I understand what you are saying, credibility is important.
Take your premium-beef example. Say you ate at the restaurant and you enjoyed your meal. Now when you're in the bathroom you notice an employee leave without washing his hands. What does that do to your opinion of the place?
The beef is still 100% pure. The food is still tasty. But does knowing that an employee didn't wash his hands make the food less good? Does it call into question the entirety of the claims of the restaurant? And knowing that often people don't wash their hands when they should, how could you ever let a stranger prepare or serve your food?
This flaw in the IPCC report is akin to that. The science is still sound. The conclusions are still sound. Just a single statement (upon which no other arguments are based) is wrong. But does that mistake call into question every statement made in the report? Does it undermine the very foundations of the science that the report was based on?
Maybe it does for you. But that's my point. If you only trust information from flawless sources, you cannot trust any information.
you sure got their number! these climate scientists are not perfect, soulless automatons. Unlike Supreme Court judges or radio talk show hosts or the british press, these men and women have biases that affect their personal judgement.
I always thought that climate scientists were chosen by a supreme entity to perform this work. But now I realize that they do climate research because they care deeply about the effects that human actions have on our planet. That concern only biases them to "discover" ways that human activity is hurting the planet. And we don't want scientists "discovering" things, do we?
You know, now that I realize they aren't perfect humans, it seems to me that this deep concern for the future of the planet we live on makes them anxious that their work be heard and understood by influential people. Considering that they believe that humans are causing catastrophic damage they are going to want their efforts to result in some sort of action. And so they might put inflammatory statements to get people to pay attention to what they're saying.
How perverse! I've never heard of such a thing!
There's really only one conclusion to draw from the use of one flawed factoid in a 2000 page report. And that is that the whole body of scientific evidence produced by thousands of accredited researchers over several decades is just a near perfect conspiracy to defrauds governments of several million dollars a year.
It seems to me that you are setting an impossible standard here.
If they can't do their jobs properly why should their possibly invalid conclusions be used to affect the lives of billions of people in the world?
The same could be said for the US Congress (or the british Parliament). Basically any collection of humans given authority could be said to be completely unworthy of our trust. Police make mistakes all the time, why trust them with law enforcement? Food companies make mistakes all the time, why trust them with food? Airports make mistakes all the time, why trust them with flying?
You have a right to be skeptical, sure. But at some point each one of us has to decide for him/herself whether reality is more that what we personally observe and whether we want to grow our own food, provide our own security, fly our own airplanes (to our own airports) and perform our own climate research.
Because, like law enforcement, food production, and flying airplanes, doing climate research is difficult. It's scientific research. So unless you want to set up your own lab and publish your own papers, you kinda need institutions like the IPCC.
I am fascinated by your ideas and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
It's damn scary just how far the Chinese have wormed into the US corporate and military systems
That would be scary if I didn't think you were just making that up.
The reason they have not? It's not that they're scared of the US retaliating in kind - they clearly have the upper hand on that front. They need us to continue leeching our dollars and tech.
Orrr... the Chinese don't actually have the godlike capabilities you ascribe to them.
So in your hypothetical, a method has been posted online to allow anyone to generate legitimate-looking software key.
Meaning, anyone can use the software and there's no way to tell whether they have a legitimate license or not.
I think for Blizzard that would qualify as a catastrophic failure of their anti-piracy scheme.
Would such a failure have a negative affect on sales? It's hard to prove either way. Personally, I think it would be a wash, but it's apparently hard for software vendors to wrap their brain around the idea that software piracy = free viral advertising.
With either type of CD key, you'd be defeating your own anti-piracy scheme.
but the GP says
BNET-D started because several individuals had banned CD-Keys or wished to play with pirated versions of Blizzards games.
which sounds to me like an admission that Blizzard's anti-piracy scheme had already failed.
of course, the other plank of Blizzard's anti-piracy scheme was online play exclusively through their controlled servers. That this was a bonehead, anti-consumer stance that did little or nothing to prevent piracy is irrelevant.
With the premise that you are more efficient at investing your money for the benefit of society than the government, I'm sure that you could find an objection to every tax in your paycheck.
Past returns are not a guarantee of future performance.
Your 401k could be worth nothing tomorrow. Meanwhile social security may remain solvent when your grand-children retire.
When you're 67, advances in medicine may provide you the strength and vitality of your 30s. You may never need to retire due to old age. You may be able to work into your 100s, if you so desire.
