In regards to evidence, what evidence would you accept?
First some real actual evidence of what you claim to be true, would be nice. Posting a let me Google that for you which doesn't even point to what you claim is simply foolish.
I've had similar discussions with people on different topics... one says something the other doesn't like... the One provides evidence then the other dismisses the evidence...
If this is the quality of the "evidence" that you normally present, it's no wonder you are routinely dismissed.
Here's a hint: you're wating my time, kid. Come back when you have something definitive.
YOU cannot have a rational discussion unless you have a criteria for accepting evidence. What evidence would YOU accept?
How about some actual evidence of a systematic blacklisting process? Leaks that show the censorship is going on, perhaps? Like the one from Fox News that says doubt must always be cast on climate change?
How about a credible list of people who have blacklisted from the media, science conferences, and journals? I'm only aware of the rules actually being bent or broken to publish matierial critical of climate change and no actual verified instances where the reverse happened. Every time I've seen that claim leveled by "climate skeptics" after a little digging it seems to turn out that either a) nothing was ever submitted in the first place apparently because the submitter determined it wouldn't be accepted anyway and decided not to submit at all (thus a self-fulfilling prophecy) or b) it was rejected because it failed peer review because of significant methodological errors and the author refused to make revisions.
Additionally, if there are scientific papers or authors who are being blacklisted, you'd think it would be easy enough to gather and post the papers online for all to see. We have this thing called the internet where anyone can host their own web site. However, we never see the blacklisted papers merely the claim from the advocats for the supposedly oppressed claiming that it's happening and it's big.
You cannot have a rational discussion on this topic without any actual evidence. What evidence could you produce?
There has been a concerted effort lately to shut out "deniers" from all such discussions. They are being blacklisted from media. Blacklisted from science conferences. Blacklisted in science journals.
The evidence is Apple CEO Tim Cook telling a libertarian to pull his head out his ass? Or Neil Degrasse Tyson saying anti-science loons shouldn't be given equal weight with scientists? Or are the comments of an unnamed CNN correspondent evidence of this conspiracy to shut out climate change deniers? Maybe it's the letter to the editor? Is Elizabeth Black from Boulder, Colerado the secret illumanity leader who's perpetuating this pro-climate change blackball campaign?
You should just be embarrassed with yourself.
Right back at you.
As to charlatans, obviously they shouldn't be given time.
You should read Tuff Voyaging by George R. R. Martin. It's a collection of short stories, but if I remember correctly, one of the stories does feature a planet with something like 200 billion people on it.
Those aren't scientists, the NIPCC is primarily funded by the Heritage Insitute. They're a conservative libertarian think-thank as such they're a political group. One, you've probably heard of before, they're the guys who ran the add campaign claiming the Unabomber believes in climate change.
The IPCC report is written by scientists with expertise in the field, the NIPCC report is written by lobbyists with clients in the field.
There has been a concerted effort lately to shut out "deniers" from all such discussions. They are being blacklisted from media. Blacklisted from science conferences. Blacklisted in science journals.
First I'd like some evidence of this extraordinary claim.
Second, assume for a moment that there was a group of people who genuinely appear to be charlatans who claim expertise where they have none and repeatedly lie and distort the truth to advance their own agenda which runs counter to the general welfare. What would you do about them? How do you suggest dealing with an instransigent group whose primary purpose is obstructing your work so they can benefit from your failure?
They look like libertarian talking points possibly from the Heritage Foundation or one their ideological ilk. They like to push the "they want to control everything so don't believe them" and "it can't be happening because capitalism" angles.
What's interesting is that if I move your start points around, I get a different graph on with different results. It's dangerous to put too much emphasis on cherry-picked time lines.
except that warming occurred without the benefit of significant CO_2 forcing and was much more uniform.
So... According to you the industrial revolution started in 1945, and there were no large scale events going on between say 1938 and 1945 which could have influenced the global climate?
