1. I never said anything about lobbying being illegal.
2. Prior to deregulation they had literal monopolies. The current effective monopolies are mostly the inertia FROM regulation. To claim that the current state of affairs was created by deregulation when the blocks against competition are all still government regulation... is moronic.
What keeps companies from competing with the cable and DSL providers? Its not economics. Its not logistics. Its not technology.
Its government regulation. Mostly local regulation... city and county.
And you sit there and tell me that DEregulation caused this issue?
You're a fool. Please slap yourself in the face... I can't reach you from here.
Just because people can print their own shoes doesn't mean they will print them.
What you'll probably have instead is the local shoe store printing its own inventory. This will mean greater opportunities for diversity and innovation.
You'll also get franchises that all output the same stuff.
And of course, the source material for whatever these shoes are made out of will have to be provided by some sort of industry. A cradle to cradle supply chain would be preferred but that's likely unworkable. Still, would be nifty if they could make new shoes out of old.
again, that's illegal... since 98 I think. So that isn't what happens. However, the cities do say "oh we can't possibly have more then one cable running over there or it will be a major inconvenience/eye sore"
Not merged... and they need to compete with each other.
Currently they don't because the cities and counties don't let them. They set up absurd pole leasing rates and policies that effectively mean only one company can operate in the area. Its a violation of the spirit of the law if not the letter of the law. They need to be split and they need to compete.
And it wouldn't be hard to deploy ebooks like that either.
Have an open DRM standard for ebooks. Publishers license the ebook shops to distribute those open standard ebooks. Have the standard be something that works on the Nook and the Kindle and whatever else. Its not a big deal.
There after, the publishers won't just be dealing with Amazon. So if some book seller is giving them a hard time they can simply refuse to sell to them and instead be comfortable that enough of their books will sell elsewhere that it won't matter.
As it stands, if the couple big ebook publishers push an author or a publisher... the ebook publisher wins. That's wrong. They should be able to sell books via all mediums.
Elegant code is code you can look at and understand what its doing and then audit easily.
That is the real point of elegant code. You ACTUALLY know precisely what it is doing. No guess work. The best code can be understood with a casual glance and any mistake in the code stands out brightly because the pattern and elegance of the code is beautiful in its way. And any imperfection is ugly.
Again, its extremely easy to bias a study like this... I'll go through some of my guesses as to how it might be biased off the top of my head in no particular order:
Looking at pictures of pain in photographs isn't a reasonable test especially if you're doing that to someone cold. That is without a little training. No more then 10 or 20 minutes is what a person needs. But if you just throw it at them out of no where they probably won't adapt to it instantly
Nearly always when we see people in pain in photos it is an act. Its entertainment. Its the solder on the field telling his Sargent to make sure his mother knows he loves her. Its a show.
The fact that they did this through photos is the first red flag.
The second is that they are not describing how the samples were prepared. For example, the images of pain could be either subtle or exaggerated. They could have little mona lisa grimaces or could have their mouths open in agony. And either one could be bullshit.
I am generally dubious of statistical studies unless I know they were conducted by multiple groups that were compartmentalized so they people collecting the data didn't know the hypothesis of the people analyzing it. There are two types of statistics. Scientific statistics which most scientists never take contrary to context... and bullshit. Nothing else.
Complete with control groups. The whole deal.
Furthermore, the computer was probably trained on those photos or photos very similar to those. Where as the random people brought in to see it were just expected to guess right instantly.
Netflix shouldn't even be talking to these people. Literally not even answering the phone when they call.
Rather... Netflix should keep their customers and media informed of bandwidth throttling and then let those customers and the politicians terrify the ISPs into doing their jobs.
Understand, I don't like using the politicians to push companies around. Its using one evil against another.
That said, the ISPs have contrived a monopoly for themselves. There is but one phone company in most communities and one cable company.
The reason for this is largely down to leases on poles and tunnels that the actual wires run through. The ISPs have set up a system for leasing this space that really no one else can afford or process the paper work to buy. As a result, they have no competition throughout most of the country.
Very well... then they complain when they don't have enough bandwidth to process all the customers they forced to use their wires and no one else's wires.
THAT is a problem.
They either accept net neutrality OR they we reexamine all these deals they've cut with local municipalities and states and counties to find the details that ultimately sustain their monopolies.
