hmmm...while I know you were just making that theory up to make a point, I'm having difficuties understanding how *I* would have made your point, by showing your theory false.
"Since my point was that a theory fitting a single observation does not prove the theory correct,"
But your theory DID NOT fit even a single observation, so it DOES prove it was *incorrect*. While you imply that this means no theories are correct untill disproven, I think it's equally valid to claim all theories are correct untill disproven.
Thus, rather than what you claim, one could say a theory fitting even a single observation proves the theory correct, untill the moment an observation shows it to be incorrect.
"What I have trouble getting past is race after race that all speak English,";-)
I understand completely; in reality such a thing would be utterly absurd. But then again, this is a bit the same thing as like I was saying about aliens so alien that nobody would understand it. If they would make a TV-show where every alien (or even human future race) would speak a more plausable language of some sorts, no living sole (in real life, when watching the show, I mean) could understand what they would be saying. So far for any intelligent conversations, then:-).
Now, to the defence of Farscape: in the very first episode the aliens *were* speaking alien. I think they solved the problem (they couldn't keep doing that, obviously) with some device or creature which would settle in the brain and 'translate' everything. One can discuss the unlikliness of such a device/creature, but that 'trick' is a lot less hard to swallow then english-speaking aliens. Most other SF-series with aliens don't even bother.
Come to think of it; ok, firefly took the easy way out, and didn't introduce any aliens (maybe they're actually being more realistic in that, agreed). And the 'chinese' as vulgar language is a nice touch, though it seems to be nothing more than, indeed, a touch. Come to think of it, while their onboard computervoice mumbled some chinees, I never heard any of the other characters speak any chinese.anyway, I don't have the same dislike of aliens in an SF-story; the point of aliens, even if they look rather human-like (in that respect, Farscape was not all that bad neither; the aliens there were far less humanoid, then, say, those of startrek NG where almost ALL are extremely human-like (being in reality just humans with make-up) were. At least most of the puppets diverted more of the human form then the typically human-with-make-up aliens do). Thus, the point of those aliens is that they lend themselves extremely well to exploiting some concepts that would otherwise be more difficult to swallow if it were mere humans (such as my exapmle from the Borg).
"and characters that act in ways that do not seem even close to what I understand of human nature."
Well, that's because they're alien characters! And there you were, complaining that you wanted something else than human drives and emotions!
j/k;-)
"'m more interested in a believable and interesting atmosphere than an alien one."
I think there we disgress the most. At least when it comes down to evaluating the value of a *SF*-show. You're basically saying what I said (apart from thos times they actually used the SF setting as an integral part): the SF is largely background noise, and is irrelevant to the actual story. Now, while you found the atmosphere interesting, while I did not (most of the time), it is perfectly possible to have exactly the same 'believable and interesting atmosphere' in Firefly, whether it is an SF or not. That's exactly one of my gripes with it. In fact, if it's about a believable and interesting atmosphere, they would better have scrapped the SF part, and it could have become even more believable.
Well, ok, we both know were we stand. I don't think you're arguments are all wrong on themselves, it's just that we seem to focus on other things when evaluating an SF (though I bet we both like Bladerunner;-). It could be that don't give enough slack; it's been a while, and maybe I should re-see them again - though this probably would be more correct of the BG episodes, since I only viewed a handful (because I think those really suck, but who knows, maybe I saw just the 5 worst episodes of the series). I DID force myself to see every episode of firefly, though, even though I thought most were not very good. Can you say the same about Farscape?;-)
It was nice talking to you!
Btw, unrelated; the 99bottlesofbeerinmyF...what does the 'F' stand for?:-)
yeah, sorry about that.
It's...well, shite happens all at once. I can't use my real nick (n3wsbt3) because my cookie got expired, I forgot my password, and I changed my emailaccount a while ago - and thus the requested password didn't arrive. I mailed the pater@slashdot thing, but I got a rebounce.
So now, I have to wait for two days before I can ask for my password, again.
If any chief-moderators are there who can help...emmm...help!
Anyway, that's why my settings were all wrong, and my backspaces and hard returns were absent (it probably was on 'html-mode'. Anyway, I posted it anew, so you should be able to read it now. (this time called it the 'the good of genetic food' or something.)
