we still have to be *civil* to our customers, not call them idiots, respect their beliefs,
That's the pragmatic thing to do, though in this context it can sometimes get confused with post-modernism. I think 'respect' is the wrong word- I don't respect any belief that I think is completely and utterly wrong, and which poses a threat to my freedom and way of life. The only sense in which respect is the right word is the sense in which one respects a dangerous opponent.
There's no point in telling these people where they're wrong, they're True Believers- it's the more reasonable masses they might temporarily convince to go along with them that you need to go after. It helps to have the media on your side, but the media has shown the same pragmatic pussy-footing you're talking about but even more so- they won't stomp on the beliefs of their viewers, and they relate most anything the government tells them as fact (the goverment also appears to have True Believers in top positions). And there is no longer any monolithic 'The Media' like existed a few decades ago, thanks to cable and the internet.
Soon enough American students will not be exposed to scientific methodologies and theory
The 'two' of the one-two punch is that we are also making it much more difficult for foreign students to enter the country- it used to be a good way to pick up the slack for a poor American education system: just attract the cream of the crop from foreign countries, but that door is narrowing.
Jesus Christ went to Hell so that, if you choose to accept the deal, you won't have to.. However, being the Son of God, He had the power to come back three days later.
Three days of Jesus in hell equals potential millions/billions of ordinary people eternity in hell. I'm not sure who was doing the bartering there and how they rationalized the trade - but if it was a fair trade then Jesus experienced an eternity in hell (infinity times a million is still infinity), either in terms of infinite suffering (or if hell is just separation, then there must be degrees of separation) or infinite subjective time passed. I wonder what variety of eternity it is that religious thinkers are proposing occurs after death- aleph-0 or aleph-omega, or somewhere inbetween?
If I were to invent a religion, I would take Jesus but make him a ordinary man (no immaculate conception), and have him go to hell forever even though he had done nothing but good- an Ultimate Sacrifice way beyond a three-day weekend in the underbelly of the arfterlife. "UltraJesus died for your sins, and he's still suffering for it right now!" Perhaps that is the original story, but religious revisionists decided to put a happier ending on it that greatly lessens the sacrifice.
I don't view Hell primarily as punishment. I view it as respect for choices made. If you wish to deny God then He has enough respect and love for you to honor that choice. God, by His perfect nature, can only be in true relationship with that which is also perfect. I'm not perfect, as I've chosen to walk away from God (ie "sin"). However, through the voluntary human death and resurrection of God I am able to be made perfect once this life is over. That way I am able to be in a perfect relationship with a perfect being.
Interesting: So God set us up with free will, but then everyone who is dissatisfied with this freedom has to live with it for now (and sin on occasion, as you say) but can be rewarded with the removal of this free will after their death granted they follow a certain recipe. What happens to those who don't is somewhat undefined and vague in your system, do they retain their freedom or not?
It's not clear to me how the lack or possession of free will is meaningful in the realm of life after death either in hell or heaven, I suspect it's kind of a pointless place compared to all that is to be accomplished and discovered and experienced here in the real world- a monotonous eternity of bliss or pain as proposed by other religious thinkers seems mighty boring.
Tenet approved of CIA operatives who openly attacked Bush, wrote books condemning Bush foreign policy, and in general, ran an operation that was nothing more than a rogues country club.
People working for the government airing views contrary to that of the standing president? That's like high treason! From now on, every federal employee should be required to swear an oath of allegiance not to uphold the constitution or some other abstract, subjective bullshit, but that they will at all costs avoid engaging in such country club rogue-like behaviour as the Writing Of Critical Books.
Legitimate critism of Bush should be applied for not being radical enough... In Bush's defense, he has his hands full...
Your attack on the president is insufficiently masked by your crude verbal maneuvering, and despite attempting to hide your identity through the anonymous coward feature, your days of rogue country clubbery are surely numbered.
aren't they the ones indoctrinating our future leaders with all this nanny-state nonsense?