There is metaphysics and physics and neither one can argue against the other.
If you absolutely refuse to acknowledge metaphysics as having any right to a domain... then what about philosophy itself?
Could you argue against Slavery with science? Could you argue for democracy with science?
Not really. Its not a matter of facts.
Understand this... when you argue against a religion, its sort of like arguing about freedom or slavery or whether you should be nice to kittens. Its not really something science has any ability to argue against.
At the same time... religion can't argue against science either. You can't use the moral treatment of kittens to argue for a theory on thermodynamics. They don't relate.
That is the problem.
So... again... Sharks in the Sea and lions in the Savannah.
Each a master of its domain and neither able to challenge the other in the opposing domain.
Every time religion attacks science in the domain of the empirical... it flops around on the hot dry sand and is crushed under the weight of its own unsupportable suppositions.
Every time science attacks religion in the domain of the metaphysical, moral, ethical, and philosophical... it flails around desperately for purchase. Those strong legs desperately trying to find a fact they can stand upon where none exist. And eventually... though it strives... it will tire and drowned as it always does... and will get gobbled up by some metaphysical/philosophical/theological/ideological entity that is more at home in those waters.
Neither one can dominate the other in their domain.
To attempt to do so is merely to profess ignorance of their contrasting states.
Its an insane contest... its octopuses versus eagles. Its a stupid conflict.
You contribute nothing and will never achieve anything in these issues. If people like you are in charge, we'll be arguing about this for the next 10,000 years.
Follow my path and the fight ends tomorrow and we can mutually cooperate on shared problems immediately.
If you find your path more desirable then I have to wonder why? Your idea wastes more time and accomplishes less.
Empirically, if you desire to end the controversy and achieve meaningful results, you should favor my path or something like it.
Do you fail to approve of my path because you desire chaos and waste or do you literally not understand that you're just spinning your wheels to no purpose while screaming? Because that's what morons do... Can you honestly disagree?
If you have the debate then you should have it philosophically and not simply pitting religion directly against science. I said it better to another person in this discussion... I will quote myself:
Neither science nor religion can argue against each other effectively. Their fundamental basis is different.
Its like pitting sharks versus lions. You noted that if you throw a shark into the realm of the lion... throw it into the middle of the hot dry savannah... the shark always loses to the lion. It just flops around gasping... crushed under its own weight. It dies ultimately without the lion even having to do anything. An easy meal because the shark is a fish out of water.
However, reverse the situation and the lion is helpless instead. Released into the middle of the ocean the lion will eventually drown. Or the shark could eat the lion at any time without the lion being able to fight back.
This is the battle between religion and science.
It is the battle between physics and metaphysics. You are quite correct that if religion is thrown into science's realm and expected to defend itself by science's rules... religion loses. However, as you should know by now... do the same thing to science and religion eats it alive.
They cannot fight each other directly and have the conflict mean anything. What you need is some sort of hybrid that can go between land and water... that can go between physics and metaphysics and be equally at home in both.
Philosophy. This is a philosophical dispute. If you ACTUALLY want to accomplish something in this sort of debate you'll have to resort to philosophy. Doing that will give religion and science an equal footing to defend themselves and a common ground can be found between people.
Anything short of that is just two monkeys beating their chests and making noises at each other.
Neither science nor religion can argue against each other effectively. Their fundamental basis is different.
Its like pitting sharks versus lions. You noted that if you throw a shark into the realm of the lion... throw it into the middle of the hot dry savannah... the shark always loses to the lion. It just flops around gasping... crushed under its own weight. It dies ultimately without the lion even having to do anything. An easy meal because the shark is a fish out of water.
However, reverse the situation and the lion is helpless instead. Released into the middle of the ocean the lion will eventually drown. Or the shark could eat the lion at any time without the lion being able to fight back.
This is the battle between religion and science.
It is the battle between physics and metaphysics. You are quite correct that if religion is thrown into science's realm and expected to defend itself by science's rules... religion loses. However, as you should know by now... do the same thing to science and religion eats it alive.
They cannot fight each other directly and have the conflict mean anything. What you need is some sort of hybrid that can go between land and water... that can go between physics and metaphysics and be equally at home in both.
Philosophy. This is a philosophical dispute. If you ACTUALLY want to accomplish something in this sort of debate you'll have to resort to philosophy. Doing that will give religion and science an equal footing to defend themselves and a common ground can be found between people.
