It looks like you're using Sony's worldwide launch numbers, but Nintendo's (completely speculated) U.S. launch numbers. Why?
"Everything you read" says Sony shipped 400,000 -- okay, though there are lots of rumors to the contrary I don't know of documented evidence otherwise -- the main documentation seems to say that there are no verified numbers... but, like many reporters you seem to accept Sony's advance numbers by default (despite widespread reports that shipments were short). On the other hand, no definite numbers are known for Nintendo yet, so you... reject Nintendo's numbers and go with lower numbers you made up. Without even the short shipments rumors as in the PS3 case. Why? Are you aware of even one single store that had fewer than twice as many Wiis as PS3s? Most of the margins seem to be well above that, though of course the dust has not settled yet.
I had thought that the Wii was going to be 4 million units strong yesterday.
Why did you think this? Nintendo never said this. Nintendo said 4 million by the end of the year. It's unreasonable to be disappointed in Nintendo because you misread the press releases.
Based on the launch day alone, it looks like there was much stonger demand for the PS3.
You made up your numbers backing this up, and I'm unclear how you define yesterday as "leisurely"... fewer people shot at/robbed? Okay, I'll give you that, but it seems like most stores were still sold out pretty early in the morning, if not right at opening. If it took longer for the sellout to happen than for the PS3, it seems mostly because there were more units available, and more stores with significant numbers of units, so tracking all of them down took longer. Also, people weren't as worried about shortages, and could afford to be less crazy about getting one.
In any case, as basic econ tells us, in situations of inelastic demand (the hardcore fans), "shorter supply" can have effects that look very similar to "stronger demand," and it's very unclear why you're claiming the latter with no real evidence...
I think you're mixing up mitochondria (real) with midichlorians (pretend). My point was that the "real-world analogue" of midichlorians isn't an analogue, since you don't measure someone's mitochondria count to determine how much energy they have.
Only if you think that explaining a miracle scientifically destroys the miracle. Yoda's monologue is the RELIGIOUS explaination, the mitochondria is the SCIENTIFIC explaination, and Qui Gon was trying to use the SCIENTIFIC explaination to prove to the council that this was the boy they had been seeking.
This makes very little sense with, for example, Han Solo's dismissal of the force as "simple tricks and nonsense" if it is a scientifically explained process that can be quantitatively measured. Similarly, the "I find your lack of faith disturbing" scene suggests that even many people in the empire believed the force was superstition (so it's not that the empire just suppressed knowledge of it among the common people over the course of 20 years or so), and that the force was an issue of faith, not just physics.
As for your "two different mythos explaining the same phenomena," I'm still not convinced that squares with the eastern/gnostic "luminous beings are we, not this crude matter." In IV-VI, we see nothing to suggest a materialistic explanation: it is treated exactly as a religion, based on faith, with many people either believing or disbelieving it. In I-III, we see nothing to suggest a religious aspect. Explanations, when they are given at all, are purely materialistic and scientifically verifiable. The two just don't fit, not in so short a time span, before the information had a chance to die off/be suppressed.
Actually- we've got something similar in our own cells- Mitochondria- a symbiotic sub-cellular life form that produces energy
Ah, yes! Which is why you measure how much energy someone has by checking their mitochondria count.
I agree with the other poster, though. The force was a mystic energy field surrounding all life, not just some supernaturally-behaving-but-it-sounds-more-scienti fic organism in people's cells. Yoda's monologue in ESB makes no sense under the new interpretation.
You're down the street from Cary... where demand for the Wii is really high because, you say, there are lots of rich, spoiled kids (as opposed to the poor kids pushing for the PS3? But anyway)... but then you also say that your "local video game store," which presumably is in or near Cary, says there is no demand for the Wii.
Wow. Yeah, I had the same thing back when I worked for Microsoft and I went to the company store^W^W local software store, they saw surprisingly little demand for copies of MacOS X. I don't see why everyone is talking like the Apple market share is increasing, since judging by what the store employees said, people couldn't get enough of Windows software. If what you say is true, Mr. Sony Employee, Nintendo is in trouble...
The headline says "MSN Music Purchases Not Compatible with Zune." The summary says "Zune content is not supported on Plays For Sure devices," which is completely different, akin to saying "Nintendo DS games are not supported on Game Boy Advance systems," which is true, while the converse certainly is not... but so what? Zune may still support the old format, it's just the new Zune format won't work on old devices.
Has Microsoft actually made any statement even remotely supporting the claims in the headline?
1) Galileo invented the thermometer in 1593.
I don't trust any temperature data for dates prior to 1593.
Then it's a good thing you don't have to, I guess, since more recent data works just fine anyway -- but I question the usefulness of your perspective. It seems akin to saying "Biological heritability of traits was discovered in the 19th century. I don't trust any data on species development prior to the 19th century." -- ignoring of course the fact that there are ways (many of them reasonably accurate, or at least all the evidence suggests so) of deriving that data after the fact.
2) Isn't global warming better than another ice age?
Since both of them have the potential to kill millions or billions of people, I'd have to say both of them are pretty bad, and would prefer to avoid either extreme. This is kind of a non sequitur anyway -- there is no reason to think there is an imminent ice age. There is reason to think global warming is a real problem. Why are we comparing a real danger with a completely different and far less plausible scenario?