40 years ago there were many who claimed to know what would happen in 20, 30, 40 years. Those who were right in any way, were right by chance alone.
Because the market isn't geared towards making their experience more efficient.
That's generally why people don't like markets.
That and the boom and bust tendency that many markets have doesn't really mesh well with the human condition.
Why do people reject government intervention? What's to prefer in the cold machinery of the market? Are they afraid that the human traits of compassion and decency might win out over the cruelty of the invisible hand?
Actually, yes, I think it's ok. I am willing to accept that science is performed by fallible human beings.
Like you. Like me.
Have you ever put together a jigsaw puzzle? Now imagine if the puzzle was split into a billion pieces. Some of which are mangled. Some of which are missing altogether. But if you can put it together, you'll gain valuable insight into how our world works. Your attitude would never allow us to even start, because we wouldn't be able to fill in the gaps.
At some point you have to acknowledge that we, humans, are in a state of limited knowledge. In order to find patterns and understand our world, we make huge assumptions. And our science works like that too.
Attacking scientists for making assumptions and "massaging" data is to attack the very core of what they do. They're trying to explain what is unknown and what they don't understand or can't explain they guess at.
And while the newspapers and television (and, yes, Al Gore) tend to gloss over it, they tend to be pretty explicit in the assumptions they are making.
I have yet to see the "deniers" be as heavily involved in money making schemes as the "alarmists."
not to be facile about this, but it kinda makes sense that people concerned about the future would be more likely to invest speculatively. Nor does it seem bizarre that they would invest in industries that stood to benefit from the changes they anticipate.
on the other hand, the deniers strike me as "head-in-the-sand" types. they have no faith in projections or science so it's difficult for them to make equivalently speculative investments.
They hold grudges! They take personal stake in their projects! They make up data!
Say it aint so!
I always assumed that these men who study the long-term variations of the planet's climate were appointed by an infallible creator as impartial arbiters of truth!
But now I find out that they are just regular people! Their only qualifications are going to grad school, getting PhDs, and publishing papers that impressed their peers!
And to top it all off, they don't have respect for other scientists whose theories contradict their own! They complain that these conflicting theories are poorly constructed, easily refuted, and written explicitly for shock value. As though it matters.
I know that in America, every piece of information should be treated equally! Whether it's backed up by actual evidence, or not. It's not up to "experts" who have spent their lives studying these things to decide what's the truth. It's up to each and every person's gut!
Preponderance of evidence? I don't even know what that word means. But I do know that my momma didn't raise no fool. Going forwards, I am not going to trust any scientists ever again!
until then I'll always have my doubts as to what is really going on
and even after that, I imagine.
unless you intend to personally fact-check every data point (make your own ice-cores, etc) and then create your own models from their data, how can you be sure?
Honestly, I can't see how getting their hands on this data will mollify skeptics.
In 1987, Congress was told the project could be completed for $4.4 billion, but by 1993 the cost projection exceeded $12 billion.
When the project was canceled, 22.5 km (14.0 mi) of tunnel and 17 shafts to the surface were already dug, and nearly two billion dollars had already been spent on the massive facility.
You call $2 billion of a projected $12 billion, mostly paid-for?
Only possible downside is needing to setup a opera account to use the DNS
really? that's the only downside you can envision to setting up a web server on your parent's PC?
it says it runs in a sandbox, but sandboxes can have holes. especially when they let independent developers write plugins.
and, even if everything is 100% secure, what's to keep your dad from accidentally sharing that text file where he keeps his bank account passwords with the whole world?
The more services, the more work to keep track of everything.
You keep saying this. Even though my reply explicitly rebuts it.
More things = more to keep track of = requires more time and resources = more difficult to control.
Joe the Censor has to watch all sorts of things. But, lucky for him, he knows that 90 percent of the things he monitors are made by his friends. He asked his friends to make changes to the things so that he doesn't have to worry that they might be used for something Joe doesn't like.
Joe trusts his friends because he knows they know that if he finds out that they lied to him, he wont let them sell any more things at all! (Boy, it sure is nice how his friends really like making money more than anything else!)
Thus, Joe can spend his time just looking at people using the 10 percent of the things that aren't made by his friends.
And, what's this? Here's a thing called "Opera" that's doing baaaad things! But Joe's not worried, because Opera likes to make money. So, Joe knows that they'll soon be good friends!
The more ways to access the web, the more work for the government when they are trying to censor it.
Except when companies (like Opera -- and many many many others) graciously cooperate in neutering their products so that they can access China's markets, that makes the censors' jobs easier.