Anything short of that is just two monkeys beating their chests and making noises at each other.
Most of the "pro-science" crowd doesn't give a damm about being productive or constructive. Being right is their goal, and because they're right anyone who doesn't believe as they do is completely wrong.
Which is why the pro science crowd went out of their way to confront every religious fundamentalist they ran into over the last 1000 years and told them they were wrong.
Oh wait, no they didn't.
This is mostly a new development. Its a game. Its like bear baiting only with theologists.
It accomplishes NOTHING but making fundamentalists angry and annoying everyone else that is trying to actually get something done.
If I go up to someone that bases their whole life around some faith, philosophy, or ideology... exactly how dense would I have to be to think that I could simply walk up to them, contradict their most deeply held beliefs, and walk away from them having made an impression?
Its foolishness.
Everyone believe what they like... unless we want to have a theocracy or state religion/ideology and start shooting people that think otherwise. If we're not willing to do that... then just accept people are going to think the way they want to think which is likely to be diverse.
Anyhow, there isn't a real difference between the "pro-science" crowd and any other sub group. You could replace "right" in the above sentence with "blessed by God" or practically anything else and have an equally valid result.
None of which really matters since the point I am making is that the point of communication is to be understood... and this form of communication does not cause party A to be understood by party B. To the contrary, it simply generates hostility for no reason and disrupts social cohesion.
Its counter productive which makes it stupid.
The problem is, to not piss people off, you have to rewind the clock and undo years of fuckups by the climate change crowd - because they went political before they went scientific. It's been about weaponizing the discussion and humiliating the opposition from the very start.
I would lay the blame there at some political activists that hijacked the cause for their own selfish ends. The fact that some of these people got very rich very quickly while not doing much for the environment and sucking up millions to billions in aid money is just one example of their real interests.
That said, there are some truly serious problems with our use of sequestered hydrocarbons. But none of that can be addressed without broad cooperation which would mean ostracizing any group that insisted on exploiting the issue for their petty political and financial ambitions.
The alternative is that the whole process locks with group A thinking they have a weapon they can use against group B and group B crouching down into a siege mentality that makes it utterly futile to get any sort of compromise.
Group B must feel the issue being discussed is ACTUALLY about the issue at hand and not merely a pretext for group A to increase their power, influence, and domination over group B. Group B will attempt to protect their power, influence, and self determination as their primary goal. So all the petty politics need to be put away with other childish things or it will never be more then a game played between rival factions with the only stakes that matter being which side calls the shots. The environment will be irrelevant until it is treated as the primary issue of importance.
he's now more about harassing religious fundamentalists and flame baiting people in the climate change debate.
I have very little regard for any of the so called scientist media personalities that spend most of their time engaging in various topics that are unproductive and rarely about science.
Religious fundamentalists cannot be argued against with science. Its utterly pointless. Their interpretation of their religion means they will not agree. End of story.
Possibly they can be argued off of it on philosophical, ideological, or theological grounds. But science is utterly futile in dealing with this issue. Yet many do this, piss off the fundamentalists for no reason, accept the applause of some atheist supporters, and then take a victory lap like they accomplished something.
As to the climate debate, that isn't a scientific debate either at this point. Its a political, economic, and ideological debate. Science doesn't even really come into it.
You have one faction that says the solution to fixing the climate is to nationalize everything, give the government sweeping control over the economy, jack up taxes hugely, and grant lots of power to non-democratic international organizations.
So... spoiler alert... many people have a problem with that. If you removed all of that from the climate change rhetoric, most of the opposition would be gone tomorrow. Yet, it is pretended that the issue can be solved by explaining the science again. Waste of god damn time.
Bill Nye was fun once... when he explained little science experiments on tv. He was great. But he hasn't done that in a long time and frankly since he stopped doing that I fail to see why anyone should give a damn about him.
Now I'm about to get attacked by some people that think I'm supporting creationism or anti global warming science or both. Right off, anyone that makes that accusation after reading the above post is a fucking retard. But this site is full of them. So let me explain again, IT DOES NOT MATTER and THAT IS NOT MY POINT. My point is that indifferent to the science, science is often not a viable answer to various debates. In matters of belief, politics, or economics you can't just cite the science and expect everyone to fall into instant obedient lockstep with whatever you want. That's foolish.