3) You know Al Gore's movie, where they show the glacier photos, before and after?
Are the before and after both from the same season?
Err. This is the best you can do? "You know that one scene, I think he might have fudged that one" is enough, in your mind, to overturn widespread scientific consensus? You don't even have any reason to think your claim is true, you just ask whether it might be true, and that's good enough?
My suspicion is that the data was not fudged in the case you describe, but I can't personally back it up -- though hard data from elsewhere suggests that if he did fudge it, it was out of laziness rather than necessity, since these changes, even in the same seasons, are documented.
But either way, how does a question like this get modded so highly? It adds nothing to the discussion, you just ask a question that it should be perfectly possible for someone to check, a question that those who are involved in this research surely thought of, and accounted for even if Al Gore didn't himself. A vague question like that isn't insightful, it's just FUD, unless you're actually prepared to at least argue (you can even hand-wave, go ahead, this isn't a journal article) that your suggestion is actually true.
[Democrats are] running an innocent and angelic campaign and wouldn't do anything bad at all and/or their dirty tricks aren't things nerds would care about eh?
I see similar comments on every thread that talks about possible election shenanigans by the Republican party. Now, here's the thing... Assuming this sort of rebuttal is correct, and the Democrats are just as blatantly corrupt and deceitful as the Republicans (which somehow makes it okay? -- but anyway), the one thing I'd like to hear from you is:
Given the balance of power in this country, you Republicans are clearly much more skilled at your corruption, ballot stuffing, etc... so do you think you could give us some tips? We'd really appreciate it...
People keep using this argument, but I have yet to see an answer to this apparent contradiction: If global warming caused by human actions is a serious danger, that would be an enormous financial blow to many of the richest and most powerful men in the world -- governments, much of big business, especially anything even peripherally related to oil or other traditional energy industries. If, on the other hand, this is all really no big deal, that is very much to their advantage, because they can carry on with business as usual, hang onto their money and power, and not worry about the environment very much.
Given that, how can you say that there is no funding for research investigating the real impact of global warming? The funding is there, the oil industry gives money to groups that try to "debunk" global warming along the lines of this article. The real issue is that apparently despite that funding, these groups can't produce a reputable scientific study that survives peer review. Why do you think that is?
I imagine you'll fall back on some "the scientific review process is biased" argument, which I will also disagree with (or rather, I'll disagree over the degree to which you claim it is biased, obviously there is at least some bias involved), but that is a very different problem from saying there is no grant money to be had for those who reach certain conclusions.
I just don't understand this line of reasoning, because indirectly at least, it's to the advantage of every human being on the planet if global warming is no big deal. Who is benefitting by falsely pushing this agenda? The alternative energy industry? We all know what a financial and legislative powerhouse that is. It must have been easy for them to buy off essentially all the climatologists in the world without every other industry and government in the world noticing.
Really, where do you think the motivation for this push is coming from?
In other words, once you see what the PS3 can do on a good display, you'd never buy a Wii.
By this reasoning, once I see what my PC can do on a 36" LCD screen, I'd never buy a 19" CRT. Hang on, lemme check. Nope, I still have a 19" CRT. And a 24" TV, or is it 22"? To be honest, I'm not sure, I'd have to check the manual, because that's not why I watch TV shows/movies or play games. I'm more interested in, you know, the content.
Of course that's besides the issue that I can't afford a PS3. Even if I really wanted one, I couldn't get it. You're telling people that once they drive a BMW they'll never buy anything else, when last time I checked, most people with cars can't afford BMWs, and BMW doesn't have anywhere near dominant market share. And before you say it, yes, $600 is arguably a good deal for the hardware you get, so maybe people could afford it. BMWs are still cheaper than most houses, after all, so everyone who can afford a house could have afforded a BMW... except that most people think that's an unreasonable trade, and similarly, for most people, having the best console hardware just isn't one of their top financial priorities...
Regarding the use of the the standard English word "rechristened," you wrote:
It's remarkable how much Christian mythology is used in common language. Stop and think before you keep promoting Faith over Reason.
Right. We should always keep in mind the etymology of every word we use, avoiding any with ascientific roots. In the future, please refrain from using the words "goodbye," "soulful," "Wednesday," "Thursday," well all the days of the week really, maybe the months too, and heck, let's throw in "breakfast" (only religious extremists fast).
Or... we could just accept that the meanings of words change over time, and not try too hard to read an agenda or conspiracy into the use of common words that can in specific contexts denote a religious ceremony.
lowering of research and writing standards, dealing with too much or just plain unbalanced information, corporate red-herrings, conflicts of interest, fanboyism, private agendas...
Well, granted, it might seem like it would be hard for bloggers and independent parties to mimic all the flaws of mainstream media you just listed, especially since all those problems have been dramatically worsening in recent years... but I have faith that the crowdsourcing contributors will be able to mangle their contributions enough to drop to mainstream media's low standards. If they work at it hard enough, anyway. It's like a limbo: you fall down at first, but given some practice you can keep setting the bar lower, and lower....
There are people right now who would bomb every airplane in the world if they had the ability to do so. There is no possibility of an accident happening on any similar scale.