I dimly remember 'nanny-state' being used as an epithet by conservatives against liberal thinking (as espoused by college professors among others) back in the early 90's, but here we see the conservative-led government, like an overbearing parent or nanny, is attempting to increase its interference and surveillance into the lives of the youth.
Of course, this is nowhere near as ridiculous as to hear someone support the current administration and 'small government' in the same sentence- but this is par for the course, these days.
And the best part is that you could zap them and capture the moment.
If you added bluetooth to the mix, you could download the image to your desktop instantly so it it becomes your next screensaver or desktop background. I'm sure the Abu Ghraib guys will love to hear their whole interrogation pipeline can be reduced to a single step.
the single most important and overlooked idea behind the second amendment. The amendment was not only for defence against a British invasion but also for defence against a tyrannical federal govt.
I think if you look at current events, it seems like the best way to inflict damage on a occupying force that has superior firepower is to use rocket propelled grenades, mortars, and improvised explosives (often made out of RPGs or hand grenades or other explosives in ample supply). Shooting bullets at the enemy will only make them keep their heads down while they call in gunships and bombers to level your neighborhood.
To really fight a revolution, American patriots would need access to local army depots, not just a few pea-shooters or even fully automatic weapons that NRA types might have around..
You still need rifles to back up the explosives with, of course. Heavy machine guns probably aren't a bad idea either, but I don't think there are too many of those in the hands of vigilant citizens currently. Handguns are nearly useless except for the occasional close-quarters assassination, so I don't see why the gun-lobby expends so much effort there rather than freeing up access to AK-47s.
A constitutional amendment is being drafted that will forever enshrine the holy relationship between producers and consumers, since the government has decided it is now in the business of delineating the sacred from the non and promoting the former. Online services such as ebay and its users that attempt to blur the distinction between buyers and sellers will not receive equal benefits or protections nor be recognized as valid entities in courts of law.
>On a similar note, the search for Bin Laden is finally underway.
Who?
I think they're accusing him of helping Iraq repel invaders or something. But the word is they're going to really demonize him by showing that he is planning to destroy the U.S. by diluting and undermining the sacred institution on which all of civilization is founded, you know, the one that will simply evaporate if the goverment fails to regulate it adequately.
Another example of the DOH'S trying to justify their existance.
On a similar note, the search for Bin Laden is finally underway. They've begun using tactics innovated with Saddam's capture such as 'interrogating relatives' and 'transfering special units in'.
Assuming you have a job, are you willing to give it up right now in the name of free trade?
You want a job? innovate. Become efficient. Figure out howto make money...
If you don't have a job, how do you get more efficient at it? How do you innovate without the resources to support R&D? Isn't getting a job the conventional way of making money?
I don't beleive 'entirely plausible' equals sufficient cause to automatically keep everything classified. The burden of proof lies with the people keeping the secrets. The default behaviour should be for everything to fall out of classification with 5-10 years, and let the relevant organizations petition the congressional committee on a per-file basis if they need more time.
It's like a stack of cards set up as a pyramid...
Please think twice before using an analogy. If you've explained your case well, then let than stand on it's own accord. Throwing in some analogy because even a child can understand it is horribly patronizing, and doesn't redeem the rest of your comment if it isn't clear. It's fine when you're trying to sum up a multipage essay or hour-plus lecture, but at the person-to-person level with 1-2 paragraphs posts it's insulting.
It doesn't matter if the policy is new or not, but whether it's right or wrong. Casting it as something new or different draws more attention and discussion of the legitimacy of the whole policy, a Good Thing, despite whenever or whoever it originated from.
this is a time when the US government can hardly afford to risk further losses in public opinion.
And the American people cannot afford to not know what mistakes and poor courses of actions made in the past if they are supposed to elect worthy leaders. The whole veil of secrecy that gained permanent institutionalization at the start of the Cold War short-circuits democracy- the less people know about the deeds of their leaders the less they can take corrective action at the ballot box.