If you ACTUALLY want to solve the creationism issue... you need to respect the religious rights of people that find evolution to be a threat to their theology. We have a freedom of worship in this country which means people can believe the universe came from a cooked potato if it makes them happy.
Yes... public schools and public money... well, that's a problem because the government isn't allowed to infringe on their beliefs. Which means you might need to give them money to run their own home schools or whatever. I know... you're not happy about that. But you'd only need to give them their share of the education money which after all came out of their own taxes. So they're hardly taking anything away from you.
That is how you coexist. You either are happy to grant that or you want to dominate people and force your own beliefs on people... yes, your beliefs are backed by science. Show me where in the constitution that matters. It doesn't. Being right doesn't mean you get to force people to agree with you. They're going to be contentious. Tolerate their differences and demand the same in return.
In regards to climate change... We really need to go over some solutions to the issue that don't instantly piss everyone off.
Obviously we need to reduce our usage of sequestered hydrocarbons. So... to that end, nuclear power really needs to be put back on the table. If only as a stop gap until energy storage systems become more practical.
Doubtless that makes some people unhappy... its called a compromise... you're not supposed to be happy. In addition to that, we should look at syngas/biogas to produce carbon neutral hydrocarbon fuel. That will further reduce our dependence on sequester
Industrial plants are manned. There is no reason they couldn't manage such systems locally.
Automation and remote administration is fine... you just need to not be a fucking retard about it.
Case in point... by all means have your remote administration tools set up so that a central control room can monitor and manage the chemical plant. But don't be so foolish as to link those control systems to the internet. Air gap the control room. Yes an inside man can do bad things. But an inside man could do that regardless of your precautions. An inside man could blow up a factory 100 years ago. So again, I'm not worried about that.
In regards to Iran, well thanks for arguing against yourself. Because my point was to limit automation and complexity such that inserting viruses into control systems simply wouldn't be possible. But you seem to think those systems are essential despite the fact that we've had industrial processes that managed similarly complex tasks for generations that did not make use of such systems.
But since I'm actually trying to solve a problem rather then come up with bullshit reasons for why it can't be solved... I'm probably wrong. Forgive me for having a functioning nervous system.
Your attitude has not been productive. "IF" you have any specialized knowledge you've not contributed or used it to enrich this discussion. Rather you've attempted to use it to brow beat me into accepting fallacious arguments or back up counter productive insults.
You want to link core control systems to the internet accessible by Croatian teenagers or the Chinese cyberwarfare agents.
What could possibly go wrong?
You say these systems can't operate without such automation. Well, they didn't have it 40 years ago and they worked then. Possibly less efficiently? Possibly. Though that might also be a factor of other improving technologies or some "convenient" shortcuts that on consideration are not worth the risk.
In regards to brown outs, those can be managed very easily with better local fail safes. Correct me if I'm wrong here... the two situations you're going to run into will be either too much power or too little. Right? In the case of a major localized power drain that cannot be met in a timely manner... Cut the area off. Yes, they'll have a brown out for a couple seconds. Boo hoo. It happens. Anyone that really can't have power disruptions has uninterruptible power supplies. That includes hospitals. You can rolling blackout hospitals all day and the lights won't even flicker.
As to having too much power for whatever reason... I should think dumping the power into the ground would be preferable to blowing fuses.
I can only imagine you're about to come back at me with some arrogant comment about your experience in the power industry, chemical plant industry, and likely something else unlikely.
Even if any of that is justified, you must admit that your ability to cite it is dubious. If you want ANYONE to take you seriously in this context, you need to demonstrate your expertise... not merely claim it.
I'm going to assume you're just going to be irrationally angry and combative at this point. So if that is the case... we can end the discussion now since the discussion will be over.
If you can subsume ego and social ineptitude then we can continue. Forgive my own barbs... I believe in tit for tat as regards these things and that made us even.
Are you suggesting I am a bigot or that Al is one? Its not entirely clear and while you might think its self evident, I've had people answer both ways in this context.
I think everyone should be subjected to this race baiting bullshit as consistently and aggressively as possible.
This is the solution to people like this... they exploit white guilt. And in exploiting it, they use it up.
Look at this very forum... look at all the people saying "f this guy"... exactly. Those are the people that are already tapped out of guilt.