Not at all. The driver simulation studies are designed to show that using a cell phone is more distracting that not using a cell phone, however, that's not a particularly useful result in the real world. The real question we want answered is whether normal cell phone usage patterns lead to a higher rate or severity of accidents. After all if you're not talking to someone on the cell phone, you could be talking to someone in the car, eating a sandwich, drinking a bottle of water, adjusting the radio, adjusting the air conditioning, reciting an entire Monty Python sketch to yourself, or lost in a fantasy. You can't compel people to pay attention with laws. The early evidence seems to suggest that distracted driving laws are not having any effect on accident rates.
Maybe cell phone use displaces other equally distracting behaviour?
Additionally, according to the U.S. Government the highest rate for distracted driving fatalities involving cell phones is 2.3% (21% of 11%) and that's for drivers aged 15-19. So it's a minority of a small minority of fatal accidents, the focus on cell phone use may be because the behaviour is more obvious, newer and thus easier to single out. This could be just another senseless moral panic.
Are those studies as rigorous as the studies that show children playing exciting games become more excited than those playing boring games which is then extrapolated to conclude that playing violent games must make children more violent? Sometimes the results of a study do not actually match the publicized conclusions.
I am skeptical, I believe those driving studies show that using a phone is distracting, but I'm not convinced that they actually show that the drivers are more distracted than they would be otherwise be. There are a number of other factors that would come into play in real world condition that might not be reflected in the simulators, including that there are plenty of other distractions in your typical car and I suspect a good driver would know not to use a cell phone when driving in trying conditions.
I think that's more of an attitude question than a placebo effect. Take for example, the 5 year surivival rate for untreated breast cancer, according to this NIH study it's under 20%, however, according to the American Cancer Society the 5 year survival rate for stage 0 and stage 1 intervention is 100%.
So. iIf a pacebo-based treatment were to delay a woman from seeking intervention from stage 1 to stage 2, her survival rate drops from 100% to 93%, if gets to stage 3, it drops to 72%, if she waits until stage 4, it drops to 22%, and if she never seeks any treatment it drops to less than 20% for 5 years (and around 4% after 10 years). That's the danger of treatments that rely on the placebo effect, they can delay the application of real timely medical treatment. In the worst case, the placebo treatment has effectively killed 96% of the people taking it by preventing them from seeking out real treatments.
In most cases, the placebo effect is detrimental. The subject reports that his condition has improved, but it hasn't in any measurable way. That's the placebo effect, in serious illness not accounting for a placebo effect could kill your patient. The placebo effect can't cure your cancer, it can only make you think the cancer is cured. The placebo effect is worse than useless for the treatment of all real measureable illnesses.
The only places where the placebo effect is useful is areas where the illness itself is largely subjective and can not be directly measured. That basically restricts the useful placebo effect to symptom management, pain management, and a few other areas where how the patient feels is the only area of concern. For example, a pain control placebo may be better than a drug that gives the same perceived level of pain relief because the placebo has no effect at all.
Once a theory or even a law becomes unfalsifiable its not longer science. Until every observation has been made, it remains possible a contradiction will be discovered. Therefore nothing can ever be settled.
Your conclusion doesn't follow. Where does it say that for something to be settled, it must unfalsifiable. For instance, I think common understanding is that "settled science" is merely the collection of theories which are widely accepted and very unlikely to be proven false.
With that said there are lots of cases like inertia where the evidence in support of it is so strong and so complete; we can reasonably depend upon its truthfulness and pretty much reject anyone who disputes it unless they have some really really solid independently reproducible observations to the contrary.
That would be the "settled science" we're talking about. It's settled, not indestructible.
Science could refer to either, depending on how you're using the word. There is "Science" the body of knowledge and "Science" the process by which we accumulate that knowledge. Without either you'd be nothing more than a smart monkey in a cave. Too many people forget that science is an iterative process, we produce knowledge and then build on the knowledge we previously created.