Obviously I understand the need to not broadcast the exact gps coordinates of current troop concentrations or names of active spies. But 25 years for some old skeletons in the closet? If they actually did the right thing the public should be able to come to the same judgement. And it would show the administration to have a little backbone- everything else they do creates the image of cowardly bullies...
So if you have to report on something like this, instead of saying "Laws of Nature Broken!" which sounds absolutely ridiculous, rather say about the results being not expected by theory, or surprising.
It's a shameless attention grab aimed at anyone whose knowledge of physics stop at the high-school or freshman level, peppered with 'transcension' nonsense for the mystical types with even less education than that.
Even then, I don't remember any of my professors harping on The Law of Positive Refraction, so this sort of thing doesn't seem like a big deal. If somebody figures out how to violate in normal circumstances Newton's laws or Maxwell's Equations (which are harped on greatly with good reason), it's probably worth talking about in the terms this professor is using.
Personally, i think I lost a lot more rights under (during) the Clinton administration than I have under B/A. The assault weapons ban/crime bill, specifically.
Right, your preferred freedom is gun ownership, while many others enjoy being safe against unlawful search and seizure (the 'unlawful' in that amendment isn't that useful, because as we're beginning to see congress can just pass a law to make any search and seizure lawful).
To a large extent, having all the other rights, especially privacy, reinforces your right to own a gun. If the police can't scan all your emails, tap your phone, or look at purchase histories, they aren't going to find out about your gun and arrest you. And that goes for all the rights not specifically enumerated- the less the government can do to violate your privacy, the less they can pass enforceable laws against things you keep private or reasonably quiet.
Freedom of speech is even more fundamental- it means you can speak out against laws that restrict other rights and maybe even get the laws change, even if you've already had your privacy invaded and have been arrested (your loss may be others gain, if you speak loudly enough).
It's a delicate balance, as others can see his support as giving too much legitimacy (putting the 'coalition' in the 'Coalition of the etc.') to the war effort.
I haven't follow Blairs actions in detail- but your line of argument would only hold if Blair was strongly principled enough to look out for manufactured evidence and/or has not staked his support of the invasion primarily on the possible existence of Nuke/Chem/Bio weapons.
As for reserving judgement, this is my drowning-witches test: In extreme situations, a principled person should be able to follow an unpopular and possibly just plain wrong course of action with ulterior respectable motives in mind, and then accept all consequences (jail, lost re-election, lost face) without complaint. If Blair knows and accepts poor judgement now and afterwards, then he's probably doing the Right Thing. So, I say, curse Blair aloud and but silently praise him for the small good he may be trying to do.
>The average person (at least here in the US) doesn't think about their personal freedom and liberties like the average/.'er does.
It's not like Germany ever threatened the liberties of the average racially pure German who kept their mouth shut (the majority of Germans, in other words). </GODWIN VIOLATION>
The sun is not a place where we could live, but also remember here on Earth there'd be no life without the light it gives.
The sun is a ball of incandescent gas, a giant nuclear furnace, specifically. Inside, hydrogen is built into helium at temperatures of millions of degrees.
There's little to be done about the sun, currently. We need its light. We need its heat. We need its energy. Without the sun, without a doubt there'd be nobody here to talk about it.
It is so hot that everything on it is a gas: iron, copper, aluminum, and many others.
The Sun is Large
If the sun were hollow, a millions Earths could fit inside. And yet, the sun is only a middle-sized star.
The Sun is Far Away
About 93 million miles away, and that's why it looks so small. And even when its out of sight the sun shines night and day.
Scientists have found that the sun is a huge atom-smashing machine. The heat and light of the sun come from the nuclear reactions of hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, and helium.
i always thought it was arrogance to suggest that, to the exclusion of all other factors, humans had the greatest impact on global warming.
But we should normalize for the factor which humans have the greatest control over. It's not arrogance to say that the first place to critisize and suggest improvements to in almost any situation is always the one you have the most influence in, whether that is yourself, your country or your country-club.
i just think we don't know enough about our ecosystem and it's interaction with the universe around us to automatically assume that it's all our fault.