I'm amongst them of course. But not everyone has gotten there yet. Let Al run rampant... Everyone he comes into contact with will be inoculated against his tactics.
Slashdot Mirror
1. I never said anything about lobbying being illegal.
2. Prior to deregulation they had literal monopolies. The current effective monopolies are mostly the inertia FROM regulation. To claim that the current state of affairs was created by deregulation when the blocks against competition are all still government regulation... is moronic.
What keeps companies from competing with the cable and DSL providers? Its not economics. Its not logistics. Its not technology.
Its government regulation. Mostly local regulation... city and county.
And you sit there and tell me that DEregulation caused this issue?
You're a fool. Please slap yourself in the face... I can't reach you from here.
Just because people can print their own shoes doesn't mean they will print them.
What you'll probably have instead is the local shoe store printing its own inventory. This will mean greater opportunities for diversity and innovation.
You'll also get franchises that all output the same stuff.
And of course, the source material for whatever these shoes are made out of will have to be provided by some sort of industry. A cradle to cradle supply chain would be preferred but that's likely unworkable. Still, would be nifty if they could make new shoes out of old.
again, that's illegal... since 98 I think. So that isn't what happens. However, the cities do say "oh we can't possibly have more then one cable running over there or it will be a major inconvenience/eye sore"
The adds need to be in the form of a banner on the bottom of the video... or adds on the left or right of the video.
I agree that video ads are unacceptable.
Not merged... and they need to compete with each other.
Currently they don't because the cities and counties don't let them. They set up absurd pole leasing rates and policies that effectively mean only one company can operate in the area. Its a violation of the spirit of the law if not the letter of the law. They need to be split and they need to compete.
if they're price fixing books then what does that mean? Are you suggesting they did it in collusion with the publishers?
If so, then the publishers are party to the conspiracy but they're not named so they weren't.
Which means apple was setting prices for books which is not something they should have a role in doing.
They should instead set their percentage or fee for listing a book and perhaps a per transaction fee per download.
Short of that, they have no reason to care what price publishers or authors charge for books.
Bingo.
And it wouldn't be hard to deploy ebooks like that either.
Have an open DRM standard for ebooks. Publishers license the ebook shops to distribute those open standard ebooks. Have the standard be something that works on the Nook and the Kindle and whatever else. Its not a big deal.
There after, the publishers won't just be dealing with Amazon. So if some book seller is giving them a hard time they can simply refuse to sell to them and instead be comfortable that enough of their books will sell elsewhere that it won't matter.
As it stands, if the couple big ebook publishers push an author or a publisher... the ebook publisher wins. That's wrong. They should be able to sell books via all mediums.
If we destroyed the NSA we'd have to build something like it tomorrow.
The problem was not the existence or core mission of the agency but rather its arrogance and the blindness of the administration.
Elegant code is code you can look at and understand what its doing and then audit easily.
That is the real point of elegant code. You ACTUALLY know precisely what it is doing. No guess work. The best code can be understood with a casual glance and any mistake in the code stands out brightly because the pattern and elegance of the code is beautiful in its way. And any imperfection is ugly.
Again, its extremely easy to bias a study like this... I'll go through some of my guesses as to how it might be biased off the top of my head in no particular order:
Looking at pictures of pain in photographs isn't a reasonable test especially if you're doing that to someone cold. That is without a little training. No more then 10 or 20 minutes is what a person needs. But if you just throw it at them out of no where they probably won't adapt to it instantly
Nearly always when we see people in pain in photos it is an act. Its entertainment. Its the solder on the field telling his Sargent to make sure his mother knows he loves her. Its a show.
The fact that they did this through photos is the first red flag.
The second is that they are not describing how the samples were prepared. For example, the images of pain could be either subtle or exaggerated. They could have little mona lisa grimaces or could have their mouths open in agony. And either one could be bullshit.
I am generally dubious of statistical studies unless I know they were conducted by multiple groups that were compartmentalized so they people collecting the data didn't know the hypothesis of the people analyzing it. There are two types of statistics. Scientific statistics which most scientists never take contrary to context... and bullshit. Nothing else.
Complete with control groups. The whole deal.
Furthermore, the computer was probably trained on those photos or photos very similar to those. Where as the random people brought in to see it were just expected to guess right instantly.
its nonsense.