Recently, I (re)stumbled upon an article called "Environmental Heresies". A good and interesting read for sure, but, like with all these kind of articles, the author (futurologists, they are called, I believe) makes the same basic mistakes as all his predecessors. I'll give some rebutal and critcism (but I'll cut it down this time to the genetic-manupilation part:
As for genetically modified (GM) crops, I fear he really simplifies the subject too much to be useful in making a rational decision about the pro's and cons. Basically, he over-optimistically only conveys the pros, while barely mentionning any of the cons - as if they were unimportant.
It should be noted however, that with living organisms, you can not simply test it out in the wild, and then expect to be able to put the genie back in the bottle when things go wrong. Once you contaminated a natural area, and the contamination has a sufficiently advantage (in a darwinistic sense) to stay around in the genepool, there is no way in hell you can get rid of it completely, when it turns out it is damaging humans, or other species and ecological systems.
Now, his counterargument that those won't survive in the wild seems rather weak. In effect, some GM genes *already* have contaminated other 'wild' crops, and it didn't sizzle out in the wild, on the contrary (a prominent example of that are some strains of GM corn in south-america). So... it may be that some GMs will not survive in the wild, but you can bet some *will*, however. And he, nor anyone else, can garantuee that such GM or hybrid crops can't be damaging or unhealthy to the ecosystem or local species, including humans.
Also, the reductionistic view of "we're not doing anything else then what people have been doing for centuries" is somewhat misleading too. Yes, people have been breeding crops, and cultivated crops are not 'natural' in the sense that they occur in the wild...but it's an unfair analogy, because one is comparing oranges with apples. For instance, with GM, it is perfectly possible to make genemodifications between two completely different species of plants. In effect, this trans-species swapping of genes with GM, can be done between animals and plants. In all those centuries that "we have always done this" I would like to see any example where this has actually been done before.
No; this is a totally new technique, with new possibilities, certainly, but also new consequences (which we don't know anything about) and new dangers. You can't just shrug those of with claiming, falsely, that we've been using those techniques for millenia. And you can't just merrily test it out in the wild, and see if anything happens.
Apart from that, even purely economically, I doubt it has all those beneficial effects the author claims it has or will have - but more about that at the end.
So, in conclusion; the author is fully right about some things, but a bit too simplistic (and, perhaps, biased) in other points. The nuclear/weather point is, indeed, logical. The world-demographics is correct, though there is a need for caution as to determine what is the cause, and if simple extrapolation is enough to make a conclusion. As for the GM-crops, I fear he is a bit misguided himself; this is obvious by the naive assumption of how much 'good' GM-crops will do - which is, I suspect, derived from an overly (and typical USA) optimistic viewpoint on capitalism, which I don't share.
GM-corporations do not care about worldhunger, nor about the living quality of poor farmers in third (or first, for that matter) worldcountries. What matters to them is maximising profit for their shareholders. In the authors' view, this is fully compatible with eachother, but I rather think that, in the end, you can't have both: if it's really about maximising profit, then it is about holding control of the market, and if it's about control, then it's not about the freedoms and abilities and rights of the farmer. This already can be seen by the fact many GM corporations have forbidden the 's
Gazing the future
Recently, I (re)stumbled upon an article called "Environmental Heresies". A good and interesting read for sure, but, like with all these kind of articles, the author (futurologists, they are called, I believe) makes the same basic mistakes as all his predecessors. I'll give some rebutal and critcism:
His first point, about slowing demographics, is not very much disputable: it is as it is, and if it's in decline, it's in decline. However, whether we will level out completely, or go down, or up again, is not as clear cut as he seems to portray. The author gives as main reason that people go to cities, but I think this explanation is inadequate, and certainly not enough to explain the changing demographics.
It should be noted, for instance, that, during the middle ages, the amount of children born in cities were no less then those on the countryside. What *did* change, though, is the empowerement of women (most notably in matters of procreation) and social and medical advancements. THOSE are the real reasons why demographics change. It also follows that, if, by some disaster or serious economic and scientific decline we would degrade into former levels of welfare and reduced possibility for women to control any family planning, demographics would go up again. It is therefor not an absolute certitude that the world-demographics will continue to decline...this is only true as an extrapolation, if everything remains more or less the same. However, it is exactly the danger of this sort of extrapolation that the author is (also) lamenting against.