So as a modest proposal that follows from this ignorance, we should spend a large proportion of the money saved by not cutting emissions into research and computer modelling (not delay-tactic congressional investigations, but real research), until we do know enough. A Manhattan Project-type project with real predictions as a result. Once we have a model fine-grained enough, try large scale experiments in which industry is required to participate (increase or decrease emissions for six-months, see if it matches the predictions).
If emissions play a tiny enough role, we'll scale up efforts into finetuning our local stellar energy source for life here on Earth.
Your counter is ad hominem by insinuation. You use the term cliche to directly imply the original poster wasn't thinking for himself, and to create a prejorative association that has nothing to do with what was said.
I can't be held for every possible insinuation, interpretation, connation, etcetera for every possible word I use. At some point someone will have heard a word used in a perjorative way and forever have negative associations with that word. Even recognizing some of these tenuous connections between words and meanings myself, choices have to be made in the name of expediency.
At the root of every debate there is an intent by both parties to show that the other party is wrong. Being wrong has negative connotations, many of these include that the person wasn't thinking for theirself or is incapable of doing so. There is absolutely no way around it.
All points of contention are ad hominem by your definition, making it a poor criticism of an argument, because it would be redundant for one, and ad hominem itself for two. In your case, because you do not think calling an argument is necessarily perjorative, it is merely redundant.
In a related note, I've come to realize in the course of this thread that arguing the use of individual words and phrases is a frequently a pointless dead end... and I think we are rapidly approaching that end.
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we still have to be *civil* to our customers, not call them idiots, respect their beliefs,
That's the pragmatic thing to do, though in this context it can sometimes get confused with post-modernism. I think 'respect' is the wrong word- I don't respect any belief that I think is completely and utterly wrong, and which poses a threat to my freedom and way of life. The only sense in which respect is the right word is the sense in which one respects a dangerous opponent.
There's no point in telling these people where they're wrong, they're True Believers- it's the more reasonable masses they might temporarily convince to go along with them that you need to go after. It helps to have the media on your side, but the media has shown the same pragmatic pussy-footing you're talking about but even more so- they won't stomp on the beliefs of their viewers, and they relate most anything the government tells them as fact (the goverment also appears to have True Believers in top positions). And there is no longer any monolithic 'The Media' like existed a few decades ago, thanks to cable and the internet.
Soon enough American students will not be exposed to scientific methodologies and theory
The 'two' of the one-two punch is that we are also making it much more difficult for foreign students to enter the country- it used to be a good way to pick up the slack for a poor American education system: just attract the cream of the crop from foreign countries, but that door is narrowing.
Personally, I would just remove you feeding tube
Oh wait, the fundamentalists are probably going to prevent you from doing that as well...
Jesus Christ went to Hell so that, if you choose to accept the deal, you won't have to.. However, being the Son of God, He had the power to come back three days later.
Three days of Jesus in hell equals potential millions/billions of ordinary people eternity in hell. I'm not sure who was doing the bartering there and how they rationalized the trade - but if it was a fair trade then Jesus experienced an eternity in hell (infinity times a million is still infinity), either in terms of infinite suffering (or if hell is just separation, then there must be degrees of separation) or infinite subjective time passed. I wonder what variety of eternity it is that religious thinkers are proposing occurs after death- aleph-0 or aleph-omega, or somewhere inbetween?
If I were to invent a religion, I would take Jesus but make him a ordinary man (no immaculate conception), and have him go to hell forever even though he had done nothing but good- an Ultimate Sacrifice way beyond a three-day weekend in the underbelly of the arfterlife. "UltraJesus died for your sins, and he's still suffering for it right now!" Perhaps that is the original story, but religious revisionists decided to put a happier ending on it that greatly lessens the sacrifice.
