and tell them how to run their country, seeing as they are real polluters by about 100,000 x the US (the air is unbreathable in many cities in China, rivers are polluted with heavy metals and other toxins etc...)
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
No government interference? Government is already providing oil subsidies. Energy stability is a primary concern of governments around the world. There's no way to make this a free market utopia, pure free market solutions have historically failed and this will not be the one time when it miraculously works.
The reason we're looking at difficult solutions like getting oil from tar sands (to sell to China) is because of scarcities. The reason we are moving to renewable energy sources more and more often is because of market forces. You won't ever divorce politics from this because the markets depend upon customers and consumers are driven by politics, and the politics are telling the consumers to use less oil. Consumers are not basing decisions upon detailed analysis but instead on random and illogical gut feelings, which continuall vex economists. The electricity utilities are the ones also moving to renewable energy, because the customers are pissed when they open a new polluting coal fired peaker plant in their neighborhoods. I have friends and family, of the Trump voting and hippy hating variety, who have put up solar panels for their ranches because it did make business sense to them.
Put in enough solar, outlaw all price supports for fossil, bill oil for the cost of M.E. interventions like Iraq (so the subsidy called "Navy" stops being hidden in taxes) and the coal and oil plants will close of their own accord.
Nuclear will take some arm twisting
International banks are indebted to the tune of 12 trillion in capital outlays and financing on these horrors
They will cling and claw and fight dirty to keep from taking write downs on those numbers
Buy a solar panel and use it for twenty years, unless you hate having cheap power. Then I guess go back to paying taxes to subsidize oil and coal.
There are a lot of really stupid people resisting the capital investment into solar and wind energy, but they pay off is huge long term. Sunlight and wind are not a volatile market, you don't have unpredictable fluctuations in price like you would with fossil fuels or even nuclear energy. Sure it's a lot more expensive initially to setup a bunch of windmills and solar panels than it is to build a furnace and some turbines, but the fuel costs are always there, you'll never get the fuel for free.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Yea, there are a lot of hippie dippy types that want to take things to their extreme conclusion.
I'd be find it acceptable if we were at some fraction of today's use. If we used 10% of the oil that we do today, that would solve a lot of problems at once. Smog in cities would improve (my town is quite smoggy), fewer oil spills, no need to build politically unpopular pipelines, we can tell the middle east to F off and keep their damn oil, etc. Coal mining tends to be messy to the local environment and creates a lot of health complications for the miners and their families. Mining materials for technology, maintaining solar panels and infrastructure, etc. there are potentials for retraining.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I wish you luck in holding the powerful and wealthy responsible for the mess they make...
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Read the koran, as it is a rich fountainhead of bad ideas. "If 50 million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing." - Anatole France (1844-1924, born François-Anatole Thibault, French poet, journalist, and novelist) So if 1.5 billion people believe a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.
I don't know why this guy hates Trump so much. Just because Trump spews bad ideas does not mean he will not be a great King.
My 2: No, many people do not, although there are some people who might like that. I suspect that there are people who expect fossil fuels to gradually become less important and be replaced by other sources.
Well that seems to be at odds with what the IEEE found - http://spectrum.ieee.org/green... . I'm waiting for this situation to change. I still have to wait.
There is also the twist that people don't want them on houses. Wife is into real estate and she's telling me that every house that has been on the market in the past 5 years, and up to a month ago, the new buyers wanted them all removed. Concerns about roof leaking, or some such BS (IMHO it's BS, last one was on a roof just 1 year old, there were no leaks). I just don't get it.
Well that seems to be at odds with what the IEEE found - http://spectrum.ieee.org/green...
I'm not sure what you mean by "at odds," since the IEEE Spectrum article doesn't even discuss energy payback time. Here's an article showing an energy payback time of 3.7 years for a typical home rooftop PV system, or 2 years for a slightly more efficient panel: http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy04o... Graph 2 shows a panel produces 20 times more energy over the 30-year lifetime (which is the PV panel typical warranty) than the energy used to produce it and mount it on the roof.
That's roughly comparable to the values shown in other sources. Here's a review paper saying that the Energy Return on Investment (EROI) is from 8.7 to 34.2 (depending on things such as where it's located, and what technology is used): http://www.sciencedirect.com/s...
The IEEE article is a caution saying that the Chinese module manufacturers don't necessarily pay attention to the environmental effects of manufacturing. This is a problem with any manufacturing, though, not particular to solar panels. They export about 180 billion dollars worth of stuff to us every month, so if you're worried about the environmental impact of Chinese manufacturing, that's laudable, but solar panels aren't even one percent of that.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
These definitions do correctly and clearly state that socialism is about ownership of the means of production.