These companies are complicit in China's censorship. On top of that, they're also providing a nice smokescreen for the Chinese government.
To wit, the more interesting question you're not asking is why does China government allow their people to use Opera or Mozilla (or Microsoft or Cisco or IBM or Dell, etc.)? Why not just force everyone in the country to access The People's Internet on The People's Computer with The People's Browser?
My bet is that they think it wouldn't work as well. That the loss in productivity of using their in-house hardware and software would put them at a disadvantage in the global economy. And more, the people they rule over would be ever more envious of the rest of the world and resentful of the restrictions.
How does not having any kind of access to Opera Mobile/Google/etc helps the people in China, compared to having a censored version?
Providing a censored version of Opera HURTS the people of China by making the work of their censors easier. Working with the demands of the government censors HURTS the people of China by making the effects of censorship less apparent (and more pernicious).
I don't think people are arguing that you should get vaccinated for the flu because it will protect you from the grim reaper. But good job debunking that one. Now we no longer have the false hope that the H1N1 vaccine was really a panacea for all disease and death.
5 links to the same story about one person who came down with a rare disorder 10 days after getting a flu shot. Say it with me: "coincidence is not causality".
You don't want to get a flu shot, good for you. Neither do I!
But there's no empirical evidence that it's at all dangerous, and plenty that says it does just what the health officials and doctors suggest: protects against the flu. Every argument I've seen against the H1N1 flu shot (including yours) falls into the FUD category.
Slashdot Mirror
it continues to amaze me that those who have no explanation for climate change think that ad-hominem attacks will assist us in determining its cause.
I understand what you are saying, credibility is important.
Take your premium-beef example. Say you ate at the restaurant and you enjoyed your meal. Now when you're in the bathroom you notice an employee leave without washing his hands. What does that do to your opinion of the place?
The beef is still 100% pure. The food is still tasty. But does knowing that an employee didn't wash his hands make the food less good? Does it call into question the entirety of the claims of the restaurant? And knowing that often people don't wash their hands when they should, how could you ever let a stranger prepare or serve your food?
This flaw in the IPCC report is akin to that. The science is still sound. The conclusions are still sound. Just a single statement (upon which no other arguments are based) is wrong. But does that mistake call into question every statement made in the report? Does it undermine the very foundations of the science that the report was based on?
Maybe it does for you. But that's my point. If you only trust information from flawless sources, you cannot trust any information.
oh dear. not this canard.
scientists with an agenda?
you sure got their number! these climate scientists are not perfect, soulless automatons. Unlike Supreme Court judges or radio talk show hosts or the british press, these men and women have biases that affect their personal judgement.
I always thought that climate scientists were chosen by a supreme entity to perform this work. But now I realize that they do climate research because they care deeply about the effects that human actions have on our planet. That concern only biases them to "discover" ways that human activity is hurting the planet. And we don't want scientists "discovering" things, do we?
You know, now that I realize they aren't perfect humans, it seems to me that this deep concern for the future of the planet we live on makes them anxious that their work be heard and understood by influential people. Considering that they believe that humans are causing catastrophic damage they are going to want their efforts to result in some sort of action. And so they might put inflammatory statements to get people to pay attention to what they're saying.
How perverse! I've never heard of such a thing!
There's really only one conclusion to draw from the use of one flawed factoid in a 2000 page report. And that is that the whole body of scientific evidence produced by thousands of accredited researchers over several decades is just a near perfect conspiracy to defrauds governments of several million dollars a year.
It seems to me that you are setting an impossible standard here.
If they can't do their jobs properly why should their possibly invalid conclusions be used to affect the lives of billions of people in the world?
The same could be said for the US Congress (or the british Parliament). Basically any collection of humans given authority could be said to be completely unworthy of our trust. Police make mistakes all the time, why trust them with law enforcement? Food companies make mistakes all the time, why trust them with food? Airports make mistakes all the time, why trust them with flying?
You have a right to be skeptical, sure. But at some point each one of us has to decide for him/herself whether reality is more that what we personally observe and whether we want to grow our own food, provide our own security, fly our own airplanes (to our own airports) and perform our own climate research.
Because, like law enforcement, food production, and flying airplanes, doing climate research is difficult. It's scientific research. So unless you want to set up your own lab and publish your own papers, you kinda need institutions like the IPCC.
I am fascinated by your ideas and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
It's damn scary just how far the Chinese have wormed into the US corporate and military systems
That would be scary if I didn't think you were just making that up.
