I'm totally with you on the gum thing, but I don't really understand why you think trash is so much less insidious. I agree gum is worse than cigarette butts and the like. However, I'm wondering if you've just never been to a city that had any real problem with trash, which seems odd, because it's not like such cities are rare.
The problem with trash is that it gets *everywhere*, including all those little cracks, crevices, "nooks and crannies" (whatever the hell that means), where it cannot be easily swept up. Ever seen an empty lot littered with trash, or a public beach littered with cigarette butts and styrofoam cups, or storm drains clogged with trash? Those are not easy to clean up.
Besides, even if all the litter was conveniently sitting on a flat surface ready to be swept up, it would be prohibitively expensive for most cities to be able to clean it all up. Yes, most cities have street sweepers, but they don't sweep every alley, every parking lot, every sidewalk, etc. Most street sweepers only sweep the gutters, and you're lucky if they manage to remove even 50% of the garbage that they pass over.
Trash may not be quite as disgusting or difficult to remove as chewed gum, but it's just as pervasive in many cities, and just as much of an eyesore.
You're right. I would never be that cruel to an animal. But as far as humans who casually toss their chewed gum wherever they please, I'm thinking (okay, just fantasizing) something along these lines:
1st offense: Rub their nose in it and swat them with a newspaper
2nd offense: Public beating and/or caning, possibly televised
3rd offense: Death by firing squad, then unceremoniously tossed into landfill
Good, then let's start enforcing it. Oh wait, that would be incredibly difficult, if not impossible, wouldn't it? Hmm. Tell me again how "it's already illegal" translates to "we've already got that problem solved".
I empathize with you completely. Just the other day I was waiting in line at the McDonald's drive-through for my morning coffee, and the person in the car in front of me, upon being handed his food, promptly took a large wad of chewing gum out of his mouth and casually tossed it out his window, as carelessly as if he was dropping a grain of sand onto a beach. I've seen people do this same exact thing with trash (fast food wrappers, empty soda cups, etc). Every time I see someone do something like that, I am instantly filled with disgust and anger, and I suddenly wish that it was legal to drag the guy out of his car and rub his nose in it like you would do with a dog that urinated on your rug.
The only people you can "blame" for Bush's victory are those who voted for Bush. Don't try to put any culpability on those who vote their conscience.
If I hadn't already commented in this thread, I'd mod you up. As someone who very frequently votes for third-party candidates, I am tired of hearing about how it's my fault that didn't win.
I must have mixed up my Internet forums terminology. When I mentioned the "GP", I was referring to logjon. And I apparently misinterpreted his opinion somewhat as well, since per his previous comments he apparently does think that voting for a third party candidate is wasting your vote.
However, I stand by what I said. I routinely vote for third party candidates, and I will continue to do so as long as the two main parties keep offering up power-hungry corporate shills - which probably means forever. But I still do empathize with logjon's sentiment. I have only one vote, and for every one of me, it seems there are 50 or 100 people who only see red or blue.
And this is why third-party voting in the US fails so miserably. "I don't wanna waste my vote by voting for a guy who actually represents what I want in government. I wanna vote for someone who might win."
You are absolutely right about why there is no viable third party in the US.
However, you are completely and utterly missing the GP's point (at least I think you are - I don't speak for him, obviously).
The point is not that we are forced to vote for one of the two main parties, lest we waste our votes.
The point is that even when we do vote for a 3rd party candidate, it has essentially zero effect, precisely because of the problem you mentioned, and thus, those of us who do vote for 3rd party candidates are truly not responsible for the actions of our government.
Your point does not rebut the GP's point - it supports it.
I'd sure like to see people put their money where their mouth is when they say shit like this. It's easy to volunteer other people to throw their lives away trying to defend their ideals, and then to question their "priorities" when they don't.
Whether you explicitly stated it or not, you're painting the GP as someone for whom having a big screen TV and a nice car is more important than having liberty. You may not have written those exact words, but by questioning his "priorities", you are attempting to make it sound like his reasons and choices are frivolous. That's nothing more than a cynical ad-hominem attack.
When you're talking about having a permanent arrest record, it's no longer just an issue of trying to preserve one's comfy lifestyle. An arrest record can potentially hurt someone for the rest of their life, which translates into a lot more than just giving up cable TV. Now we're talking about whether or not that person will be able to feed his family, put shoes on his childrens' feet, and a roof over their heads, much less send them to college.
And it doesn't really matter if he/she is single and doesn't have children, because an arrest record is permanent, which simply means that he/she may not ever be able (financially, etc) to get married and/or have children. That's a hell of a lot more to give up than just the prospect of a big screen TV or a leather sofa.
And before you accuse me of resorting to a "think of the children" argument, let me point out that even if the person getting arrested is single and childless and is perfectly happy to keep it that way, you STILL have to right or reason to expect them to sacrifice themselves, unless you are willing and ready to do the same. Don't give me some bullshit line about how you would be willing to get arrested, but you just haven't had the opportunity. That's a coward's excuse. If you're so convinced that defending liberty is worth the price of an arrest record, I wholeheartedly invite YOU to go get arrested for a good cause. There are PLENTY of good causes out there that need a champion/martyr/test-case/whatever. Put up or shut up!
As for me, I'm not willing to sacrifice the well-being of myself, my wife, or my kids just to get a couple bully cops off the street. Call me a coward if you will, but at least I'm not spewing out a bunch of false bravado and calling my neighbor a coward for lacking the will to do something that I'm not willing to do either.