Till then... its just words.
The government needs to understand that it did a bad thing. An act of contrition is required. Some symbol of their acceptance.
Snowden would be a good example. They could do something else. But simply saying they're ending the program isn't enough.
Netflix shouldn't even be talking to these people. Literally not even answering the phone when they call.
Rather... Netflix should keep their customers and media informed of bandwidth throttling and then let those customers and the politicians terrify the ISPs into doing their jobs.
Understand, I don't like using the politicians to push companies around. Its using one evil against another.
That said, the ISPs have contrived a monopoly for themselves. There is but one phone company in most communities and one cable company.
The reason for this is largely down to leases on poles and tunnels that the actual wires run through. The ISPs have set up a system for leasing this space that really no one else can afford or process the paper work to buy. As a result, they have no competition throughout most of the country.
Very well... then they complain when they don't have enough bandwidth to process all the customers they forced to use their wires and no one else's wires.
THAT is a problem.
They either accept net neutrality OR they we reexamine all these deals they've cut with local municipalities and states and counties to find the details that ultimately sustain their monopolies.
You're missing the point.
There is metaphysics and physics and neither one can argue against the other.
If you absolutely refuse to acknowledge metaphysics as having any right to a domain... then what about philosophy itself?
Could you argue against Slavery with science? Could you argue for democracy with science?
Not really. Its not a matter of facts.
Understand this... when you argue against a religion, its sort of like arguing about freedom or slavery or whether you should be nice to kittens. Its not really something science has any ability to argue against.
At the same time... religion can't argue against science either. You can't use the moral treatment of kittens to argue for a theory on thermodynamics. They don't relate.
That is the problem.
So... again... Sharks in the Sea and lions in the Savannah.
Each a master of its domain and neither able to challenge the other in the opposing domain.
Every time religion attacks science in the domain of the empirical... it flops around on the hot dry sand and is crushed under the weight of its own unsupportable suppositions.
Every time science attacks religion in the domain of the metaphysical, moral, ethical, and philosophical... it flails around desperately for purchase. Those strong legs desperately trying to find a fact they can stand upon where none exist. And eventually... though it strives... it will tire and drowned as it always does... and will get gobbled up by some metaphysical/philosophical/theological/ideological entity that is more at home in those waters.
Neither one can dominate the other in their domain.
To attempt to do so is merely to profess ignorance of their contrasting states.
Its an insane contest... its octopuses versus eagles. Its a stupid conflict.
I would really want to go over the photos they were showing people. I can think of three different ways this study was contaminated.
The content of the games themselves are not any more offensive then the typical content in other formats.
As to internet trolls hurting peoples feelings... the mute feature is highly underrated.
Mindless noise.
You contribute nothing and will never achieve anything in these issues. If people like you are in charge, we'll be arguing about this for the next 10,000 years.
Follow my path and the fight ends tomorrow and we can mutually cooperate on shared problems immediately.
If you find your path more desirable then I have to wonder why? Your idea wastes more time and accomplishes less.
Empirically, if you desire to end the controversy and achieve meaningful results, you should favor my path or something like it.
Do you fail to approve of my path because you desire chaos and waste or do you literally not understand that you're just spinning your wheels to no purpose while screaming? Because that's what morons do... Can you honestly disagree?
*jams the "rake" up asshat's twat and walks away*
If you have the debate then you should have it philosophically and not simply pitting religion directly against science. I said it better to another person in this discussion... I will quote myself:
Neither science nor religion can argue against each other effectively. Their fundamental basis is different.
Its like pitting sharks versus lions. You noted that if you throw a shark into the realm of the lion... throw it into the middle of the hot dry savannah... the shark always loses to the lion. It just flops around gasping... crushed under its own weight. It dies ultimately without the lion even having to do anything. An easy meal because the shark is a fish out of water.
However, reverse the situation and the lion is helpless instead. Released into the middle of the ocean the lion will eventually drown. Or the shark could eat the lion at any time without the lion being able to fight back.
This is the battle between religion and science.
It is the battle between physics and metaphysics. You are quite correct that if religion is thrown into science's realm and expected to defend itself by science's rules... religion loses. However, as you should know by now... do the same thing to science and religion eats it alive.