Definitions 1 and 2 are actually defining state socialism , which is indeed a subset of socialism (and, to be fair, is the type of socialism most people think of).
Here's the business dictionary, which says something similar but with the slightly wider definition "cooperative and/or government ownership": http://www.businessdictionary....
Definition three merely says where socialism lies in Marxist theory, but doesn't actually say what it is. (I'm no great fan of Marxist theory. It tends to degenerate into jargon that ends up being self-referential and not terribly enlightening; and in any case I think it's very clear that Marx has been proven wrong in his understanding of how societies actually work.)
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
This is the perfect example of a bad idea that just can't be killed.
I've just started assuming that people that hold on to those ideas are not real people. They are shills for the fossil fuel industry or something similar.
How else do you explain a site for nerds, having a large percent of users who apparently cannot do a simple google query?
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=ROI+on+solar+panels+2017
Locating hydro plants is a big issue; and not just because of water flow (you also need to build the dam). However, the largest hydro scheme can generate more than four times as much as the largest coal plant (only two times as much for the fourth largest hydro plant). Of the top 15 largest power producing plants in the world, 11 are hydro and 4 are nuclear; and the nuclear plants are clumped at the end of that list (fuel oil, gas, and coal first appear at #18, #19, and #20 respectively). And there are four countries which produce more than half of their power through hydro. But all that said, I agree it's probably not enough to offset the location problem for most of the world.
Geothermal is a different matter. Location does matter from an efficiency point of view. But the good locations aren't rare or hard to find. The plants themselves don't have large capacities at the moment. But that's probably not the limit of what they can do, just the limit of what we have done. Also, they can be larger than other renewable energy sources and we don't have a problem with those. And geothermal energy is consistent. Why build solar when geothermal can generate the same power, and also do so at night?
Two men claimed to have walked into a bar. Only one had the bruises to prove it.
"Government is already providing oil subsidies."
That is straight up false. There is exactly $0 in oil subsidies as defined by dictionary.com:
-a direct pecuniary aid furnished by a government to a private industrial undertaking, a charity organization, or the like.
-a sum paid, often in accordance with a treaty, by one government to another to secure some service in return.
-a grant or contribution of money.
-money formerly granted by the English Parliament to the crown for special needs.
Oil companies are allowed to deduct their operating costs just like any other company and not pay taxes on losses JUST LIKE ANY OTHER COMPANY, including the one that you work for. They are further allowed to use the same tax structure that all US corporations are subject to to maximize their deductions and minimize their tax liability. Unless you don't take any deductions on your taxes every year (I know you take deductions you are eligible for because you are not a drooling idiot), don't expect others to not take deductions that they are eligible for. Also don't try to redefine an existing word to mean something that it clearly does not in common usage just to make your argument sound valid, that is underhanded and deceitful.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/d...
Furthermore, consumers are basing their purchases of energy based largely on cost. When the cost of solar is less than the cost from the utility, they switch (as I have done) to solar. If gas becomes expensive, they want to know why and lightweight, less safe vehicles that get better mileage start to sell better. The economy is made up of millions of intelligent beings making billions of deciscions every day, which is why free market forces quickly shift to new optimums far faster than government regulation ever could (just look at the adoption rates of smart phones since 2007 that incorporate features that the public wanted, including web browsing, camera and video, music playback etc.)
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
Bad ideas, despite the suffering and ignorance they might disperse during its life are usually killed by themselves.
But most people are fucking idiots - and we''ve known that for milennnia.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
In that case, with enough development of AI sophistication, it could peruse the scientific articles published in the fields of atmospheric physics and chemistry, climate modelling, and in basic physics (absorption/emission spectra of different molecules etc) and draw its own conclusions.
The beauty is, the computer program wouldn't care how hot it's going to get or not, or how big of a truck it wants to buy or not. It would just report out on how the facts and probabilities fit together. Data from "all sides" of the human debate would no doubt be input.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Herein lies the reason for improved education.
If more peoples knew actual facts about the world, and how to check those facts, and recognized the importance of having accurate (NOT alternate) facts,
then more bad ideas could be averted.
Of course, the ruling class sees truth in education as a bad idea!
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
The Copenhagen Interpretation, String Theory, etc. Reminds me of a consulting "demotivational" poster: "If you are not part of the solution, there's money to be made in prolonging the problem."