You're making it sound like people just publish their conclusions, but they're publishing data as well, at least distillations of it.
No I'm not. I'm saying scientists can and sometimes do tweak the data before it gets published, to better appear to support their conclusions.
That's where peer review comes in: the reviewers look at the data and decide whether the conclusions are merited.
I agree. I never said peer review doesn't happen. But peer review of a study that supports the current consensus is not likely to be nearly as strict as for a study that challenges the current consensus. That's just plain ol' human behavior, and as much as you and I would like to think scientists are immune from it, they're not.
Furthermore, where did this consensus come from in the first place? It didn't just magically appear, and it wasn't dictated to the NSF in a smoky back room.
I didn't say it magically appeared, or is a big conspiracy. You're having that argument with the wrong person. I'm not an anti global warming conspiracy theorist. In fact, I tend to think the consensus is probably correct, and that there is a significant amount of real science behind it. I just happen to also believe that there is some non-insignificant amount of bad science mixed in.
The reason why you're faced with scrutiny when you make a claim counter to the consensus is that you are making an extraordinary claim!
I'm not suggesting otherwise. I'm merely suggesting that studies that support the consensus need to be scrutinized equally. That, after all, is the scientific thing to do. But again, typical human behavior is to only scrutinize claims that sound outlandish. Bad science should not get a pass just because its conclusions fit with the consensus view, but IMO sometimes it does.
Where does the funding come from, then? Leprechauns with pots of gold?
Private industries that stand to lose the most from more environmental regulations.
but if you have a problem with government funding for this type of research
I never said I had a problem with government funding of science. And I definitely DO have a problem with science being funded by private industry, at least when there is such an obvious conflict of interests. The problem as I see it is that the government has its own agenda, and isn't merely an impartial seeker of truth. You've no doubt heard the Winston Churchill quote about how democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried. Well, I would say that the government is the worst source of funding for science, except for all the others.
I don't disagree with you that the media practices lazy journalism and tends to distort things. On the other hand, you need to take a chill pill. I was halfway just trying to be funny, and halfway trying to express my own opinion that most US citizens aren't very rational. What I was definitely not doing was trying to pass off the revised quote as either the GP's position, or as some sort of gospel truth. If you want to criticize the media, fine. But don't hitch your argument to an analogy between the media and some half-serious "FTFY" post on Slashdot. That's just lame.
Maybe I'm just being gullible or naive, but it seems like if global warming were not happening, and a climate scientist could definitively prove it, that would be a career-making move. Suppressing it would seem to require quite the conspiracy.
Science isn't a boolean proposition. In other words, when a scientist begins investigating an issue, the range of possible results is vast, and the results are often messy, difficult to interpret, and often inconclusive. So it's not a matter of either being able to prove global warming IS happening, or being able to prove that it's not happening.
Being able to prove that global warming is not happening would indeed be a HUGE find (assuming the science was good, and it wasn't just more politically-motivated junk science). But for the vast majority of scientists wrangling for grant money, choosing whether to prove or disprove global warming is NOT the choice they face.
The choice they face is to either produce conclusive results, or stop getting grant money. One of the foundational concepts in science is that "I don't know" is an acceptable answer. In other words, from a purely scientific standpoint, if you spend 5 years analyzing tree rings from around the world to see if they indicate a global warming trend, and the results are not conclusive, that's okay. You accept that the data is inconclusive, and you move on. If you instead try to insist that the data either proves or disproves your hypothesis, then you are no longer doing real science.
However, the government expects results. If you think the government doesn't care about the results, then IMO you really are naive. When a government-funded scientific study concludes, the reports from the scientists don't just sit untouched or unnoticed in a binder on a shelf in some big warehouse. The reports are immediately politicized. They get quoted over and over again by politicians, all of whom have an agenda. The reports essentially become political canon-shot. That's what they're paying you for, and that's what they expect. If you get a big grant and your report says "The data is inconclusive", you can bet you won't be getting more grant money again any time soon.
So yeah, if you're a scientist and you really can produce results that disprove the consensus hypothesis, and you somehow are able to know this before you've actually done the science, then I suppose you could sell that. But for most scientists, the easiest way to keep the grant money rolling in is to consistently produce conclusive results. Yet, MOST of the time, results are either inconclusive, or offer only weak conclusions with lots of asterisks. Thus the dilemma. If you've managed to end up with strongly conclusive results, then hey, great. No need to try to spin the results, or overstate them, or "tweak" the data. But this will almost never be the case, and you will find yourself choosing between your scientific honesty and your livelihood. And if you do choose to do engage in a little spinning or creative interpretation of the data, then you will face a LOT LESS scrutiny if your tweaked results align with the consensus. If you tweak the results so that they go against the consensus, then you are going to be subjecting yourself and your data to some intense scrutiny.
Not that there isn't a market for scientific results that run counter to the consensus. There is a big market for that. It just doesn't tend to be funded by government grant money.
Can you give an example of such a thing? I do know of a few instances of scientific fraud, but they are relatively rare, and the coverage (to the extent it even hits the media) makes it fairly clear that it is rare.
That's a fair question, but I'm not sure I'll be able to convince you that scientific fraud is anything more than a 1 in 1,000,000 occurrence. The problem is, it's difficult to quantify exactly how much of it is going on. It's amazing how subjective science can become when a scientist's results are called into question. Proving that a fraud has indeed been committed then becomes essentially an exercise whereby other scientists attempt to reproduce the questionable results.