You can't stand on the shoulders of giants if you insist on always attacking their knees.
When one or both sides dig in, there's no way either is going to be convinced.
Which is actually why people sometimes talk about science being settled in the first place. You can't let one person who refuses to acknowledge what's in front of their face hold the entire world hostage to their (dis)belief. Saying it's settled, is simply a way of moving past obstinate roadblocks. That doesn't mean every time some claims something is settled it is, but if the vast majority agree then it's settled, at least for now.
There are a lot more possible explanations. For example another one is that some groups are pushing skepticism of science and scientists as a political tactic. Libertarians groups seem to fund an aweful lot of anti-science campaigns, for example. That may be because scientific evidence is often used to restrain the activities that free enterprise can engage in, something many libertarians oppose. They know attacking the messenger can prevent the message from being heard. In particular, in the climate change area, acceptance that there is a broad consensus of opinion among scientists and that the consensus supports global warming overwhelming tends to substantially increase acceptance of the findings. Thus, attacking the science and the consensus could be seen as a pre-emptive strike to prevent regulation and the dreaded source of all evil - government, for libertarians. I'm sure you could name other groups who have similar reasons to oppose the consequences of accepting certain streams of science.
I think you're using a different definition of "settled" than most people.
Claiming the science is settled isn't an attempt to shut down the scientific process, it's generally attempt to move past the few remaining people who won't or can't accept the consensus even when they are unable provide any solid reasons for their objections. Effectively, the science is settled when the majority becomes tired of listening to arguments that have already been examined and found lacking.
People are free to continue investigating the settled science, but it's usually more worthwhile to focus on the areas which aren't already well-establish and well-supported by the evidence.
Science is never settled. But it can be accepted by the large majority given overwhelming evidence.
On the contrary, there is a lot of settled science. That doesn't mean it's always right, instead it means exactly that it's been accepted by the majority of scientists because of the overwhelming amount of evidence supporting it.
The world was once flat.
Is it Ironic that you're repeating one of the examples that the article explicitly cites as a stupid argument presented by ignorant people? European and Middle Eastern societies have known the world was round since the 3rd century BC. Other cultures may have taken longer to reach the same conclusion, however, I'm not sure how that relates to science. Do you really intend to conflate pre-science beliefs about the world with actual scientific discoveries? Or are you trying to imply that tomorrow we may find that the world is actually a giant disk floating through space on the back of four elephants standing on a turtle?
As far as I understand the existence of the historical Jesus of Nazareth was still in doubt among scholars. There is some evidence that he could have existed, and some evidence that he probably did not. The last I heard there will still scholars who think he was a real living person as told in the Bible, some who believe he was a real living person who life was fictionalized (improved, aggrandized, choose your favorite word) by the Bible, some who believe he was a composite of several different religious figures, and some that believe he was entirely fictional. Of course, I don't have much interest in this particular field so I make no attempt to keep current on the latest developments.
Like when someone steals your car, the police say that your car is not "real currency" so it doesn't have any value and they won't investigate its theft.
Bitcoin is made of bits, ownership of a bitcoin is really based on a distributed network of people agreeing that the bitcoin belongs to you. As you should well know there is a fundamental difference between "bits" and "cars". The police understand cars. However, it's yet to be shown that the police understand bitcoin and have the ability (or interest) to do anything about a "theft" of bitcoins. I quoted theft because it's actually the network now saying that the bitcoins no longer belong to you. It's unclear if they can do anything about your loss other than press charges againt the person you claim stole your of the bitcoins, if they can even figure out who that person is (and think they can prove that link in a court of law).
Bitcoin may not officially be 'currency', but that doesn't mean that it can't be treated as a valuable commodity (the theft of which is illegal and investigable).