I don't view Hell primarily as punishment. I view it as respect for choices made. If you wish to deny God then He has enough respect and love for you to honor that choice. God, by His perfect nature, can only be in true relationship with that which is also perfect. I'm not perfect, as I've chosen to walk away from God (ie "sin"). However, through the voluntary human death and resurrection of God I am able to be made perfect once this life is over. That way I am able to be in a perfect relationship with a perfect being.
Interesting:
So God set us up with free will, but then everyone who is dissatisfied with this freedom has to live with it for now (and sin on occasion, as you say) but can be rewarded with the removal of this free will after their death granted they follow a certain recipe. What happens to those who don't is somewhat undefined and vague in your system, do they retain their freedom or not?
It's not clear to me how the lack or possession of free will is meaningful in the realm of life after death either in hell or heaven, I suspect it's kind of a pointless place compared to all that is to be accomplished and discovered and experienced here in the real world- a monotonous eternity of bliss or pain as proposed by other religious thinkers seems mighty boring.
Tenet approved of CIA operatives who openly attacked Bush, wrote books condemning Bush foreign policy, and in general, ran an operation that was nothing more than a rogues country club.
People working for the government airing views contrary to that of the standing president? That's like high treason! From now on, every federal employee should be required to swear an oath of allegiance not to uphold the constitution or some other abstract, subjective bullshit, but that they will at all costs avoid engaging in such country club rogue-like behaviour as the Writing Of Critical Books.
Legitimate critism of Bush should be applied for not being radical enough... In Bush's defense, he has his hands full...
Your attack on the president is insufficiently masked by your crude verbal maneuvering, and despite attempting to hide your identity through the anonymous coward feature, your days of rogue country clubbery are surely numbered.
aren't they the ones indoctrinating our future leaders with all this nanny-state nonsense?
I dimly remember 'nanny-state' being used as an epithet by conservatives against liberal thinking (as espoused by college professors among others) back in the early 90's, but here we see the conservative-led government, like an overbearing parent or nanny, is attempting to increase its interference and surveillance into the lives of the youth.
Of course, this is nowhere near as ridiculous as to hear someone support the current administration and 'small government' in the same sentence- but this is par for the course, these days.
And the best part is that you could zap them and capture the moment.
If you added bluetooth to the mix, you could download the image to your desktop instantly so it it becomes your next screensaver or desktop background. I'm sure the Abu Ghraib guys will love to hear their whole interrogation pipeline can be reduced to a single step.
the single most important and overlooked idea behind the second amendment. The amendment was not only for defence against a British invasion but also for defence against a tyrannical federal govt.
.
I think if you look at current events, it seems like the best way to inflict damage on a occupying force that has superior firepower is to use rocket propelled grenades, mortars, and improvised explosives (often made out of RPGs or hand grenades or other explosives in ample supply). Shooting bullets at the enemy will only make them keep their heads down while they call in gunships and bombers to level your neighborhood.
To really fight a revolution, American patriots would need access to local army depots, not just a few pea-shooters or even fully automatic weapons that NRA types might have around.
You still need rifles to back up the explosives with, of course. Heavy machine guns probably aren't a bad idea either, but I don't think there are too many of those in the hands of vigilant citizens currently. Handguns are nearly useless except for the occasional close-quarters assassination, so I don't see why the gun-lobby expends so much effort there rather than freeing up access to AK-47s.
You mean the dollar, right?
A constitutional amendment is being drafted that will forever enshrine the holy relationship between producers and consumers, since the government has decided it is now in the business of delineating the sacred from the non and promoting the former. Online services such as ebay and its users that attempt to blur the distinction between buyers and sellers will not receive equal benefits or protections nor be recognized as valid entities in courts of law.
>On a similar note, the search for Bin Laden is finally underway.
Who?
I think they're accusing him of helping Iraq repel invaders or something. But the word is they're going to really demonize him by showing that he is planning to destroy the U.S. by diluting and undermining the sacred institution on which all of civilization is founded, you know, the one that will simply evaporate if the goverment fails to regulate it adequately.