By the way, we're not just talking about outright fraud here - I used the somewhat inexact term "junk science", which in my mind includes not only outright fraud but also plenty of lazy and/or biased science. Essentially, if it's not rigorous science, with the greatest possible effort made to prevent human bias from contaminating the results, then in my mind it is junk science. If you've already got your mind made up that 99.999% of the science being funded by grant money is on the up and up, then my definition of "junk science" will no doubt strike you as a weasel-ish attempt to avoid having to prove my assertion that competition for grant money is a significantly corrupting influence on the science community.
So, to answer your question, I could easily rattle off a handful of examples, and then do some quick Google searches and add perhaps half a dozen more examples, but I don't see the point of that. You likely wouldn't be convinced anyway, and perhaps rightly so, since a handful of examples does not a pattern make. Besides which, we would invariably end up going down the rabbit hole debating every little aspect of each example. For instance, it is my belief that, even though I can't exactly put a finger on it, there has been a lot of sloppy science done in the global warming arena. Of course, I can't prove it, and if I tried, it would be fairly easy for you to keep me on the ropes trying to nail down every minor point. After all, even the whole Climate Gate fiasco didn't yield any hard proof for *either* side of the debate. But fefore you denounce me as an anti-global-warming nut, I should point out that although I'm still on the fence about global warming, I tend toward siding with the current scientific consensus.
The point is, whether or not the current consensus regarding global warming is "correct" has nothing to do with whether or not there has indeed been a significant amount of junk science done, and my personal belief that there *has* been a significant amount of junk science in that particular field has nothing to do with my personal views regarding the validity of the consensus view. My belief (or rather, suspicion, since I admittedly do not know) that there is a lot of junk science being done is based on the fact that competition for grant money is very high, and my intuition that for every confirmed case of scientific fraud we hear about in the media, there are probably at least a dozen other cases of fraud and/or just-plain-lazy science that we don't hear about. I think the much more likely possibility is that intense competition for grant money DOES often lead to bad science
I have not come easily to this conclusion. I've placed a LOT of faith in science, and I have been absolutely loath to believe that scientists, on average, are just as corruptible as lawyers or investment bankers.
I imagine your next question would be "So what makes you think the situation is any worse now than it was 50 years ago?", to which I would simply reply that it sure seems like there is a lot more competition for grant money, and a lot more would-be scientists, than there was/were 50 years ago. Again, this is largely based on my own intuition, so feel free to disregard it if it doesn't meet your threshold for causing you to reevaluate your own assumptions.
Nowadays, it seems healthy skepticism has turned unhealthy. Science isn't as respected.
I agree completely, and I'm as saddened and frustrated by the current state of affairs as anyone, especially when I try to explain to a family member why Jenny McCarthy is not a credible source of information about autism and/or vaccines, and everybody in the room turns on me and starts saying obvious-but-irrelevant things like "Science can't explain everything, ya know." I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to enumerate all the logical flaws in that line of reasoning.
However, this sad state of affairs is not entirely the fault of the public. The article places blame on scientists for their lack of communication skills, but IMO the problem is much deeper than that. The public no longer trusts scientists because there have just been too damn many scientists (or, in some cases, just your usual assortment of liars, cheats, and theives masquerading as scientists) who have shown they can't be trusted. There have been too many studies funded by corporate interests where the data has been intentionally skewed and/or fabricated. Too many career academics willing to do junk science in order to keep the grant money rolling in. Too many expert witnesses for hire who will say anything you want them to (and I don't just mean the defense witnesses - innocent people have been sent to prison with junk science).
Another big part of the problem, as has already been suggested by others, is the lazy and sometimes irresponsible reporting by the news media. We're constantly being bombarded by news of some study or another that correlates X with Y, but the media rarely bother to explain anything in detail so that you can truly understand the study's results. They don't tell you who funded the study. They don't tell you anything about the study's methodology. They skip right ahead to their own watered down interpretation of the study's conclusion, without providing *any* actual data (except maybe one or two percentages that are more or less meaningless outside the context of the full data set). One might argue that the media presents science in a watered down format because the public is not savvy enough to understand the nuances, but that by itself is not a useful analysis, as it just leaves us with a chicken/egg problem. Why is the public so ignorant? Is it because the media only ever spoonfeeds them watered down science (TM)? Or is it the fault of the teachers? Or is it just that most of the public is just too mentally lazy and/or apathetic to care about understanding science?
I suspect it's a combination of all of those things, but the bottom line is that this is not simply a failure of scientists to communicate.
anytime you try to associate a trait with a group you're probably oversimplifying the truth.
Yes, and this applies equally well to the comment by the AC who said:
Personally I think Christians (practicing their faith in "loving others") are the best kind of citizen one can have. They follow the just laws, they pay taxes and help their fellow men.
But you have when you defended the current system over the previous one. You took sides.
Again with the reading comprehension problem. When I said I didn't think "one was better than the other", I was talking about vote fixing vs voter intimidation, not open vs secret ballots.
Asserting my opinion is wrong and then denying that such assertions imply the opposite opinion...
If you assert x > y and I challenge your assumptions, I am NOT claiming with any certainty that y > x. I am merely casting doubt on your assumption that x > y. And not just as some sort of linguistic "trick" to trip you up, but because I honestly can't see how you claim to be so sure, without having provided any data to support your claim. I don't claim to have any knowledge of whether vote fixing is greater under an open ballot or a secret ballot. I am merely suggesting that both systems are vulnerable to fraud, and that I don't believe we ought to throw out the secret ballot just to try to stamp out fraud, because A) IMO, the secret ballot is important for protecting a voter's right to vote without coercion, and B) I *suspect* that open ballots are just as ripe for voter fraud as secret ballots, or close to it, and C) I believe there are ways to attack fraud without throwing out the secret ballot.