It could be treated as a valuable commodity, but the system is designed to make such investigation difficult, and makes restitution practically impossible unless the perpetrator admits to the crime and agrees to make restitution. For some reason, I doubt the police are going to spend many resources investigating unauthorized transferrals of ownership in the bitcoin network in the forseeable future.
Of course, fraud is more likely to get investigated, as long as you can identify the person(s) whom you were engaged in the transaction with. The police understand "I paid them and they didn't give me my stuff" quite well.
It seems many people in business are unable or unwilling to see that common cause of
1) We don't train people because they get hired away too often.
2) We can't hire someone who's already doing the job we need to do them.
is
3) We are paying below-average wages.
Training isn't done because they don't want to give raises to people who complete the training commesurate with the new value they're generating for the company, and they can't hire many people (from a job that they already have) by paying them less than they're already getting.
IE, Word, Excel, Outlook and even Powerpoint have always been developed as needed to defeat opponents. Pretty much everything good that has ever come out any of them has been copied from a competitor they were trying to kill off. Microsofts product may be the best one you know about, but that's because the thing they have always been best at is ruthless murdering the competition using their monopoly (whether through tieing or spending the monopoly rents).
The more T-Rex fossils we find without finding any evolutionary ancestors or descendants, however, begins to point to the fact that they may not have existed.
So given that they probably had no descendants because they were wiped out by an external event, and we have found fossils of some of their ancestors, what does that mean for evolution?
Slashdot Mirror
I am always amused at the self-righteousness of those who believe the tolerant should tolerate their intolerance.
They're almost amusing as those who believe that their free speech rights should be used to stiffle the criticism of others.
I am not going to waste my time getting links for you when all you have to do is refuse to accept it for no apparent reason.
No apparent reason? Are you daft? Your primary evidence that blacklisting is happening is a handful of people complaining that it is not.
I need to have something from you that says you'll accept evidence if it meets certain standards.
It seems you have some sort of problem with actually reading and understanding what other people write.
In regards to evidence, what evidence would you accept?
First some real actual evidence of what you claim to be true, would be nice. Posting a let me Google that for you which doesn't even point to what you claim is simply foolish.
I've had similar discussions with people on different topics... one says something the other doesn't like... the One provides evidence then the other dismisses the evidence...
If this is the quality of the "evidence" that you normally present, it's no wonder you are routinely dismissed.
Here's a hint: you're wating my time, kid. Come back when you have something definitive.
YOU cannot have a rational discussion unless you have a criteria for accepting evidence. What evidence would YOU accept?
How about some actual evidence of a systematic blacklisting process? Leaks that show the censorship is going on, perhaps? Like the one from Fox News that says doubt must always be cast on climate change?
How about a credible list of people who have blacklisted from the media, science conferences, and journals? I'm only aware of the rules actually being bent or broken to publish matierial critical of climate change and no actual verified instances where the reverse happened. Every time I've seen that claim leveled by "climate skeptics" after a little digging it seems to turn out that either a) nothing was ever submitted in the first place apparently because the submitter determined it wouldn't be accepted anyway and decided not to submit at all (thus a self-fulfilling prophecy) or b) it was rejected because it failed peer review because of significant methodological errors and the author refused to make revisions.
Additionally, if there are scientific papers or authors who are being blacklisted, you'd think it would be easy enough to gather and post the papers online for all to see. We have this thing called the internet where anyone can host their own web site. However, we never see the blacklisted papers merely the claim from the advocats for the supposedly oppressed claiming that it's happening and it's big.
You cannot have a rational discussion on this topic without any actual evidence. What evidence could you produce?
There has been a concerted effort lately to shut out "deniers" from all such discussions. They are being blacklisted from media. Blacklisted from science conferences. Blacklisted in science journals.
The evidence is Apple CEO Tim Cook telling a libertarian to pull his head out his ass? Or Neil Degrasse Tyson saying anti-science loons shouldn't be given equal weight with scientists? Or are the comments of an unnamed CNN correspondent evidence of this conspiracy to shut out climate change deniers? Maybe it's the letter to the editor? Is Elizabeth Black from Boulder, Colerado the secret illumanity leader who's perpetuating this pro-climate change blackball campaign?