I disagree with your second sentence: cf. the Indian Ocean Tsunami, with total casualties and economic damage both exceeding that of, say, every airplane in the sky at a given moment suddenly exploding.
But leaving that aside: a similar statement could be made in response to your first sentence, that is, that there is no possibility of any act of terrorism happening on any similar scale. It is a major success for the largest terrorist organizations in the world to bring down a few planes at a time, once. It seems like you're implying that people taking down all planes simultaneously could be a realistic possibility, and I'm not sure why you think that.
Then of course, there are traffic accidents, many of which are preventable, and which are every year on a far greater scale than all the terrorist attacks in history combined. So there really is a peculiarity in priorities here.
If that skyscraper then collapsed, killing 3000 people, I'm thinking we'd remember it. If not the exact date, at least the fact that it happened.
FTFSummary:
"...few of us would be able to name the date on which it happened."
Of course you'd remember that it happened, no one is arguing that we forget the events completely. But even when they have much higher death tolls, we don't remember them as specifically, and they fade much more quickly. To the degree that our priorities in avoiding such disasters can be drastically disproportionate, prioritizing a relative handful of lives lost to intentional actions over millions to more "random" (but still preventable!) events.
I could get hit by a meteor and die instantly when I walk outside tomorrow. There's nothing interesting about that, though, since it's essentially random, and there's nothing I can do about it anyway.
Right. But the point is that there are many situations with high death counts where we could do something about it (e.g. renovating the most dangerous roads/intersections in the country would each year save more lives than were lost in the twin towers, many times over, and would cost less than invading Iraq). Yet people tend to overprioritize the "deliberate" dangers anyway.
Agreed -- I'm much more concerned with behaving ethically than behaving legally. I buy most of my music, often through iTunes when it's available, but if for some reason I really wanted a different player after my iPod dies, I'd jump through whatever illegal hoops I need to to transfer my music. I paid for it, I don't do massive music sharing, if it bothers them that I can listen to the music I paid for, well, I'll just have to somehow cope with the knowledge that the music industry doesn't like me very much.
Sorry but the fans are wrong in this one. Viral advertising doesnt mean stealing intellectual property and copyrighted material to show your "love" for whatever is being promoted.
Aha -- then presumably you think that the fan site being billed (11th Hour) should also be compensated for its original artwork that was included in extra features on the Firefly DVD release? Since, you know, the studio shouldn't be "stealing" "intellectual property"?
See, this is what I don't get. Obviously the studio has a legal right to do at least most of what they're doing, but that completely ignores the unwritten ethics of the situation -- yet everyone is jumping all over the fan site.
The studio encouraged this site earlier. Even up to including their work in features about fan support, on the official DVD. You don't see any hypocrisy (albeit legal hypocrisy) in then turning around and trying to shut the site down and take its money?
The thing is, the $9000 they're asking for is a huge deal for a fan site, but means very little to the studio. They aren't going to pump up their income from the movie by getting money in this way. They could have requested that sites take down allegedly infringing material -- it seems like the guy has done everything he can to comply with the law since getting the letter, at least, so this would have been a very easy way to solve the "problem" -- but instead they are being assholes, and trying to take money from someone they not only benefitted from, but actively encouraged.
Alright, I didn't see this thread till it hit 1500, but maybe someone will see this:
If 1% of the people who joked about moving to Canada after the last election instead moved to, say, Florida and Ohio, we could fix this whole mess.
I don't intend to leave, and if you're thinking of leaving, please don't. There's still a chance to improve the situation. If everyone who dislikes the state of the country leaves, then there really will be no one left to keep the most powerful military in the world (for now:-P) from doing whatever an unstable pseudo-fundamentalist leader wants. As depressing as it seems, the presence of even a small opposition is still keeping Bush from doing a lot of things...
I'm not sure why you're getting such hostile replies to your comment, but thank you for posting this. Your comment stands head-and-shoulders above all the modded-5 comments that are just speculating over whether the study is valid without giving any good basis for that speculation. I wish more articles had comments like this.
IQ is meant to measure exactly what you're describing -- the inborn intelligence that is relatively non-plastic after birth (or at least the first few years of development.)
Right. I said in my post it was meant to measure that. I also said it fails. Intelligence can change substantially after the first few years of development, if (again repeating myself) you take someone out of poverty and give them a good education. Or even if they just change their educational focus to be more in line with things measured by an IQ test.
Anti-racists can take the Stephen J. Gould route and attack the motivation and methodology of individual IQ researchers, most of them long dead, but don't bother. It just makes you look silly, unless you really can name names and publications and know their significance in the context of the entire field of IQ research.
So, we're trying to prove that a gap doesn't exist. Stephen J. Gould, to use your example, shows major flaws in some of the leading research that suggests there is a gap. He also argues quantitatively that the same data used by that research in fact shows that there is no significant gap. His arguments can be understood by anyone with a basic knowledge of statistics. So what's the problem? How does this make someone look silly because they don't also become thoroughly familiar with the entire publication history of the field?
Certainly, I would not expect Stephen J. Gould to convince someone who firmly does not want to be convinced. That's not the same thing. The arguments are there, the fact that you can't know all of them, or your friend doesn't accept them, doesn't mean there is no evidence.