As for genetically modified (GM) crops, I fear he really simplifies the subject too much to be useful in making a rational decision about the pro's and cons. Basically, he over-optimistically only conveys the pros, while barely mentionning any of the cons - as if they were unimportant.
It should be noted however, that with living organisms, you can not simply test it out in the wild, and then expect to be able to put the genie back in the bottle when things go wrong. Once you contaminated a natural area, and the contamination has a sufficiently advantage (in a darwinistic sense) to stay around in the genepool, there is no way in hell you can get rid of it completely, when it turns out it is damaging humans, or other species and ecological systems.
Now, his counterargument that those won't survive in the wild seems rather weak. In effect, some GM genes *already* have contaminated other 'wild' crops, and it didn't sizzle out in the wild, on the contrary (a prominent example of that are some strains of GM corn in south-america). So... it may be that some GMs will not survive in the wild, but you can bet some *will*, however. And he, nor anyone else, can garantuee that such GM or hybrid crops can't be damaging or unhealthy to the ecosystem or local species, including humans.
Also, the reductionistic view of "we're not doing anything else then what people have been doing for centuries" is somewhat misleading too. Yes, people have been breeding crops, and cultivated crops are not 'natural' in the sense that they occur in the wild...but it's an unfair analogy, because one is comparing oranges with apples. For instance, with GM, it is perfectly possible to make genemodifications between two completely different species of plants. In effect, this trans-species swapping of genes with GM, can be done between animals and plants. In all those centuries that "we have always done this" I would like to see any example where this has actually been done before.
No; this is a totally new technique, with new possibilities, certainly, but also new consequences (which we don't know anything about) and new dangers. You can't just shrug those of with claiming, falsely, that we've been using those techniques for millenia. And you can't just merrily test it out in the wild, and see if anything happens.
Apart from that, even purely economically, I doubt it has all those beneficial effects the author claims it has or will have - but more about that at the end.
About his weather and nuc
Slashdot Mirror
hmmm...while I know you were just making that theory up to make a point, I'm having difficuties understanding how *I* would have made your point, by showing your theory false. "Since my point was that a theory fitting a single observation does not prove the theory correct," But your theory DID NOT fit even a single observation, so it DOES prove it was *incorrect*. While you imply that this means no theories are correct untill disproven, I think it's equally valid to claim all theories are correct untill disproven. Thus, rather than what you claim, one could say a theory fitting even a single observation proves the theory correct, untill the moment an observation shows it to be incorrect.
"What I have trouble getting past is race after race that all speak English," ;-)
I understand completely; in reality such a thing would be utterly absurd. But then again, this is a bit the same thing as like I was saying about aliens so alien that nobody would understand it. If they would make a TV-show where every alien (or even human future race) would speak a more plausable language of some sorts, no living sole (in real life, when watching the show, I mean) could understand what they would be saying. So far for any intelligent conversations, then :-).
Now, to the defence of Farscape: in the very first episode the aliens *were* speaking alien. I think they solved the problem (they couldn't keep doing that, obviously) with some device or creature which would settle in the brain and 'translate' everything. One can discuss the unlikliness of such a device/creature, but that 'trick' is a lot less hard to swallow then english-speaking aliens. Most other SF-series with aliens don't even bother.
Come to think of it; ok, firefly took the easy way out, and didn't introduce any aliens (maybe they're actually being more realistic in that, agreed). And the 'chinese' as vulgar language is a nice touch, though it seems to be nothing more than, indeed, a touch. Come to think of it, while their onboard computervoice mumbled some chinees, I never heard any of the other characters speak any chinese.anyway, I don't have the same dislike of aliens in an SF-story; the point of aliens, even if they look rather human-like (in that respect, Farscape was not all that bad neither; the aliens there were far less humanoid, then, say, those of startrek NG where almost ALL are extremely human-like (being in reality just humans with make-up) were. At least most of the puppets diverted more of the human form then the typically human-with-make-up aliens do). Thus, the point of those aliens is that they lend themselves extremely well to exploiting some concepts that would otherwise be more difficult to swallow if it were mere humans (such as my exapmle from the Borg).