Fuck you.... You don't get to hide your opinion while attacking mine...
I'm not the one making assumptions about whether voting fraud would be greater or less under system X or system Y. I've been very careful to avoid relying on such assumptions. You seem to think this is just some sort of weasel behavior to try to trip you up, but in fact I'm merely trying to express my own opinion without tripping *myself* up in assumptions I can't defend. As for me hiding my own opinion, that's bullshit. You say "x > y", I say "hmm, I doubt that", and you *assume* that means that I have an affirmative belief that "y > x" and I'm merely "hiding" my opinion, and then you get all "fuck you fuck you fuck you...." Maybe you should go take a class on logic or critical thinking.
Did I mention "Fuck you"?
Yes, several times. Got it.
I'm happy to debate the issues.
Apparently not.
I don't debate when the other person asserts their opinion is greater than mine while lying, uh, I mean pretending that they didn't actually voice an opinion of their own.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I'm lying about what my real opinion is, just to win an argument with some guy on Slashdot? I think not. Just because you're getting all huffy and can't be bothered to actually understand what I'm saying, doesn't mean I'm "hiding" anything. The whole point of argument is to promote your own opinion, and that's precisely what I've been doing. You just can't seem to handle someone disagreeing with you, without getting all pissy and whiny and resorting to "Fuck you." So, okay. Conversation over.
So you assert without proof. For every story of voter intimidation, there are stories of dead people voting, or multiple presidential elections decided by less than the margin of error after questionable activities that would have been fixed/prevented with open ballots.
Both voter intimidation and vote fixing are problems. I am not suggesting one is better than the other. Where you and I disagree is that you apparently do find one preferable to the other, and would gladly open the door for one in order to try (albeit in vain, IMO) to stamp out the other. I believe there are ways to ensure accountability without depriving people of the ability to vote their conscience without having to face the ire of an angry mob, or possible retaliation by the incumbent-run government.
You are asserting that the vote fixing under open ballots is greater than close ballots, and apparently backing that up with nothing other than your intuition. So why should I be held to a higher standard?
You have a reading comprehension problem. I did not claim that vote fixing is greater under open ballots. I merely challenged your claim that it is less. My point was that vote fixing can and does happen under both systems. And besides, when you have a corrupt government and/or a tyrannical majority under an open ballot system, who needs vote fixing? You can just bully people into voting "correctly".
So, if a precinct shows 90% of people voted for Kang, and the voters there think more people voted for Kodos, having everyone in the precinct go back and verify their votes to reveal that there was some "error" wouldn't make any problem go away?
There are ways to verify votes without resorting to an open ballot. Haven't you ever walked out of a polling place with one of those little stubs? They've got unique numbers on them, and can be used to verify votes just as easily as any system you've suggested. You're acting as if vote fixing is impossible (or can be made so) under an open ballot system. I call B.S. on that. Especially when you have elections with millions of voters, and lots of people who probably can't even remember who they voted for. Also, if a voter "verifies" his vote after an election (say in a close race, or when there have been allegations of fraud), how do you suggest we verify that people aren't lying about having to vote the other way initially? I can foresee a huge market in post-election P.R. campaigns designed to get people to change their minds and make false allegations of fraud. And even if there is no coordinated campaign, you would likely get plenty of voters who are merely trying to revise the votes after the fact, after seeing the initial results. What? I voted for a third party candidate, and that jerkwad Republican is winning by a 1% margin? Crap! I better cry fraud and claim that I actually voted for the Democrat!
Okay, so maybe there are ways to handle that as well, and that does not necessarily justify not having an open ballot. But if "don't throw the baby out with the bathwater" is your attitude when it comes to addressing problems with the open ballot, then why not give the same careful consideration to fixing the problems associated with secret ballots?
I'll give you a hint, we had it for about 100 years before it was done away with.
Gee, thanks for the amazing revelation. I mean, it's not like that little bit of information was in the Wiki article I linked to in my original post. Oh wait, it was.
As for the improvement, just look at any recent election in South America, Africa, or Eastern Europe. They're rife with fraud and voter intimidation. I never said secret ballots are perfect, but it's better than the alternative. Besides, secret ballots are not mutually exclusive with stamping out voting fraud.
The secret ballot is not the cause of voting fraud. Voting fraud existed before the secret ballot, and will continue even if we go back to an open ballot. You make the claim that voting fraud has increased since the establishment of the secret ballot, but you provide no data whatsoever, and it sounds like you're going purely off of your own intuition. The secret ballot is not the problem. There are mechanisms in place to allow for full accountability with secret ballots. The problem is that at some point, you are trusting people to count and/or verify the election results, and people are corruptible. That problem won't go away with an open ballot. You seem to think that open ballots automagically prevent voting fraud, but that's complete nonsense.
That's one of the stupidest ideas I've heard in a while. How easily people seem to forget the reasons why we have a secret ballot in the first place. Governments invariably tend toward corruption, which is something the founders understood quite well. Go back and read the Declaration of Independence.
The problem with making people's voting records public is that it opens the door for a corrupt government, or even just an angry mob, to influence election results by intimidation and reprisals. Go read George Orwell's 1984 and then ask yourself if you still think voting records should be made public.