Trust me (again -- I'm experienced!), don't make this argument unless you're prepared to continue arguing after your opponent says, "Yes, that's exactly what I believe."
I was prepared for that. But since I was discussing the subject in good faith, I was first trying to point out the implications of the original comment, since a lot of people are naive about what IQ means without realizing some of its history and the racist results it supports. If someone is arguing the point with me to get, as you say, "satisfaction and conviction" from my "sputtering and inability to continue the discussion rationally," rather than to have an actual discussion, well then I'm not really interested in talking with them anyway. But for people who are interested, there are answers to the points you raise (I particularly like Stephen J. Gould's essay in "The Mismeasure of Man," though as I said, I wouldn't expect that to change someone's mind if they don't want to change it.)
We damn well do know that people with high IQ are usually more successful than those with low IQ.
True, but (as shouldn't even have to be pointed out in this discussion) correlation does not imply causation. Specifically: when people are given better education, their IQ increases. IQ is decidedly not (as you claim) "mostly in-born [and] inheritable" unless you really believe that there is a measurable sense in which whites are inherently (on average) intellectually superior to blacks and hispanics in the United States.
Now, even aside from any issues of political correctness, I hope you aren't in fact claiming that, because it's been pretty thoroughly refuted. If you take someone (of any race) out of poverty and give them a good education, their average IQ increases dramatically. While in any group (including those in poverty) there will be certain extraordinary individuals who have a high IQ (or whatever positive attribute you're measuring) despite all disadvantages, the frequency of these individuals goes up an awful lot if you take away the disadvantages in the first place.
The reason some people dislike IQ, or claim it does not measure anything useful, is that most discussions about it implicitly assume that it succeeds in its goal of measuring intellectual capacity independently of cultural and educational factors. In this it fails completely. Which doesn't mean that it isn't measuring anything useful, but your comment shows there are still plenty of people who think IQ is some sort of "in-born" attribute. It's not.
There is a sort of unfairness that goes against Western ideals. The idea that anybody can pull themself up out of poverty, that every child has a chance to succeed intellectually, is threatened by this.
I'm actually kind of with you on this. I don't think the world is as fair as a lot of people would like to believe, and I don't think that anyone can pull themselves out of poverty, everyone has a chance to succeed, etc. -- and even though I think IQ is (mostly) bunk, I think some amount of intelligence is inborn. But nowhere near all. Even people who could have been very successful intellectually can fail because of their surroundings. All of which suggests, to me anyway, that it is important to do what we can to help others out of poverty and to provide children with good educations, since they may not be able to attain these things themselves regardless of their actions (that is, unlike some Americans, I don't see poverty as a moral failing).
But, as I said, the fact that the world isn't fair doesn't mean it's unfair in the particular way you suggest, that is, that IQ is an innate property transcending culture, language, and education, and rich folks just happen to be innately the smartest.
Not necessarily -- it is conceivable that there exists a poly-time algorithm for an NP-complete problem, but there is no proof (within ZFC, say) that it is correct. The physical truth is certain -- but what we can know about the physical truth is limited.
Now, I'm with you in believing that that's extraordinarily improbable, but math doesn't always respect what we consider to be likely.
In my opinion (as a complexity theory grad student), the "maybe P=NP is independent" speculation is bunk. There are genuine, interesting results talking about the limits of how we can resolve P vs. NP, but none of them come anywhere near logical independence, and giving up on a field-defining problem after 30-odd years is just very odd considering how long the really major open problems often take to solve. I believe the solution exists, and I hope it is found soon, but I will be unsurprised if it takes another 100 years or so while we get a better handle on what computation really means.
It saddens me that today's youth brags about getting all their news from the daily show...
I don't know many people who brag about that, exactly. It's usually said more in disgust, as in "even a comedian is more informative than most news sources now." As for print newspapers, they're losing a lot of offline readers to their own websites, so they're still being read, the medium is just shifting.
3000 people? Look at the annual death toll from cancer, heart disease, diabetes, or auto accidents sometime. Where would all that money really be better spent?
An excellent point, and one I've made repeatedly. If one tenth of the money (probably a lot less, but never mind) spent in Iraq was instead spent on improving, say, the 1% most dangerous traffic intersections in the country (okay, roads are a state issue, not federal, but work with me here), then we would be saving 3000 lives every single year, easily. Or if the money was put into medical infrastructure. Or anti-smoking initiatives. You know, whatever, the point is that while 9/11 is a tragedy that we should not forget, we most certainly do need to move on.
Terrorism is a problem, and we should address it, but if our goal is protecting the safety of the American people we're doing it in about the least efficient way possible. When we take this one problem of terrorism and make it not just a problem we should try to address but instead the single defining problem of our existence, we're really just being fucking idiots.
While 9/11 may be the single biggest terrorist attack in history, the US has not had the sort of long-term major issue with terrorism that, say, England has, and somehow they managed to make it through decades of the IRA without focusing on it to the exclusion of all other issues. We have a seriously warped perspective about what it means to be "safe."
Slashdot Mirror
It looks like you're using Sony's worldwide launch numbers, but Nintendo's (completely speculated) U.S. launch numbers. Why?