The reason they have not? It's not that they're scared of the US retaliating in kind - they clearly have the upper hand on that front. They need us to continue leeching our dollars and tech.
Orrr... the Chinese don't actually have the godlike capabilities you ascribe to them.
So in your hypothetical, a method has been posted online to allow anyone to generate legitimate-looking software key.
Meaning, anyone can use the software and there's no way to tell whether they have a legitimate license or not.
I think for Blizzard that would qualify as a catastrophic failure of their anti-piracy scheme.
Would such a failure have a negative affect on sales? It's hard to prove either way. Personally, I think it would be a wash, but it's apparently hard for software vendors to wrap their brain around the idea that software piracy = free viral advertising.
you say
With either type of CD key, you'd be defeating your own anti-piracy scheme.
but the GP says
BNET-D started because several individuals had banned CD-Keys or wished to play with pirated versions of Blizzards games.
which sounds to me like an admission that Blizzard's anti-piracy scheme had already failed.
of course, the other plank of Blizzard's anti-piracy scheme was online play exclusively through their controlled servers. That this was a bonehead, anti-consumer stance that did little or nothing to prevent piracy is irrelevant.
With the premise that you are more efficient at investing your money for the benefit of society than the government, I'm sure that you could find an objection to every tax in your paycheck.
Past returns are not a guarantee of future performance.
Your 401k could be worth nothing tomorrow. Meanwhile social security may remain solvent when your grand-children retire.
When you're 67, advances in medicine may provide you the strength and vitality of your 30s. You may never need to retire due to old age. You may be able to work into your 100s, if you so desire.
40 years ago there were many who claimed to know what would happen in 20, 30, 40 years. Those who were right in any way, were right by chance alone.
Why do people reject markets
Because the market isn't geared towards making their experience more efficient.
That's generally why people don't like markets.
That and the boom and bust tendency that many markets have doesn't really mesh well with the human condition.
Why do people reject government intervention? What's to prefer in the cold machinery of the market? Are they afraid that the human traits of compassion and decency might win out over the cruelty of the invisible hand?
so "skeptics' conspiracy theories" would have been better?
Actually, yes, I think it's ok. I am willing to accept that science is performed by fallible human beings.
Like you. Like me.
Have you ever put together a jigsaw puzzle? Now imagine if the puzzle was split into a billion pieces. Some of which are mangled. Some of which are missing altogether. But if you can put it together, you'll gain valuable insight into how our world works. Your attitude would never allow us to even start, because we wouldn't be able to fill in the gaps.
At some point you have to acknowledge that we, humans, are in a state of limited knowledge. In order to find patterns and understand our world, we make huge assumptions. And our science works like that too.
Attacking scientists for making assumptions and "massaging" data is to attack the very core of what they do. They're trying to explain what is unknown and what they don't understand or can't explain they guess at.
And while the newspapers and television (and, yes, Al Gore) tend to gloss over it, they tend to be pretty explicit in the assumptions they are making.
I have yet to see the "deniers" be as heavily involved in money making schemes as the "alarmists."
not to be facile about this, but it kinda makes sense that people concerned about the future would be more likely to invest speculatively. Nor does it seem bizarre that they would invest in industries that stood to benefit from the changes they anticipate.
on the other hand, the deniers strike me as "head-in-the-sand" types. they have no faith in projections or science so it's difficult for them to make equivalently speculative investments.
what else would you call the theories of those who believe that there is no manmade global warming and that it is all a conspiracy?
Public policy has become the captive of a scientific-technological elite
whatthef*ck indeed!
imagine, scientists and engineers being consulted when formulating public policy.
things would be much better if we went back to praying to the heavens for answers.
clearly, you believe that all climate change science is a fraud.
can you think of anything that could convince you otherwise?
They hold grudges! They take personal stake in their projects! They make up data!
Say it aint so!
I always assumed that these men who study the long-term variations of the planet's climate were appointed by an infallible creator as impartial arbiters of truth!
But now I find out that they are just regular people! Their only qualifications are going to grad school, getting PhDs, and publishing papers that impressed their peers!
And to top it all off, they don't have respect for other scientists whose theories contradict their own! They complain that these conflicting theories are poorly constructed, easily refuted, and written explicitly for shock value. As though it matters.
I know that in America, every piece of information should be treated equally! Whether it's backed up by actual evidence, or not. It's not up to "experts" who have spent their lives studying these things to decide what's the truth. It's up to each and every person's gut!