No worries, I realized you were just trying to be funny. I've got no gripe with that. I'm not "getting my angst on" though. Not even sure I know what that means. I'm too old to have "angst" anyway. And besides, I happen to like that Megadeth song.:)
It has been my experience that most people will take any opportunity they can get to feel like an expert, or even just to feel like they're "in the know." It has also been my experience that the people with the least to say, always say the most. So it doesn't surprise me at all that there are doomsday forums out there.
It's the perfect formula:
1) You don't have to actually know what you're talking about, since doomsday theories are a dime-a-dozen and virtually impossible to verify.
2) You can blather on about whatever foolish nonsense you want, and still maintain your anonymity. Thus, there's none of the public embarrassment that prevents most people from saying stupid things. (Of course, this is an obvious, well established "Law" of the Internet, but I mention it anyway because, hey, if the shoe fits...)
3) It allows uneducated morons and various other stupid people to feel like an superior. Don't underestimate the "market" for that. That's why all the biggest loudmouths you've ever met (you know, the people who go on extended, often angry rants about various issues) are almost invariably among the least educated and/or least enlightened people you know.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm totally with you on the gum thing, but I don't really understand why you think trash is so much less insidious. I agree gum is worse than cigarette butts and the like. However, I'm wondering if you've just never been to a city that had any real problem with trash, which seems odd, because it's not like such cities are rare.
The problem with trash is that it gets *everywhere*, including all those little cracks, crevices, "nooks and crannies" (whatever the hell that means), where it cannot be easily swept up. Ever seen an empty lot littered with trash, or a public beach littered with cigarette butts and styrofoam cups, or storm drains clogged with trash? Those are not easy to clean up.
Besides, even if all the litter was conveniently sitting on a flat surface ready to be swept up, it would be prohibitively expensive for most cities to be able to clean it all up. Yes, most cities have street sweepers, but they don't sweep every alley, every parking lot, every sidewalk, etc. Most street sweepers only sweep the gutters, and you're lucky if they manage to remove even 50% of the garbage that they pass over.
Trash may not be quite as disgusting or difficult to remove as chewed gum, but it's just as pervasive in many cities, and just as much of an eyesore.
You're right. I would never be that cruel to an animal. But as far as humans who casually toss their chewed gum wherever they please, I'm thinking (okay, just fantasizing) something along these lines:
Good, then let's start enforcing it. Oh wait, that would be incredibly difficult, if not impossible, wouldn't it? Hmm. Tell me again how "it's already illegal" translates to "we've already got that problem solved".
I empathize with you completely. Just the other day I was waiting in line at the McDonald's drive-through for my morning coffee, and the person in the car in front of me, upon being handed his food, promptly took a large wad of chewing gum out of his mouth and casually tossed it out his window, as carelessly as if he was dropping a grain of sand onto a beach. I've seen people do this same exact thing with trash (fast food wrappers, empty soda cups, etc). Every time I see someone do something like that, I am instantly filled with disgust and anger, and I suddenly wish that it was legal to drag the guy out of his car and rub his nose in it like you would do with a dog that urinated on your rug.
If I hadn't already commented in this thread, I'd mod you up. As someone who very frequently votes for third-party candidates, I am tired of hearing about how it's my fault that didn't win.
I must have mixed up my Internet forums terminology. When I mentioned the "GP", I was referring to logjon. And I apparently misinterpreted his opinion somewhat as well, since per his previous comments he apparently does think that voting for a third party candidate is wasting your vote.
However, I stand by what I said. I routinely vote for third party candidates, and I will continue to do so as long as the two main parties keep offering up power-hungry corporate shills - which probably means forever. But I still do empathize with logjon's sentiment. I have only one vote, and for every one of me, it seems there are 50 or 100 people who only see red or blue.
You are absolutely right about why there is no viable third party in the US.
However, you are completely and utterly missing the GP's point (at least I think you are - I don't speak for him, obviously).
The point is not that we are forced to vote for one of the two main parties, lest we waste our votes.
The point is that even when we do vote for a 3rd party candidate, it has essentially zero effect, precisely because of the problem you mentioned, and thus, those of us who do vote for 3rd party candidates are truly not responsible for the actions of our government.
Your point does not rebut the GP's point - it supports it.
I'd sure like to see people put their money where their mouth is when they say shit like this. It's easy to volunteer other people to throw their lives away trying to defend their ideals, and then to question their "priorities" when they don't.
Whether you explicitly stated it or not, you're painting the GP as someone for whom having a big screen TV and a nice car is more important than having liberty. You may not have written those exact words, but by questioning his "priorities", you are attempting to make it sound like his reasons and choices are frivolous. That's nothing more than a cynical ad-hominem attack.
When you're talking about having a permanent arrest record, it's no longer just an issue of trying to preserve one's comfy lifestyle. An arrest record can potentially hurt someone for the rest of their life, which translates into a lot more than just giving up cable TV. Now we're talking about whether or not that person will be able to feed his family, put shoes on his childrens' feet, and a roof over their heads, much less send them to college.
And it doesn't really matter if he/she is single and doesn't have children, because an arrest record is permanent, which simply means that he/she may not ever be able (financially, etc) to get married and/or have children. That's a hell of a lot more to give up than just the prospect of a big screen TV or a leather sofa.