You should just be embarrassed with yourself.
Right back at you.
As to charlatans, obviously they shouldn't be given time.
I'm glad we agree on something.
You should read Tuff Voyaging by George R. R. Martin. It's a collection of short stories, but if I remember correctly, one of the stories does feature a planet with something like 200 billion people on it.
Those aren't scientists, the NIPCC is primarily funded by the Heritage Insitute. They're a conservative libertarian think-thank as such they're a political group. One, you've probably heard of before, they're the guys who ran the add campaign claiming the Unabomber believes in climate change.
The IPCC report is written by scientists with expertise in the field, the NIPCC report is written by lobbyists with clients in the field.
There has been a concerted effort lately to shut out "deniers" from all such discussions. They are being blacklisted from media. Blacklisted from science conferences. Blacklisted in science journals.
First I'd like some evidence of this extraordinary claim.
Second, assume for a moment that there was a group of people who genuinely appear to be charlatans who claim expertise where they have none and repeatedly lie and distort the truth to advance their own agenda which runs counter to the general welfare. What would you do about them? How do you suggest dealing with an instransigent group whose primary purpose is obstructing your work so they can benefit from your failure?
They look like libertarian talking points possibly from the Heritage Foundation or one their ideological ilk. They like to push the "they want to control everything so don't believe them" and "it can't be happening because capitalism" angles.
What's interesting is that if I move your start points around, I get a different graph on with different results. It's dangerous to put too much emphasis on cherry-picked time lines.
except that warming occurred without the benefit of significant CO_2 forcing and was much more uniform.
So... According to you the industrial revolution started in 1945, and there were no large scale events going on between say 1938 and 1945 which could have influenced the global climate?
Not at all. The driver simulation studies are designed to show that using a cell phone is more distracting that not using a cell phone, however, that's not a particularly useful result in the real world. The real question we want answered is whether normal cell phone usage patterns lead to a higher rate or severity of accidents. After all if you're not talking to someone on the cell phone, you could be talking to someone in the car, eating a sandwich, drinking a bottle of water, adjusting the radio, adjusting the air conditioning, reciting an entire Monty Python sketch to yourself, or lost in a fantasy. You can't compel people to pay attention with laws. The early evidence seems to suggest that distracted driving laws are not having any effect on accident rates.
Maybe cell phone use displaces other equally distracting behaviour?
Additionally, according to the U.S. Government the highest rate for distracted driving fatalities involving cell phones is 2.3% (21% of 11%) and that's for drivers aged 15-19. So it's a minority of a small minority of fatal accidents, the focus on cell phone use may be because the behaviour is more obvious, newer and thus easier to single out. This could be just another senseless moral panic.
Are those studies as rigorous as the studies that show children playing exciting games become more excited than those playing boring games which is then extrapolated to conclude that playing violent games must make children more violent? Sometimes the results of a study do not actually match the publicized conclusions.
I am skeptical, I believe those driving studies show that using a phone is distracting, but I'm not convinced that they actually show that the drivers are more distracted than they would be otherwise be. There are a number of other factors that would come into play in real world condition that might not be reflected in the simulators, including that there are plenty of other distractions in your typical car and I suspect a good driver would know not to use a cell phone when driving in trying conditions.
I think that's more of an attitude question than a placebo effect. Take for example, the 5 year surivival rate for untreated breast cancer, according to this NIH study it's under 20%, however, according to the American Cancer Society the 5 year survival rate for stage 0 and stage 1 intervention is 100%.