Preponderance of evidence? I don't even know what that word means. But I do know that my momma didn't raise no fool. Going forwards, I am not going to trust any scientists ever again!
until then I'll always have my doubts as to what is really going on
and even after that, I imagine.
unless you intend to personally fact-check every data point (make your own ice-cores, etc) and then create your own models from their data, how can you be sure?
Honestly, I can't see how getting their hands on this data will mollify skeptics.
from your link
In 1987, Congress was told the project could be completed for $4.4 billion, but by 1993 the cost projection exceeded $12 billion.
When the project was canceled, 22.5 km (14.0 mi) of tunnel and 17 shafts to the surface were already dug, and nearly two billion dollars had already been spent on the massive facility.
You call $2 billion of a projected $12 billion, mostly paid-for?
Only possible downside is needing to setup a opera account to use the DNS
really? that's the only downside you can envision to setting up a web server on your parent's PC?
it says it runs in a sandbox, but sandboxes can have holes. especially when they let independent developers write plugins.
and, even if everything is 100% secure, what's to keep your dad from accidentally sharing that text file where he keeps his bank account passwords with the whole world?
The more services, the more work to keep track of everything.
You keep saying this. Even though my reply explicitly rebuts it.
More things = more to keep track of = requires more time and resources = more difficult to control.
Joe the Censor has to watch all sorts of things. But, lucky for him, he knows that 90 percent of the things he monitors are made by his friends. He asked his friends to make changes to the things so that he doesn't have to worry that they might be used for something Joe doesn't like.
Joe trusts his friends because he knows they know that if he finds out that they lied to him, he wont let them sell any more things at all! (Boy, it sure is nice how his friends really like making money more than anything else!)
Thus, Joe can spend his time just looking at people using the 10 percent of the things that aren't made by his friends.
And, what's this? Here's a thing called "Opera" that's doing baaaad things! But Joe's not worried, because Opera likes to make money. So, Joe knows that they'll soon be good friends!
Friends make Joe's job so much easier!
The more ways to access the web, the more work for the government when they are trying to censor it.
Except when companies (like Opera -- and many many many others) graciously cooperate in neutering their products so that they can access China's markets, that makes the censors' jobs easier.
These companies are complicit in China's censorship. On top of that, they're also providing a nice smokescreen for the Chinese government.
To wit, the more interesting question you're not asking is why does China government allow their people to use Opera or Mozilla (or Microsoft or Cisco or IBM or Dell, etc.)? Why not just force everyone in the country to access The People's Internet on The People's Computer with The People's Browser?
My bet is that they think it wouldn't work as well. That the loss in productivity of using their in-house hardware and software would put them at a disadvantage in the global economy. And more, the people they rule over would be ever more envious of the rest of the world and resentful of the restrictions.
How does not having any kind of access to Opera Mobile/Google/etc helps the people in China, compared to having a censored version?
Providing a censored version of Opera HURTS the people of China by making the work of their censors easier. Working with the demands of the government censors HURTS the people of China by making the effects of censorship less apparent (and more pernicious).
All I know is she couldn't be stupider than say, Reagan, or Bush
Sarah Palin accepts your challenge.
The real smart crooks encrypt their stuff in a way that nothing short of banging them over the head with a $5 pipe wrench will ever reveal.
how would giving someone a concussion reveal their password?
I don't think people are arguing that you should get vaccinated for the flu because it will protect you from the grim reaper. But good job debunking that one. Now we no longer have the false hope that the H1N1 vaccine was really a panacea for all disease and death.
5 links to the same story about one person who came down with a rare disorder 10 days after getting a flu shot. Say it with me: "coincidence is not causality".
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/breaking/64730177.html
http://www.foodconsumer.org/newsite/Non-food/Miscellaneous/virginia_player_wins_200_million_lottery_jackpot_101020090859.html
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/florida/story/1285214.html
You don't want to get a flu shot, good for you. Neither do I!
But there's no empirical evidence that it's at all dangerous, and plenty that says it does just what the health officials and doctors suggest: protects against the flu. Every argument I've seen against the H1N1 flu shot (including yours) falls into the FUD category.
From TFEFF:
However, despite that, it is clearly on a fast track; treaty proponents want it tabled at the G8 summit in July, and completed by the end of 2008.
Apparently their definition of "fast track" and mine are significantly different.
Not that I don't agree with the EFF, just saying that maybe the breaks have been applied after all.