Another example of the DOH'S trying to justify their existance.
On a similar note, the search for Bin Laden is finally underway. They've begun using tactics innovated with Saddam's capture such as 'interrogating relatives' and 'transfering special units in'.
Governemnt interference with the market is bad...
Assuming you have a job, are you willing to give it up right now in the name of free trade?
You want a job? innovate. Become efficient. Figure out howto make money...
If you don't have a job, how do you get more efficient at it? How do you innovate without the resources to support R&D? Isn't getting a job the conventional way of making money?
That's the same tired line that manufacturing workers have rolled out for decades, yet the US economy is still the strongest in the world...
So the efforts of the manufacturing workers to protect their jobs is good then, because we have a strong economy as a result?
Anyone with an ounce of civility would realize that its just crude.
Do you want civil and compassionate humor, or the funny kind?
Its odd that so many liberals, so eager to tell everyone who compassionate they are, are so quick to make jokes about such topics.
Troll, please give us all a list of topics to steer clear of in the future so we can preserve our 'compassionate liberal' designation. Thanks.
I don't beleive 'entirely plausible' equals sufficient cause to automatically keep everything classified. The burden of proof lies with the people keeping the secrets. The default behaviour should be for everything to fall out of classification with 5-10 years, and let the relevant organizations petition the congressional committee on a per-file basis if they need more time.
It's like a stack of cards set up as a pyramid...
Please think twice before using an analogy. If you've explained your case well, then let than stand on it's own accord. Throwing in some analogy because even a child can understand it is horribly patronizing, and doesn't redeem the rest of your comment if it isn't clear. It's fine when you're trying to sum up a multipage essay or hour-plus lecture, but at the person-to-person level with 1-2 paragraphs posts it's insulting.
It doesn't matter if the policy is new or not, but whether it's right or wrong. Casting it as something new or different draws more attention and discussion of the legitimacy of the whole policy, a Good Thing, despite whenever or whoever it originated from.
this is a time when the US government can hardly afford to risk further losses in public opinion.
And the American people cannot afford to not know what mistakes and poor courses of actions made in the past if they are supposed to elect worthy leaders. The whole veil of secrecy that gained permanent institutionalization at the start of the Cold War short-circuits democracy- the less people know about the deeds of their leaders the less they can take corrective action at the ballot box.
Obviously I understand the need to not broadcast the exact gps coordinates of current troop concentrations or names of active spies. But 25 years for some old skeletons in the closet? If they actually did the right thing the public should be able to come to the same judgement. And it would show the administration to have a little backbone- everything else they do creates the image of cowardly bullies...
So if you have to report on something like this, instead of saying "Laws of Nature Broken!" which sounds absolutely ridiculous, rather say about the results being not expected by theory, or surprising.
It's a shameless attention grab aimed at anyone whose knowledge of physics stop at the high-school or freshman level, peppered with 'transcension' nonsense for the mystical types with even less education than that.
Even then, I don't remember any of my professors harping on The Law of Positive Refraction, so this sort of thing doesn't seem like a big deal. If somebody figures out how to violate in normal circumstances Newton's laws or Maxwell's Equations (which are harped on greatly with good reason), it's probably worth talking about in the terms this professor is using.
Personally, i think I lost a lot more rights under (during) the Clinton administration than I have under B/A. The assault weapons ban/crime bill, specifically.
Right, your preferred freedom is gun ownership, while many others enjoy being safe against unlawful search and seizure (the 'unlawful' in that amendment isn't that useful, because as we're beginning to see congress can just pass a law to make any search and seizure lawful).
To a large extent, having all the other rights, especially privacy, reinforces your right to own a gun. If the police can't scan all your emails, tap your phone, or look at purchase histories, they aren't going to find out about your gun and arrest you. And that goes for all the rights not specifically enumerated- the less the government can do to violate your privacy, the less they can pass enforceable laws against things you keep private or reasonably quiet.