And before you accuse me of resorting to a "think of the children" argument, let me point out that even if the person getting arrested is single and childless and is perfectly happy to keep it that way, you STILL have to right or reason to expect them to sacrifice themselves, unless you are willing and ready to do the same. Don't give me some bullshit line about how you would be willing to get arrested, but you just haven't had the opportunity. That's a coward's excuse. If you're so convinced that defending liberty is worth the price of an arrest record, I wholeheartedly invite YOU to go get arrested for a good cause. There are PLENTY of good causes out there that need a champion/martyr/test-case/whatever. Put up or shut up!
As for me, I'm not willing to sacrifice the well-being of myself, my wife, or my kids just to get a couple bully cops off the street. Call me a coward if you will, but at least I'm not spewing out a bunch of false bravado and calling my neighbor a coward for lacking the will to do something that I'm not willing to do either.
No I'm not. I'm saying scientists can and sometimes do tweak the data before it gets published, to better appear to support their conclusions.
I agree. I never said peer review doesn't happen. But peer review of a study that supports the current consensus is not likely to be nearly as strict as for a study that challenges the current consensus. That's just plain ol' human behavior, and as much as you and I would like to think scientists are immune from it, they're not.
I didn't say it magically appeared, or is a big conspiracy. You're having that argument with the wrong person. I'm not an anti global warming conspiracy theorist. In fact, I tend to think the consensus is probably correct, and that there is a significant amount of real science behind it. I just happen to also believe that there is some non-insignificant amount of bad science mixed in.
I'm not suggesting otherwise. I'm merely suggesting that studies that support the consensus need to be scrutinized equally. That, after all, is the scientific thing to do. But again, typical human behavior is to only scrutinize claims that sound outlandish. Bad science should not get a pass just because its conclusions fit with the consensus view, but IMO sometimes it does.
Private industries that stand to lose the most from more environmental regulations.
I never said I had a problem with government funding of science. And I definitely DO have a problem with science being funded by private industry, at least when there is such an obvious conflict of interests. The problem as I see it is that the government has its own agenda, and isn't merely an impartial seeker of truth. You've no doubt heard the Winston Churchill quote about how democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried. Well, I would say that the government is the worst source of funding for science, except for all the others.
I don't disagree with you that the media practices lazy journalism and tends to distort things. On the other hand, you need to take a chill pill. I was halfway just trying to be funny, and halfway trying to express my own opinion that most US citizens aren't very rational. What I was definitely not doing was trying to pass off the revised quote as either the GP's position, or as some sort of gospel truth. If you want to criticize the media, fine. But don't hitch your argument to an analogy between the media and some half-serious "FTFY" post on Slashdot. That's just lame.
Science isn't a boolean proposition. In other words, when a scientist begins investigating an issue, the range of possible results is vast, and the results are often messy, difficult to interpret, and often inconclusive. So it's not a matter of either being able to prove global warming IS happening, or being able to prove that it's not happening.
Being able to prove that global warming is not happening would indeed be a HUGE find (assuming the science was good, and it wasn't just more politically-motivated junk science). But for the vast majority of scientists wrangling for grant money, choosing whether to prove or disprove global warming is NOT the choice they face.
The choice they face is to either produce conclusive results, or stop getting grant money. One of the foundational concepts in science is that "I don't know" is an acceptable answer. In other words, from a purely scientific standpoint, if you spend 5 years analyzing tree rings from around the world to see if they indicate a global warming trend, and the results are not conclusive, that's okay. You accept that the data is inconclusive, and you move on. If you instead try to insist that the data either proves or disproves your hypothesis, then you are no longer doing real science.
However, the government expects results. If you think the government doesn't care about the results, then IMO you really are naive. When a government-funded scientific study concludes, the reports from the scientists don't just sit untouched or unnoticed in a binder on a shelf in some big warehouse. The reports are immediately politicized. They get quoted over and over again by politicians, all of whom have an agenda. The reports essentially become political canon-shot. That's what they're paying you for, and that's what they expect. If you get a big grant and your report says "The data is inconclusive", you can bet you won't be getting more grant money again any time soon.
So yeah, if you're a scientist and you really can produce results that disprove the consensus hypothesis, and you somehow are able to know this before you've actually done the science, then I suppose you could sell that. But for most scientists, the easiest way to keep the grant money rolling in is to consistently produce conclusive results. Yet, MOST of the time, results are either inconclusive, or offer only weak conclusions with lots of asterisks. Thus the dilemma. If you've managed to end up with strongly conclusive results, then hey, great. No need to try to spin the results, or overstate them, or "tweak" the data. But this will almost never be the case, and you will find yourself choosing between your scientific honesty and your livelihood. And if you do choose to do engage in a little spinning or creative interpretation of the data, then you will face a LOT LESS scrutiny if your tweaked results align with the consensus. If you tweak the results so that they go against the consensus, then you are going to be subjecting yourself and your data to some intense scrutiny.
Not that there isn't a market for scientific results that run counter to the consensus. There is a big market for that. It just doesn't tend to be funded by government grant money.
That's a fair question, but I'm not sure I'll be able to convince you that scientific fraud is anything more than a 1 in 1,000,000 occurrence. The problem is, it's difficult to quantify exactly how much of it is going on. It's amazing how subjective science can become when a scientist's results are called into question. Proving that a fraud has indeed been committed then becomes essentially an exercise whereby other scientists attempt to reproduce the questionable results.