They cannot fight each other directly and have the conflict mean anything. What you need is some sort of hybrid that can go between land and water... that can go between physics and metaphysics and be equally at home in both.
Philosophy. This is a philosophical dispute. If you ACTUALLY want to accomplish something in this sort of debate you'll have to resort to philosophy. Doing that will give religion and science an equal footing to defend themselves and a common ground can be found between people.
Anything short of that is just two monkeys beating their chests and making noises at each other.
I'm not that primitive.
Which is why the pro science crowd went out of their way to confront every religious fundamentalist they ran into over the last 1000 years and told them they were wrong.
Oh wait, no they didn't.
This is mostly a new development. Its a game. Its like bear baiting only with theologists.
It accomplishes NOTHING but making fundamentalists angry and annoying everyone else that is trying to actually get something done.
If I go up to someone that bases their whole life around some faith, philosophy, or ideology... exactly how dense would I have to be to think that I could simply walk up to them, contradict their most deeply held beliefs, and walk away from them having made an impression?
Its foolishness.
Everyone believe what they like... unless we want to have a theocracy or state religion/ideology and start shooting people that think otherwise. If we're not willing to do that... then just accept people are going to think the way they want to think which is likely to be diverse.
None of which really matters since the point I am making is that the point of communication is to be understood... and this form of communication does not cause party A to be understood by party B. To the contrary, it simply generates hostility for no reason and disrupts social cohesion.
Its counter productive which makes it stupid.
I would lay the blame there at some political activists that hijacked the cause for their own selfish ends. The fact that some of these people got very rich very quickly while not doing much for the environment and sucking up millions to billions in aid money is just one example of their real interests.
That said, there are some truly serious problems with our use of sequestered hydrocarbons. But none of that can be addressed without broad cooperation which would mean ostracizing any group that insisted on exploiting the issue for their petty political and financial ambitions.
The alternative is that the whole process locks with group A thinking they have a weapon they can use against group B and group B crouching down into a siege mentality that makes it utterly futile to get any sort of compromise.
Group B must feel the issue being discussed is ACTUALLY about the issue at hand and not merely a pretext for group A to increase their power, influence, and domination over group B. Group B will attempt to protect their power, influence, and self determination as their primary goal. So all the petty politics need to be put away with other childish things or it will never be more then a game played between rival factions with the only stakes that matter being which side calls the shots. The environment will be irrelevant until it is treated as the primary issue of importance.
he's now more about harassing religious fundamentalists and flame baiting people in the climate change debate.
I have very little regard for any of the so called scientist media personalities that spend most of their time engaging in various topics that are unproductive and rarely about science.
Religious fundamentalists cannot be argued against with science. Its utterly pointless. Their interpretation of their religion means they will not agree. End of story.
Possibly they can be argued off of it on philosophical, ideological, or theological grounds. But science is utterly futile in dealing with this issue. Yet many do this, piss off the fundamentalists for no reason, accept the applause of some atheist supporters, and then take a victory lap like they accomplished something.
As to the climate debate, that isn't a scientific debate either at this point. Its a political, economic, and ideological debate. Science doesn't even really come into it.
You have one faction that says the solution to fixing the climate is to nationalize everything, give the government sweeping control over the economy, jack up taxes hugely, and grant lots of power to non-democratic international organizations.
So... spoiler alert... many people have a problem with that. If you removed all of that from the climate change rhetoric, most of the opposition would be gone tomorrow. Yet, it is pretended that the issue can be solved by explaining the science again. Waste of god damn time.
Bill Nye was fun once... when he explained little science experiments on tv. He was great. But he hasn't done that in a long time and frankly since he stopped doing that I fail to see why anyone should give a damn about him.
Now I'm about to get attacked by some people that think I'm supporting creationism or anti global warming science or both. Right off, anyone that makes that accusation after reading the above post is a fucking retard. But this site is full of them. So let me explain again, IT DOES NOT MATTER and THAT IS NOT MY POINT. My point is that indifferent to the science, science is often not a viable answer to various debates. In matters of belief, politics, or economics you can't just cite the science and expect everyone to fall into instant obedient lockstep with whatever you want. That's foolish.
If you ACTUALLY want to solve the creationism issue... you need to respect the religious rights of people that find evolution to be a threat to their theology. We have a freedom of worship in this country which means people can believe the universe came from a cooked potato if it makes them happy.