"Everything you read" says Sony shipped 400,000 -- okay, though there are lots of rumors to the contrary I don't know of documented evidence otherwise -- the main documentation seems to say that there are no verified numbers... but, like many reporters you seem to accept Sony's advance numbers by default (despite widespread reports that shipments were short). On the other hand, no definite numbers are known for Nintendo yet, so you... reject Nintendo's numbers and go with lower numbers you made up. Without even the short shipments rumors as in the PS3 case. Why? Are you aware of even one single store that had fewer than twice as many Wiis as PS3s? Most of the margins seem to be well above that, though of course the dust has not settled yet.
I had thought that the Wii was going to be 4 million units strong yesterday.
Why did you think this? Nintendo never said this. Nintendo said 4 million by the end of the year. It's unreasonable to be disappointed in Nintendo because you misread the press releases.
Based on the launch day alone, it looks like there was much stonger demand for the PS3.
You made up your numbers backing this up, and I'm unclear how you define yesterday as "leisurely"... fewer people shot at/robbed? Okay, I'll give you that, but it seems like most stores were still sold out pretty early in the morning, if not right at opening. If it took longer for the sellout to happen than for the PS3, it seems mostly because there were more units available, and more stores with significant numbers of units, so tracking all of them down took longer. Also, people weren't as worried about shortages, and could afford to be less crazy about getting one.
In any case, as basic econ tells us, in situations of inelastic demand (the hardcore fans), "shorter supply" can have effects that look very similar to "stronger demand," and it's very unclear why you're claiming the latter with no real evidence...
I think you're mixing up mitochondria (real) with midichlorians (pretend). My point was that the "real-world analogue" of midichlorians isn't an analogue, since you don't measure someone's mitochondria count to determine how much energy they have.
Only if you think that explaining a miracle scientifically destroys the miracle. Yoda's monologue is the RELIGIOUS explaination, the mitochondria is the SCIENTIFIC explaination, and Qui Gon was trying to use the SCIENTIFIC explaination to prove to the council that this was the boy they had been seeking.
This makes very little sense with, for example, Han Solo's dismissal of the force as "simple tricks and nonsense" if it is a scientifically explained process that can be quantitatively measured. Similarly, the "I find your lack of faith disturbing" scene suggests that even many people in the empire believed the force was superstition (so it's not that the empire just suppressed knowledge of it among the common people over the course of 20 years or so), and that the force was an issue of faith, not just physics.
As for your "two different mythos explaining the same phenomena," I'm still not convinced that squares with the eastern/gnostic "luminous beings are we, not this crude matter." In IV-VI, we see nothing to suggest a materialistic explanation: it is treated exactly as a religion, based on faith, with many people either believing or disbelieving it. In I-III, we see nothing to suggest a religious aspect. Explanations, when they are given at all, are purely materialistic and scientifically verifiable. The two just don't fit, not in so short a time span, before the information had a chance to die off/be suppressed.
Actually- we've got something similar in our own cells- Mitochondria- a symbiotic sub-cellular life form that produces energy
Ah, yes! Which is why you measure how much energy someone has by checking their mitochondria count.
I agree with the other poster, though. The force was a mystic energy field surrounding all life, not just some supernaturally-behaving-but-it-sounds-more-scienti fic organism in people's cells. Yoda's monologue in ESB makes no sense under the new interpretation.
Well, the Republicans got a negative outcome, so I guess that means they'll finally start calling for election/e-voting reform....
You're down the street from Cary... where demand for the Wii is really high because, you say, there are lots of rich, spoiled kids (as opposed to the poor kids pushing for the PS3? But anyway)... but then you also say that your "local video game store," which presumably is in or near Cary, says there is no demand for the Wii.
Care to explain the apparent contradiction?
Wow. Yeah, I had the same thing back when I worked for Microsoft and I went to the company store^W^W local software store, they saw surprisingly little demand for copies of MacOS X. I don't see why everyone is talking like the Apple market share is increasing, since judging by what the store employees said, people couldn't get enough of Windows software. If what you say is true, Mr. Sony Employee, Nintendo is in trouble...
The headline says "MSN Music Purchases Not Compatible with Zune." The summary says "Zune content is not supported on Plays For Sure devices," which is completely different, akin to saying "Nintendo DS games are not supported on Game Boy Advance systems," which is true, while the converse certainly is not... but so what? Zune may still support the old format, it's just the new Zune format won't work on old devices.
Has Microsoft actually made any statement even remotely supporting the claims in the headline?
1) Galileo invented the thermometer in 1593. I don't trust any temperature data for dates prior to 1593.
Then it's a good thing you don't have to, I guess, since more recent data works just fine anyway -- but I question the usefulness of your perspective. It seems akin to saying "Biological heritability of traits was discovered in the 19th century. I don't trust any data on species development prior to the 19th century." -- ignoring of course the fact that there are ways (many of them reasonably accurate, or at least all the evidence suggests so) of deriving that data after the fact.
2) Isn't global warming better than another ice age?
Since both of them have the potential to kill millions or billions of people, I'd have to say both of them are pretty bad, and would prefer to avoid either extreme. This is kind of a non sequitur anyway -- there is no reason to think there is an imminent ice age. There is reason to think global warming is a real problem. Why are we comparing a real danger with a completely different and far less plausible scenario?
3) You know Al Gore's movie, where they show the glacier photos, before and after? Are the before and after both from the same season?