"and characters that act in ways that do not seem even close to what I understand of human nature."
Well, that's because they're alien characters! And there you were, complaining that you wanted something else than human drives and emotions!
j/k ;-)
"'m more interested in a believable and interesting atmosphere than an alien one."
I think there we disgress the most. At least when it comes down to evaluating the value of a *SF*-show. You're basically saying what I said (apart from thos times they actually used the SF setting as an integral part): the SF is largely background noise, and is irrelevant to the actual story. Now, while you found the atmosphere interesting, while I did not (most of the time), it is perfectly possible to have exactly the same 'believable and interesting atmosphere' in Firefly, whether it is an SF or not. That's exactly one of my gripes with it. In fact, if it's about a believable and interesting atmosphere, they would better have scrapped the SF part, and it could have become even more believable.
Well, ok, we both know were we stand. I don't think you're arguments are all wrong on themselves, it's just that we seem to focus on other things when evaluating an SF (though I bet we both like Bladerunner ;-). It could be that don't give enough slack; it's been a while, and maybe I should re-see them again - though this probably would be more correct of the BG episodes, since I only viewed a handful (because I think those really suck, but who knows, maybe I saw just the 5 worst episodes of the series). I DID force myself to see every episode of firefly, though, even though I thought most were not very good. Can you say the same about Farscape? ;-)
It was nice talking to you!
Btw, unrelated; the 99bottlesofbeerinmyF...what does the 'F' stand for? :-)
yeah, sorry about that. It's...well, shite happens all at once. I can't use my real nick (n3wsbt3) because my cookie got expired, I forgot my password, and I changed my emailaccount a while ago - and thus the requested password didn't arrive. I mailed the pater@slashdot thing, but I got a rebounce. So now, I have to wait for two days before I can ask for my password, again. If any chief-moderators are there who can help...emmm...help! Anyway, that's why my settings were all wrong, and my backspaces and hard returns were absent (it probably was on 'html-mode'. Anyway, I posted it anew, so you should be able to read it now. (this time called it the 'the good of genetic food' or something.)
Recently, I (re)stumbled upon an article called "Environmental Heresies". A good and interesting read for sure, but, like with all these kind of articles, the author (futurologists, they are called, I believe) makes the same basic mistakes as all his predecessors. I'll give some rebutal and critcism (but I'll cut it down this time to the genetic-manupilation part:
As for genetically modified (GM) crops, I fear he really simplifies the subject too much to be useful in making a rational decision about the pro's and cons. Basically, he over-optimistically only conveys the pros, while barely mentionning any of the cons - as if they were unimportant.
It should be noted however, that with living organisms, you can not simply test it out in the wild, and then expect to be able to put the genie back in the bottle when things go wrong. Once you contaminated a natural area, and the contamination has a sufficiently advantage (in a darwinistic sense) to stay around in the genepool, there is no way in hell you can get rid of it completely, when it turns out it is damaging humans, or other species and ecological systems.
Now, his counterargument that those won't survive in the wild seems rather weak. In effect, some GM genes *already* have contaminated other 'wild' crops, and it didn't sizzle out in the wild, on the contrary (a prominent example of that are some strains of GM corn in south-america). So... it may be that some GMs will not survive in the wild, but you can bet some *will*, however. And he, nor anyone else, can garantuee that such GM or hybrid crops can't be damaging or unhealthy to the ecosystem or local species, including humans.
Also, the reductionistic view of "we're not doing anything else then what people have been doing for centuries" is somewhat misleading too. Yes, people have been breeding crops, and cultivated crops are not 'natural' in the sense that they occur in the wild...but it's an unfair analogy, because one is comparing oranges with apples. For instance, with GM, it is perfectly possible to make genemodifications between two completely different species of plants. In effect, this trans-species swapping of genes with GM, can be done between animals and plants. In all those centuries that "we have always done this" I would like to see any example where this has actually been done before.
No; this is a totally new technique, with new possibilities, certainly, but also new consequences (which we don't know anything about) and new dangers. You can't just shrug those of with claiming, falsely, that we've been using those techniques for millenia. And you can't just merrily test it out in the wild, and see if anything happens.