By the way, we're not just talking about outright fraud here - I used the somewhat inexact term "junk science", which in my mind includes not only outright fraud but also plenty of lazy and/or biased science. Essentially, if it's not rigorous science, with the greatest possible effort made to prevent human bias from contaminating the results, then in my mind it is junk science. If you've already got your mind made up that 99.999% of the science being funded by grant money is on the up and up, then my definition of "junk science" will no doubt strike you as a weasel-ish attempt to avoid having to prove my assertion that competition for grant money is a significantly corrupting influence on the science community.
So, to answer your question, I could easily rattle off a handful of examples, and then do some quick Google searches and add perhaps half a dozen more examples, but I don't see the point of that. You likely wouldn't be convinced anyway, and perhaps rightly so, since a handful of examples does not a pattern make. Besides which, we would invariably end up going down the rabbit hole debating every little aspect of each example. For instance, it is my belief that, even though I can't exactly put a finger on it, there has been a lot of sloppy science done in the global warming arena. Of course, I can't prove it, and if I tried, it would be fairly easy for you to keep me on the ropes trying to nail down every minor point. After all, even the whole Climate Gate fiasco didn't yield any hard proof for *either* side of the debate. But fefore you denounce me as an anti-global-warming nut, I should point out that although I'm still on the fence about global warming, I tend toward siding with the current scientific consensus.
The point is, whether or not the current consensus regarding global warming is "correct" has nothing to do with whether or not there has indeed been a significant amount of junk science done, and my personal belief that there *has* been a significant amount of junk science in that particular field has nothing to do with my personal views regarding the validity of the consensus view. My belief (or rather, suspicion, since I admittedly do not know) that there is a lot of junk science being done is based on the fact that competition for grant money is very high, and my intuition that for every confirmed case of scientific fraud we hear about in the media, there are probably at least a dozen other cases of fraud and/or just-plain-lazy science that we don't hear about. I think the much more likely possibility is that intense competition for grant money DOES often lead to bad science
I have not come easily to this conclusion. I've placed a LOT of faith in science, and I have been absolutely loath to believe that scientists, on average, are just as corruptible as lawyers or investment bankers.
I imagine your next question would be "So what makes you think the situation is any worse now than it was 50 years ago?", to which I would simply reply that it sure seems like there is a lot more competition for grant money, and a lot more would-be scientists, than there was/were 50 years ago. Again, this is largely based on my own intuition, so feel free to disregard it if it doesn't meet your threshold for causing you to reevaluate your own assumptions.
FTFY.
I agree completely, and I'm as saddened and frustrated by the current state of affairs as anyone, especially when I try to explain to a family member why Jenny McCarthy is not a credible source of information about autism and/or vaccines, and everybody in the room turns on me and starts saying obvious-but-irrelevant things like "Science can't explain everything, ya know." I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to enumerate all the logical flaws in that line of reasoning.
However, this sad state of affairs is not entirely the fault of the public. The article places blame on scientists for their lack of communication skills, but IMO the problem is much deeper than that. The public no longer trusts scientists because there have just been too damn many scientists (or, in some cases, just your usual assortment of liars, cheats, and theives masquerading as scientists) who have shown they can't be trusted. There have been too many studies funded by corporate interests where the data has been intentionally skewed and/or fabricated. Too many career academics willing to do junk science in order to keep the grant money rolling in. Too many expert witnesses for hire who will say anything you want them to (and I don't just mean the defense witnesses - innocent people have been sent to prison with junk science).
Another big part of the problem, as has already been suggested by others, is the lazy and sometimes irresponsible reporting by the news media. We're constantly being bombarded by news of some study or another that correlates X with Y, but the media rarely bother to explain anything in detail so that you can truly understand the study's results. They don't tell you who funded the study. They don't tell you anything about the study's methodology. They skip right ahead to their own watered down interpretation of the study's conclusion, without providing *any* actual data (except maybe one or two percentages that are more or less meaningless outside the context of the full data set). One might argue that the media presents science in a watered down format because the public is not savvy enough to understand the nuances, but that by itself is not a useful analysis, as it just leaves us with a chicken/egg problem. Why is the public so ignorant? Is it because the media only ever spoonfeeds them watered down science (TM)? Or is it the fault of the teachers? Or is it just that most of the public is just too mentally lazy and/or apathetic to care about understanding science?
I suspect it's a combination of all of those things, but the bottom line is that this is not simply a failure of scientists to communicate.
Yes, and this applies equally well to the comment by the AC who said:
Again with the reading comprehension problem. When I said I didn't think "one was better than the other", I was talking about vote fixing vs voter intimidation, not open vs secret ballots.
If you assert x > y and I challenge your assumptions, I am NOT claiming with any certainty that y > x. I am merely casting doubt on your assumption that x > y. And not just as some sort of linguistic "trick" to trip you up, but because I honestly can't see how you claim to be so sure, without having provided any data to support your claim. I don't claim to have any knowledge of whether vote fixing is greater under an open ballot or a secret ballot. I am merely suggesting that both systems are vulnerable to fraud, and that I don't believe we ought to throw out the secret ballot just to try to stamp out fraud, because A) IMO, the secret ballot is important for protecting a voter's right to vote without coercion, and B) I *suspect* that open ballots are just as ripe for voter fraud as secret ballots, or close to it, and C) I believe there are ways to attack fraud without throwing out the secret ballot.
I'm not the one making assumptions about whether voting fraud would be greater or less under system X or system Y. I've been very careful to avoid relying on such assumptions. You seem to think this is just some sort of weasel behavior to try to trip you up, but in fact I'm merely trying to express my own opinion without tripping *myself* up in assumptions I can't defend. As for me hiding my own opinion, that's bullshit. You say "x > y", I say "hmm, I doubt that", and you *assume* that means that I have an affirmative belief that "y > x" and I'm merely "hiding" my opinion, and then you get all "fuck you fuck you fuck you...." Maybe you should go take a class on logic or critical thinking.