Err. This is the best you can do? "You know that one scene, I think he might have fudged that one" is enough, in your mind, to overturn widespread scientific consensus? You don't even have any reason to think your claim is true, you just ask whether it might be true, and that's good enough?
My suspicion is that the data was not fudged in the case you describe, but I can't personally back it up -- though hard data from elsewhere suggests that if he did fudge it, it was out of laziness rather than necessity, since these changes, even in the same seasons, are documented.
But either way, how does a question like this get modded so highly? It adds nothing to the discussion, you just ask a question that it should be perfectly possible for someone to check, a question that those who are involved in this research surely thought of, and accounted for even if Al Gore didn't himself. A vague question like that isn't insightful, it's just FUD, unless you're actually prepared to at least argue (you can even hand-wave, go ahead, this isn't a journal article) that your suggestion is actually true.
[Democrats are] running an innocent and angelic campaign and wouldn't do anything bad at all and/or their dirty tricks aren't things nerds would care about eh?
I see similar comments on every thread that talks about possible election shenanigans by the Republican party. Now, here's the thing... Assuming this sort of rebuttal is correct, and the Democrats are just as blatantly corrupt and deceitful as the Republicans (which somehow makes it okay? -- but anyway), the one thing I'd like to hear from you is:
Given the balance of power in this country, you Republicans are clearly much more skilled at your corruption, ballot stuffing, etc... so do you think you could give us some tips? We'd really appreciate it...
People keep using this argument, but I have yet to see an answer to this apparent contradiction: If global warming caused by human actions is a serious danger, that would be an enormous financial blow to many of the richest and most powerful men in the world -- governments, much of big business, especially anything even peripherally related to oil or other traditional energy industries. If, on the other hand, this is all really no big deal, that is very much to their advantage, because they can carry on with business as usual, hang onto their money and power, and not worry about the environment very much.
Given that, how can you say that there is no funding for research investigating the real impact of global warming? The funding is there, the oil industry gives money to groups that try to "debunk" global warming along the lines of this article. The real issue is that apparently despite that funding, these groups can't produce a reputable scientific study that survives peer review. Why do you think that is?
I imagine you'll fall back on some "the scientific review process is biased" argument, which I will also disagree with (or rather, I'll disagree over the degree to which you claim it is biased, obviously there is at least some bias involved), but that is a very different problem from saying there is no grant money to be had for those who reach certain conclusions.
I just don't understand this line of reasoning, because indirectly at least, it's to the advantage of every human being on the planet if global warming is no big deal. Who is benefitting by falsely pushing this agenda? The alternative energy industry? We all know what a financial and legislative powerhouse that is. It must have been easy for them to buy off essentially all the climatologists in the world without every other industry and government in the world noticing.
Really, where do you think the motivation for this push is coming from?
In other words, once you see what the PS3 can do on a good display, you'd never buy a Wii.
By this reasoning, once I see what my PC can do on a 36" LCD screen, I'd never buy a 19" CRT. Hang on, lemme check. Nope, I still have a 19" CRT. And a 24" TV, or is it 22"? To be honest, I'm not sure, I'd have to check the manual, because that's not why I watch TV shows/movies or play games. I'm more interested in, you know, the content.
Of course that's besides the issue that I can't afford a PS3. Even if I really wanted one, I couldn't get it. You're telling people that once they drive a BMW they'll never buy anything else, when last time I checked, most people with cars can't afford BMWs, and BMW doesn't have anywhere near dominant market share. And before you say it, yes, $600 is arguably a good deal for the hardware you get, so maybe people could afford it. BMWs are still cheaper than most houses, after all, so everyone who can afford a house could have afforded a BMW... except that most people think that's an unreasonable trade, and similarly, for most people, having the best console hardware just isn't one of their top financial priorities...
Regarding the use of the the standard English word "rechristened," you wrote:
It's remarkable how much Christian mythology is used in common language. Stop and think before you keep promoting Faith over Reason.
Right. We should always keep in mind the etymology of every word we use, avoiding any with ascientific roots. In the future, please refrain from using the words "goodbye," "soulful," "Wednesday," "Thursday," well all the days of the week really, maybe the months too, and heck, let's throw in "breakfast" (only religious extremists fast).
Or... we could just accept that the meanings of words change over time, and not try too hard to read an agenda or conspiracy into the use of common words that can in specific contexts denote a religious ceremony.
Apologies for feeding the troll.
lowering of research and writing standards, dealing with too much or just plain unbalanced information, corporate red-herrings, conflicts of interest, fanboyism, private agendas...
Well, granted, it might seem like it would be hard for bloggers and independent parties to mimic all the flaws of mainstream media you just listed, especially since all those problems have been dramatically worsening in recent years... but I have faith that the crowdsourcing contributors will be able to mangle their contributions enough to drop to mainstream media's low standards. If they work at it hard enough, anyway. It's like a limbo: you fall down at first, but given some practice you can keep setting the bar lower, and lower....
There are people right now who would bomb every airplane in the world if they had the ability to do so. There is no possibility of an accident happening on any similar scale.
I disagree with your second sentence: cf. the Indian Ocean Tsunami, with total casualties and economic damage both exceeding that of, say, every airplane in the sky at a given moment suddenly exploding.