So. iIf a pacebo-based treatment were to delay a woman from seeking intervention from stage 1 to stage 2, her survival rate drops from 100% to 93%, if gets to stage 3, it drops to 72%, if she waits until stage 4, it drops to 22%, and if she never seeks any treatment it drops to less than 20% for 5 years (and around 4% after 10 years). That's the danger of treatments that rely on the placebo effect, they can delay the application of real timely medical treatment. In the worst case, the placebo treatment has effectively killed 96% of the people taking it by preventing them from seeking out real treatments.
Interestingly, it seems that having a positive attitude doesn't seem to have any measurable effect on breast cancer survival rates, and even if it did, the detrimental effect of not seeking a real treatment would almost always be worse. Of course, this is all much simpler than I'm making it out to be. After all, what would be better? Getting real life-saving treatment and having a positive attitude or getting nothing and having a positive attitude?
In most cases, the placebo effect is detrimental. The subject reports that his condition has improved, but it hasn't in any measurable way. That's the placebo effect, in serious illness not accounting for a placebo effect could kill your patient. The placebo effect can't cure your cancer, it can only make you think the cancer is cured. The placebo effect is worse than useless for the treatment of all real measureable illnesses.
The only places where the placebo effect is useful is areas where the illness itself is largely subjective and can not be directly measured. That basically restricts the useful placebo effect to symptom management, pain management, and a few other areas where how the patient feels is the only area of concern. For example, a pain control placebo may be better than a drug that gives the same perceived level of pain relief because the placebo has no effect at all.
Once a theory or even a law becomes unfalsifiable its not longer science. Until every observation has been made, it remains possible a contradiction will be discovered. Therefore nothing can ever be settled.
Your conclusion doesn't follow. Where does it say that for something to be settled, it must unfalsifiable. For instance, I think common understanding is that "settled science" is merely the collection of theories which are widely accepted and very unlikely to be proven false.
With that said there are lots of cases like inertia where the evidence in support of it is so strong and so complete; we can reasonably depend upon its truthfulness and pretty much reject anyone who disputes it unless they have some really really solid independently reproducible observations to the contrary.
That would be the "settled science" we're talking about. It's settled, not indestructible.
Science could refer to either, depending on how you're using the word. There is "Science" the body of knowledge and "Science" the process by which we accumulate that knowledge. Without either you'd be nothing more than a smart monkey in a cave. Too many people forget that science is an iterative process, we produce knowledge and then build on the knowledge we previously created.
You can't stand on the shoulders of giants if you insist on always attacking their knees.
When one or both sides dig in, there's no way either is going to be convinced.
Which is actually why people sometimes talk about science being settled in the first place. You can't let one person who refuses to acknowledge what's in front of their face hold the entire world hostage to their (dis)belief. Saying it's settled, is simply a way of moving past obstinate roadblocks. That doesn't mean every time some claims something is settled it is, but if the vast majority agree then it's settled, at least for now.
There are a lot more possible explanations. For example another one is that some groups are pushing skepticism of science and scientists as a political tactic. Libertarians groups seem to fund an aweful lot of anti-science campaigns, for example. That may be because scientific evidence is often used to restrain the activities that free enterprise can engage in, something many libertarians oppose. They know attacking the messenger can prevent the message from being heard. In particular, in the climate change area, acceptance that there is a broad consensus of opinion among scientists and that the consensus supports global warming overwhelming tends to substantially increase acceptance of the findings. Thus, attacking the science and the consensus could be seen as a pre-emptive strike to prevent regulation and the dreaded source of all evil - government, for libertarians. I'm sure you could name other groups who have similar reasons to oppose the consequences of accepting certain streams of science.
Or a clue that they're taking to idiots. Never underestimate the persistance of an idiot with a grudge.
I think you're using a different definition of "settled" than most people.
Claiming the science is settled isn't an attempt to shut down the scientific process, it's generally attempt to move past the few remaining people who won't or can't accept the consensus even when they are unable provide any solid reasons for their objections. Effectively, the science is settled when the majority becomes tired of listening to arguments that have already been examined and found lacking.