Yes, several times. Got it.
Apparently not.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I'm lying about what my real opinion is, just to win an argument with some guy on Slashdot? I think not. Just because you're getting all huffy and can't be bothered to actually understand what I'm saying, doesn't mean I'm "hiding" anything. The whole point of argument is to promote your own opinion, and that's precisely what I've been doing. You just can't seem to handle someone disagreeing with you, without getting all pissy and whiny and resorting to "Fuck you." So, okay. Conversation over.
Both voter intimidation and vote fixing are problems. I am not suggesting one is better than the other. Where you and I disagree is that you apparently do find one preferable to the other, and would gladly open the door for one in order to try (albeit in vain, IMO) to stamp out the other. I believe there are ways to ensure accountability without depriving people of the ability to vote their conscience without having to face the ire of an angry mob, or possible retaliation by the incumbent-run government.
You have a reading comprehension problem. I did not claim that vote fixing is greater under open ballots. I merely challenged your claim that it is less. My point was that vote fixing can and does happen under both systems. And besides, when you have a corrupt government and/or a tyrannical majority under an open ballot system, who needs vote fixing? You can just bully people into voting "correctly".
There are ways to verify votes without resorting to an open ballot. Haven't you ever walked out of a polling place with one of those little stubs? They've got unique numbers on them, and can be used to verify votes just as easily as any system you've suggested. You're acting as if vote fixing is impossible (or can be made so) under an open ballot system. I call B.S. on that. Especially when you have elections with millions of voters, and lots of people who probably can't even remember who they voted for. Also, if a voter "verifies" his vote after an election (say in a close race, or when there have been allegations of fraud), how do you suggest we verify that people aren't lying about having to vote the other way initially? I can foresee a huge market in post-election P.R. campaigns designed to get people to change their minds and make false allegations of fraud. And even if there is no coordinated campaign, you would likely get plenty of voters who are merely trying to revise the votes after the fact, after seeing the initial results. What? I voted for a third party candidate, and that jerkwad Republican is winning by a 1% margin? Crap! I better cry fraud and claim that I actually voted for the Democrat!
Okay, so maybe there are ways to handle that as well, and that does not necessarily justify not having an open ballot. But if "don't throw the baby out with the bathwater" is your attitude when it comes to addressing problems with the open ballot, then why not give the same careful consideration to fixing the problems associated with secret ballots?
Gee, thanks for the amazing revelation. I mean, it's not like that little bit of information was in the Wiki article I linked to in my original post. Oh wait, it was.
As for the improvement, just look at any recent election in South America, Africa, or Eastern Europe. They're rife with fraud and voter intimidation. I never said secret ballots are perfect, but it's better than the alternative. Besides, secret ballots are not mutually exclusive with stamping out voting fraud.
The secret ballot is not the cause of voting fraud. Voting fraud existed before the secret ballot, and will continue even if we go back to an open ballot. You make the claim that voting fraud has increased since the establishment of the secret ballot, but you provide no data whatsoever, and it sounds like you're going purely off of your own intuition. The secret ballot is not the problem. There are mechanisms in place to allow for full accountability with secret ballots. The problem is that at some point, you are trusting people to count and/or verify the election results, and people are corruptible. That problem won't go away with an open ballot. You seem to think that open ballots automagically prevent voting fraud, but that's complete nonsense.
I didn't say that. I said the founders understood that governments tend toward corruption.
Oh wait. It's a trick question, right? Isn't it Grant?
I'll do it for half that amount!
That's one of the stupidest ideas I've heard in a while. How easily people seem to forget the reasons why we have a secret ballot in the first place. Governments invariably tend toward corruption, which is something the founders understood quite well. Go back and read the Declaration of Independence.
The problem with making people's voting records public is that it opens the door for a corrupt government, or even just an angry mob, to influence election results by intimidation and reprisals. Go read George Orwell's 1984 and then ask yourself if you still think voting records should be made public.
No worries, I realized you were just trying to be funny. I've got no gripe with that. I'm not "getting my angst on" though. Not even sure I know what that means. I'm too old to have "angst" anyway. And besides, I happen to like that Megadeth song. :)
Only on Slashdot can you get modded "Insightful" for quoting lyrics from a Megadeth song.
Yeah, yeah, I know. I'm about to get modded "0, Troll" for daring to question the wisdom of the moderators, but so be it. Do your worst!
It has been my experience that most people will take any opportunity they can get to feel like an expert, or even just to feel like they're "in the know." It has also been my experience that the people with the least to say, always say the most. So it doesn't surprise me at all that there are doomsday forums out there.
It's the perfect formula:
1) You don't have to actually know what you're talking about, since doomsday theories are a dime-a-dozen and virtually impossible to verify.
2) You can blather on about whatever foolish nonsense you want, and still maintain your anonymity. Thus, there's none of the public embarrassment that prevents most people from saying stupid things. (Of course, this is an obvious, well established "Law" of the Internet, but I mention it anyway because, hey, if the shoe fits...)
3) It allows uneducated morons and various other stupid people to feel like an superior. Don't underestimate the "market" for that. That's why all the biggest loudmouths you've ever met (you know, the people who go on extended, often angry rants about various issues) are almost invariably among the least educated and/or least enlightened people you know.