But leaving that aside: a similar statement could be made in response to your first sentence, that is, that there is no possibility of any act of terrorism happening on any similar scale. It is a major success for the largest terrorist organizations in the world to bring down a few planes at a time, once. It seems like you're implying that people taking down all planes simultaneously could be a realistic possibility, and I'm not sure why you think that.
Then of course, there are traffic accidents, many of which are preventable, and which are every year on a far greater scale than all the terrorist attacks in history combined. So there really is a peculiarity in priorities here.
If that skyscraper then collapsed, killing 3000 people, I'm thinking we'd remember it. If not the exact date, at least the fact that it happened.
FTFSummary:
"...few of us would be able to name the date on which it happened."
Of course you'd remember that it happened, no one is arguing that we forget the events completely. But even when they have much higher death tolls, we don't remember them as specifically, and they fade much more quickly. To the degree that our priorities in avoiding such disasters can be drastically disproportionate, prioritizing a relative handful of lives lost to intentional actions over millions to more "random" (but still preventable!) events.
I could get hit by a meteor and die instantly when I walk outside tomorrow. There's nothing interesting about that, though, since it's essentially random, and there's nothing I can do about it anyway.
Right. But the point is that there are many situations with high death counts where we could do something about it (e.g. renovating the most dangerous roads/intersections in the country would each year save more lives than were lost in the twin towers, many times over, and would cost less than invading Iraq). Yet people tend to overprioritize the "deliberate" dangers anyway.
Agreed -- I'm much more concerned with behaving ethically than behaving legally. I buy most of my music, often through iTunes when it's available, but if for some reason I really wanted a different player after my iPod dies, I'd jump through whatever illegal hoops I need to to transfer my music. I paid for it, I don't do massive music sharing, if it bothers them that I can listen to the music I paid for, well, I'll just have to somehow cope with the knowledge that the music industry doesn't like me very much.
Sorry but the fans are wrong in this one. Viral advertising doesnt mean stealing intellectual property and copyrighted material to show your "love" for whatever is being promoted.
Aha -- then presumably you think that the fan site being billed (11th Hour) should also be compensated for its original artwork that was included in extra features on the Firefly DVD release? Since, you know, the studio shouldn't be "stealing" "intellectual property"?
See, this is what I don't get. Obviously the studio has a legal right to do at least most of what they're doing, but that completely ignores the unwritten ethics of the situation -- yet everyone is jumping all over the fan site.
The studio encouraged this site earlier. Even up to including their work in features about fan support, on the official DVD. You don't see any hypocrisy (albeit legal hypocrisy) in then turning around and trying to shut the site down and take its money?
The thing is, the $9000 they're asking for is a huge deal for a fan site, but means very little to the studio. They aren't going to pump up their income from the movie by getting money in this way. They could have requested that sites take down allegedly infringing material -- it seems like the guy has done everything he can to comply with the law since getting the letter, at least, so this would have been a very easy way to solve the "problem" -- but instead they are being assholes, and trying to take money from someone they not only benefitted from, but actively encouraged.
Sure, it's legal, but that doesn't make it right.
Alright, I didn't see this thread till it hit 1500, but maybe someone will see this:
If 1% of the people who joked about moving to Canada after the last election instead moved to, say, Florida and Ohio, we could fix this whole mess.
I don't intend to leave, and if you're thinking of leaving, please don't. There's still a chance to improve the situation. If everyone who dislikes the state of the country leaves, then there really will be no one left to keep the most powerful military in the world (for now :-P) from doing whatever an unstable pseudo-fundamentalist leader wants. As depressing as it seems, the presence of even a small opposition is still keeping Bush from doing a lot of things...
I'm not sure why you're getting such hostile replies to your comment, but thank you for posting this. Your comment stands head-and-shoulders above all the modded-5 comments that are just speculating over whether the study is valid without giving any good basis for that speculation. I wish more articles had comments like this.
IQ is meant to measure exactly what you're describing -- the inborn intelligence that is relatively non-plastic after birth (or at least the first few years of development.)
Right. I said in my post it was meant to measure that. I also said it fails. Intelligence can change substantially after the first few years of development, if (again repeating myself) you take someone out of poverty and give them a good education. Or even if they just change their educational focus to be more in line with things measured by an IQ test.
Anti-racists can take the Stephen J. Gould route and attack the motivation and methodology of individual IQ researchers, most of them long dead, but don't bother. It just makes you look silly, unless you really can name names and publications and know their significance in the context of the entire field of IQ research.
So, we're trying to prove that a gap doesn't exist. Stephen J. Gould, to use your example, shows major flaws in some of the leading research that suggests there is a gap. He also argues quantitatively that the same data used by that research in fact shows that there is no significant gap. His arguments can be understood by anyone with a basic knowledge of statistics. So what's the problem? How does this make someone look silly because they don't also become thoroughly familiar with the entire publication history of the field?
Certainly, I would not expect Stephen J. Gould to convince someone who firmly does not want to be convinced. That's not the same thing. The arguments are there, the fact that you can't know all of them, or your friend doesn't accept them, doesn't mean there is no evidence.