Apart from that, even purely economically, I doubt it has all those beneficial effects the author claims it has or will have - but more about that at the end.
So, in conclusion; the author is fully right about some things, but a bit too simplistic (and, perhaps, biased) in other points. The nuclear/weather point is, indeed, logical. The world-demographics is correct, though there is a need for caution as to determine what is the cause, and if simple extrapolation is enough to make a conclusion. As for the GM-crops, I fear he is a bit misguided himself; this is obvious by the naive assumption of how much 'good' GM-crops will do - which is, I suspect, derived from an overly (and typical USA) optimistic viewpoint on capitalism, which I don't share.
GM-corporations do not care about worldhunger, nor about the living quality of poor farmers in third (or first, for that matter) worldcountries. What matters to them is maximising profit for their shareholders. In the authors' view, this is fully compatible with eachother, but I rather think that, in the end, you can't have both: if it's really about maximising profit, then it is about holding control of the market, and if it's about control, then it's not about the freedoms and abilities and rights of the farmer. This already can be seen by the fact many GM corporations have forbidden the 's
Gazing the future Recently, I (re)stumbled upon an article called "Environmental Heresies". A good and interesting read for sure, but, like with all these kind of articles, the author (futurologists, they are called, I believe) makes the same basic mistakes as all his predecessors. I'll give some rebutal and critcism: His first point, about slowing demographics, is not very much disputable: it is as it is, and if it's in decline, it's in decline. However, whether we will level out completely, or go down, or up again, is not as clear cut as he seems to portray. The author gives as main reason that people go to cities, but I think this explanation is inadequate, and certainly not enough to explain the changing demographics. It should be noted, for instance, that, during the middle ages, the amount of children born in cities were no less then those on the countryside. What *did* change, though, is the empowerement of women (most notably in matters of procreation) and social and medical advancements. THOSE are the real reasons why demographics change. It also follows that, if, by some disaster or serious economic and scientific decline we would degrade into former levels of welfare and reduced possibility for women to control any family planning, demographics would go up again. It is therefor not an absolute certitude that the world-demographics will continue to decline...this is only true as an extrapolation, if everything remains more or less the same. However, it is exactly the danger of this sort of extrapolation that the author is (also) lamenting against. As for genetically modified (GM) crops, I fear he really simplifies the subject too much to be useful in making a rational decision about the pro's and cons. Basically, he over-optimistically only conveys the pros, while barely mentionning any of the cons - as if they were unimportant. It should be noted however, that with living organisms, you can not simply test it out in the wild, and then expect to be able to put the genie back in the bottle when things go wrong. Once you contaminated a natural area, and the contamination has a sufficiently advantage (in a darwinistic sense) to stay around in the genepool, there is no way in hell you can get rid of it completely, when it turns out it is damaging humans, or other species and ecological systems. Now, his counterargument that those won't survive in the wild seems rather weak. In effect, some GM genes *already* have contaminated other 'wild' crops, and it didn't sizzle out in the wild, on the contrary (a prominent example of that are some strains of GM corn in south-america). So... it may be that some GMs will not survive in the wild, but you can bet some *will*, however. And he, nor anyone else, can garantuee that such GM or hybrid crops can't be damaging or unhealthy to the ecosystem or local species, including humans. Also, the reductionistic view of "we're not doing anything else then what people have been doing for centuries" is somewhat misleading too. Yes, people have been breeding crops, and cultivated crops are not 'natural' in the sense that they occur in the wild...but it's an unfair analogy, because one is comparing oranges with apples. For instance, with GM, it is perfectly possible to make genemodifications between two completely different species of plants. In effect, this trans-species swapping of genes with GM, can be done between animals and plants. In all those centuries that "we have always done this" I would like to see any example where this has actually been done before. No; this is a totally new technique, with new possibilities, certainly, but also new consequences (which we don't know anything about) and new dangers. You can't just shrug those of with claiming, falsely, that we've been using those techniques for millenia. And you can't just merrily test it out in the wild, and see if anything happens. Apart from that, even purely economically, I doubt it has all those beneficial effects the author claims it has or will have - but more about that at the end. About his weather and nuc