People are free to continue investigating the settled science, but it's usually more worthwhile to focus on the areas which aren't already well-establish and well-supported by the evidence.
Science is never settled. But it can be accepted by the large majority given overwhelming evidence.
On the contrary, there is a lot of settled science. That doesn't mean it's always right, instead it means exactly that it's been accepted by the majority of scientists because of the overwhelming amount of evidence supporting it.
The world was once flat.
Is it Ironic that you're repeating one of the examples that the article explicitly cites as a stupid argument presented by ignorant people? European and Middle Eastern societies have known the world was round since the 3rd century BC. Other cultures may have taken longer to reach the same conclusion, however, I'm not sure how that relates to science. Do you really intend to conflate pre-science beliefs about the world with actual scientific discoveries? Or are you trying to imply that tomorrow we may find that the world is actually a giant disk floating through space on the back of four elephants standing on a turtle?
As far as I understand the existence of the historical Jesus of Nazareth was still in doubt among scholars. There is some evidence that he could have existed, and some evidence that he probably did not. The last I heard there will still scholars who think he was a real living person as told in the Bible, some who believe he was a real living person who life was fictionalized (improved, aggrandized, choose your favorite word) by the Bible, some who believe he was a composite of several different religious figures, and some that believe he was entirely fictional. Of course, I don't have much interest in this particular field so I make no attempt to keep current on the latest developments.
Like when someone steals your car, the police say that your car is not "real currency" so it doesn't have any value and they won't investigate its theft.
Bitcoin is made of bits, ownership of a bitcoin is really based on a distributed network of people agreeing that the bitcoin belongs to you. As you should well know there is a fundamental difference between "bits" and "cars". The police understand cars. However, it's yet to be shown that the police understand bitcoin and have the ability (or interest) to do anything about a "theft" of bitcoins. I quoted theft because it's actually the network now saying that the bitcoins no longer belong to you. It's unclear if they can do anything about your loss other than press charges againt the person you claim stole your of the bitcoins, if they can even figure out who that person is (and think they can prove that link in a court of law).
Bitcoin may not officially be 'currency', but that doesn't mean that it can't be treated as a valuable commodity (the theft of which is illegal and investigable).
It could be treated as a valuable commodity, but the system is designed to make such investigation difficult, and makes restitution practically impossible unless the perpetrator admits to the crime and agrees to make restitution. For some reason, I doubt the police are going to spend many resources investigating unauthorized transferrals of ownership in the bitcoin network in the forseeable future.
Of course, fraud is more likely to get investigated, as long as you can identify the person(s) whom you were engaged in the transaction with. The police understand "I paid them and they didn't give me my stuff" quite well.
It seems many people in business are unable or unwilling to see that common cause of
1) We don't train people because they get hired away too often.
2) We can't hire someone who's already doing the job we need to do them.
is
3) We are paying below-average wages.
Training isn't done because they don't want to give raises to people who complete the training commesurate with the new value they're generating for the company, and they can't hire many people (from a job that they already have) by paying them less than they're already getting.
IE, Word, Excel, Outlook and even Powerpoint have always been developed as needed to defeat opponents. Pretty much everything good that has ever come out any of them has been copied from a competitor they were trying to kill off. Microsofts product may be the best one you know about, but that's because the thing they have always been best at is ruthless murdering the competition using their monopoly (whether through tieing or spending the monopoly rents).
The more T-Rex fossils we find without finding any evolutionary ancestors or descendants, however, begins to point to the fact that they may not have existed.
The lack of descendants of Tyrannosaurus Rex is likely because the line went extinct at the end of the Cretaceous period, and it seems like there are about ten other Tyrannosaur species found in the fossil record so far, then there's the Coelurosaurs that the Tyrannosaurs most likely evolved from, and the Theropods before that.
So given that they probably had no descendants because they were wiped out by an external event, and we have found fossils of some of their ancestors, what does that mean for evolution?