Trust me (again -- I'm experienced!), don't make this argument unless you're prepared to continue arguing after your opponent says, "Yes, that's exactly what I believe."
I was prepared for that. But since I was discussing the subject in good faith, I was first trying to point out the implications of the original comment, since a lot of people are naive about what IQ means without realizing some of its history and the racist results it supports. If someone is arguing the point with me to get, as you say, "satisfaction and conviction" from my "sputtering and inability to continue the discussion rationally," rather than to have an actual discussion, well then I'm not really interested in talking with them anyway. But for people who are interested, there are answers to the points you raise (I particularly like Stephen J. Gould's essay in "The Mismeasure of Man," though as I said, I wouldn't expect that to change someone's mind if they don't want to change it.)
We damn well do know that people with high IQ are usually more successful than those with low IQ.
True, but (as shouldn't even have to be pointed out in this discussion) correlation does not imply causation. Specifically: when people are given better education, their IQ increases. IQ is decidedly not (as you claim) "mostly in-born [and] inheritable" unless you really believe that there is a measurable sense in which whites are inherently (on average) intellectually superior to blacks and hispanics in the United States.
Now, even aside from any issues of political correctness, I hope you aren't in fact claiming that, because it's been pretty thoroughly refuted. If you take someone (of any race) out of poverty and give them a good education, their average IQ increases dramatically. While in any group (including those in poverty) there will be certain extraordinary individuals who have a high IQ (or whatever positive attribute you're measuring) despite all disadvantages, the frequency of these individuals goes up an awful lot if you take away the disadvantages in the first place.
The reason some people dislike IQ, or claim it does not measure anything useful, is that most discussions about it implicitly assume that it succeeds in its goal of measuring intellectual capacity independently of cultural and educational factors. In this it fails completely. Which doesn't mean that it isn't measuring anything useful, but your comment shows there are still plenty of people who think IQ is some sort of "in-born" attribute. It's not.
There is a sort of unfairness that goes against Western ideals. The idea that anybody can pull themself up out of poverty, that every child has a chance to succeed intellectually, is threatened by this.
I'm actually kind of with you on this. I don't think the world is as fair as a lot of people would like to believe, and I don't think that anyone can pull themselves out of poverty, everyone has a chance to succeed, etc. -- and even though I think IQ is (mostly) bunk, I think some amount of intelligence is inborn. But nowhere near all. Even people who could have been very successful intellectually can fail because of their surroundings. All of which suggests, to me anyway, that it is important to do what we can to help others out of poverty and to provide children with good educations, since they may not be able to attain these things themselves regardless of their actions (that is, unlike some Americans, I don't see poverty as a moral failing).
But, as I said, the fact that the world isn't fair doesn't mean it's unfair in the particular way you suggest, that is, that IQ is an innate property transcending culture, language, and education, and rich folks just happen to be innately the smartest.
Not necessarily -- it is conceivable that there exists a poly-time algorithm for an NP-complete problem, but there is no proof (within ZFC, say) that it is correct. The physical truth is certain -- but what we can know about the physical truth is limited.
Now, I'm with you in believing that that's extraordinarily improbable, but math doesn't always respect what we consider to be likely.
In my opinion (as a complexity theory grad student), the "maybe P=NP is independent" speculation is bunk. There are genuine, interesting results talking about the limits of how we can resolve P vs. NP, but none of them come anywhere near logical independence, and giving up on a field-defining problem after 30-odd years is just very odd considering how long the really major open problems often take to solve. I believe the solution exists, and I hope it is found soon, but I will be unsurprised if it takes another 100 years or so while we get a better handle on what computation really means.
It saddens me that today's youth brags about getting all their news from the daily show...
I don't know many people who brag about that, exactly. It's usually said more in disgust, as in "even a comedian is more informative than most news sources now." As for print newspapers, they're losing a lot of offline readers to their own websites, so they're still being read, the medium is just shifting.
3000 people? Look at the annual death toll from cancer, heart disease, diabetes, or auto accidents sometime. Where would all that money really be better spent?
An excellent point, and one I've made repeatedly. If one tenth of the money (probably a lot less, but never mind) spent in Iraq was instead spent on improving, say, the 1% most dangerous traffic intersections in the country (okay, roads are a state issue, not federal, but work with me here), then we would be saving 3000 lives every single year, easily. Or if the money was put into medical infrastructure. Or anti-smoking initiatives. You know, whatever, the point is that while 9/11 is a tragedy that we should not forget, we most certainly do need to move on.
Terrorism is a problem, and we should address it, but if our goal is protecting the safety of the American people we're doing it in about the least efficient way possible. When we take this one problem of terrorism and make it not just a problem we should try to address but instead the single defining problem of our existence, we're really just being fucking idiots.
While 9/11 may be the single biggest terrorist attack in history, the US has not had the sort of long-term major issue with terrorism that, say, England has, and somehow they managed to make it through decades of the IRA without focusing on it to the exclusion of all other issues. We have a seriously warped perspective about what it means to be "safe."
We will have to wait 90 years to learn whether or not some lifeform was listening.
Wrong! They've discovered faster-than-light travel ages ago. We'll only need ~50 years.
Although even this is presumptuous: it doesn't tell us whether someone was listening, but whether, after listening, they still wanted to talk to us.
"Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us." -- Calvin