Freedom of speech is even more fundamental- it means you can speak out against laws that restrict other rights and maybe even get the laws change, even if you've already had your privacy invaded and have been arrested (your loss may be others gain, if you speak loudly enough).
It's a delicate balance, as others can see his support as giving too much legitimacy (putting the 'coalition' in the 'Coalition of the etc.') to the war effort.
I haven't follow Blairs actions in detail- but your line of argument would only hold if Blair was strongly principled enough to look out for manufactured evidence and/or has not staked his support of the invasion primarily on the possible existence of Nuke/Chem/Bio weapons.
As for reserving judgement, this is my drowning-witches test: In extreme situations, a principled person should be able to follow an unpopular and possibly just plain wrong course of action with ulterior respectable motives in mind, and then accept all consequences (jail, lost re-election, lost face) without complaint. If Blair knows and accepts poor judgement now and afterwards, then he's probably doing the Right Thing. So, I say, curse Blair aloud and but silently praise him for the small good he may be trying to do.
>The average person (at least here in the US) doesn't think about their personal freedom and liberties like the average /.'er does.
It's not like Germany ever threatened the liberties of the average racially pure German who kept their mouth shut (the majority of Germans, in other words). </GODWIN VIOLATION>
It's hot.
The sun is not a place where we could live, but also remember here on Earth there'd be no life without the light it gives.
The sun is a ball of incandescent gas, a giant nuclear furnace, specifically. Inside, hydrogen is built into helium at temperatures of millions of degrees.
There's little to be done about the sun, currently. We need its light. We need its heat. We need its energy. Without the sun, without a doubt there'd be nobody here to talk about it.
It is so hot that everything on it is a gas: iron, copper, aluminum, and many others.
The Sun is Large
If the sun were hollow, a millions Earths could fit inside. And yet, the sun is only a middle-sized star.
The Sun is Far Away
About 93 million miles away, and that's why it looks so small. And even when its out of sight the sun shines night and day.
Scientists have found that the sun is a huge atom-smashing machine. The heat and light of the sun come from the nuclear reactions of hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, and helium.
(apologies to TMBG)
i always thought it was arrogance to suggest that, to the exclusion of all other factors, humans had the greatest impact on global warming.
But we should normalize for the factor which humans have the greatest control over. It's not arrogance to say that the first place to critisize and suggest improvements to in almost any situation is always the one you have the most influence in, whether that is yourself, your country or your country-club.
i just think we don't know enough about our ecosystem and it's interaction with the universe around us to automatically assume that it's all our fault.
So as a modest proposal that follows from this ignorance, we should spend a large proportion of the money saved by not cutting emissions into research and computer modelling (not delay-tactic congressional investigations, but real research), until we do know enough. A Manhattan Project-type project with real predictions as a result. Once we have a model fine-grained enough, try large scale experiments in which industry is required to participate (increase or decrease emissions for six-months, see if it matches the predictions).
If emissions play a tiny enough role, we'll scale up efforts into finetuning our local stellar energy source for life here on Earth.
Your counter is ad hominem by insinuation. You use the term cliche to directly imply the original poster wasn't thinking for himself, and to create a prejorative association that has nothing to do with what was said.
I can't be held for every possible insinuation, interpretation, connation, etcetera for every possible word I use. At some point someone will have heard a word used in a perjorative way and forever have negative associations with that word. Even recognizing some of these tenuous connections between words and meanings myself, choices have to be made in the name of expediency.
At the root of every debate there is an intent by both parties to show that the other party is wrong. Being wrong has negative connotations, many of these include that the person wasn't thinking for theirself or is incapable of doing so. There is absolutely no way around it.
All points of contention are ad hominem by your definition, making it a poor criticism of an argument, because it would be redundant for one, and ad hominem itself for two. In your case, because you do not think calling an argument is necessarily perjorative, it is merely redundant.
In a related note, I've come to realize in the course of this thread that arguing the use of individual words and phrases is a frequently a pointless dead end... and I think we are rapidly approaching that end.