Yes... public schools and public money... well, that's a problem because the government isn't allowed to infringe on their beliefs. Which means you might need to give them money to run their own home schools or whatever. I know... you're not happy about that. But you'd only need to give them their share of the education money which after all came out of their own taxes. So they're hardly taking anything away from you.
That is how you coexist. You either are happy to grant that or you want to dominate people and force your own beliefs on people... yes, your beliefs are backed by science. Show me where in the constitution that matters. It doesn't. Being right doesn't mean you get to force people to agree with you. They're going to be contentious. Tolerate their differences and demand the same in return.
In regards to climate change... We really need to go over some solutions to the issue that don't instantly piss everyone off.
Obviously we need to reduce our usage of sequestered hydrocarbons. So... to that end, nuclear power really needs to be put back on the table. If only as a stop gap until energy storage systems become more practical.
Doubtless that makes some people unhappy... its called a compromise... you're not supposed to be happy. In addition to that, we should look at syngas/biogas to produce carbon neutral hydrocarbon fuel. That will further reduce our dependence on sequester
Industrial plants are manned. There is no reason they couldn't manage such systems locally.
Automation and remote administration is fine... you just need to not be a fucking retard about it.
Case in point... by all means have your remote administration tools set up so that a central control room can monitor and manage the chemical plant. But don't be so foolish as to link those control systems to the internet. Air gap the control room. Yes an inside man can do bad things. But an inside man could do that regardless of your precautions. An inside man could blow up a factory 100 years ago. So again, I'm not worried about that.
In regards to Iran, well thanks for arguing against yourself. Because my point was to limit automation and complexity such that inserting viruses into control systems simply wouldn't be possible. But you seem to think those systems are essential despite the fact that we've had industrial processes that managed similarly complex tasks for generations that did not make use of such systems.
But since I'm actually trying to solve a problem rather then come up with bullshit reasons for why it can't be solved... I'm probably wrong. Forgive me for having a functioning nervous system.
Your attitude has not been productive. "IF" you have any specialized knowledge you've not contributed or used it to enrich this discussion. Rather you've attempted to use it to brow beat me into accepting fallacious arguments or back up counter productive insults.
You want to link core control systems to the internet accessible by Croatian teenagers or the Chinese cyberwarfare agents.
What could possibly go wrong?
You say these systems can't operate without such automation. Well, they didn't have it 40 years ago and they worked then. Possibly less efficiently? Possibly. Though that might also be a factor of other improving technologies or some "convenient" shortcuts that on consideration are not worth the risk.
In regards to brown outs, those can be managed very easily with better local fail safes. Correct me if I'm wrong here... the two situations you're going to run into will be either too much power or too little. Right? In the case of a major localized power drain that cannot be met in a timely manner... Cut the area off. Yes, they'll have a brown out for a couple seconds. Boo hoo. It happens. Anyone that really can't have power disruptions has uninterruptible power supplies. That includes hospitals. You can rolling blackout hospitals all day and the lights won't even flicker.
As to having too much power for whatever reason... I should think dumping the power into the ground would be preferable to blowing fuses.
I can only imagine you're about to come back at me with some arrogant comment about your experience in the power industry, chemical plant industry, and likely something else unlikely.
Even if any of that is justified, you must admit that your ability to cite it is dubious. If you want ANYONE to take you seriously in this context, you need to demonstrate your expertise... not merely claim it.
I'm going to assume you're just going to be irrationally angry and combative at this point. So if that is the case... we can end the discussion now since the discussion will be over.
If you can subsume ego and social ineptitude then we can continue. Forgive my own barbs... I believe in tit for tat as regards these things and that made us even.
Your move.
Are you suggesting I am a bigot or that Al is one? Its not entirely clear and while you might think its self evident, I've had people answer both ways in this context.
I think everyone should be subjected to this race baiting bullshit as consistently and aggressively as possible.
This is the solution to people like this... they exploit white guilt. And in exploiting it, they use it up.
Look at this very forum... look at all the people saying "f this guy"... exactly. Those are the people that are already tapped out of guilt.
I'm amongst them of course. But not everyone has gotten there yet. Let Al run rampant... Everyone he comes into contact with will be inoculated against his tactics.
Really?... you think the feds are doing a great job then... good to know... you have no credibility.
Utterly useless.