Re:There is an illusion today among younger people
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Twilight of the Bomb
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· Score: 1
Evil is a thing you do. It's a verb. There's no division into 'good' people and 'evil' people
Well, you're welcome to your viewpoint, but I disagree...
Too bad. You don't get to redefine concepts that are millennia old to suit your purposes.
this is not a Disney cartoon with handsome, prancing heroes and dastardly villains with sycophants as offsiders. There's no musical cue or colouring choice to guide you into knowing whose arrogance and misogyny and murdering you need to contextualise as the forgivable failings of the good and whose wrongdoing arises because they are evil.
What a wonderful way to whitewash the whole subject and remove any responsibility... Everything is relative in your world, everything is ok...
Are you so stupid that you replied to my remarks without reading them?
Thankfully there are rough men (and now women) who are willing to stand up and do what is required, so you can sit there in your safe, warm house and make such absurd comments.
Who are these rough men you are talking about? ISIS?
Re:There is an illusion today among younger people
on
Twilight of the Bomb
·
· Score: 1
There is an illusion today among younger people that somehow our world isn't full of evil people,
Evil is a thing you do. It's a verb. There's no division into 'good' people and 'evil' people - this is not a Disney cartoon with handsome, prancing heroes and dastardly villains with sycophants as offsiders. There's no musical cue or colouring choice to guide you into knowing whose arrogance and misogyny and murdering you need to contextualise as the forgivable failings of the good and whose wrongdoing arises because they are evil.
that another Hitler or Stalin won't emerge, that world peace is at hand and that only small regional conflicts far away will happen in the future.
Stalin was an ally - at least for a while. So was Osama Bin Laden. And Saddam Hussein. And the US.
A million people died in Iraq. A million. At this point, nobody as proffered a credible reason why a million people were killed. Were they all teh evil?
Escaping the earth's gravity well is the millstone about the neck of the exploration of the rest of the Universe for the Earthling humans.
Really? I woiuld have thought, by any measure, the sheer size of the galaxy, let alone the universe, is the actual millstone. The delta v required to reach orbit (11.2 km/s) is only a quarter of the size needed to escape the gravity of the sun (42 km/s) and thus escape the solar system. Even then, you will get nowhere, the delta-v required to travel anywhere is measure in fractions of the speed of light, and any practical speed (for the purposes of travelling) is measured in units far above what we can hope to achieve. By way of example, it will take the fastest moving object we have sent to the edge of our solar system millions of years to reach the next star. The galaxy is billions of stars deep.
Clearly, then, if we want to actually explore the universe, we must find a away to do so that doesn't require physically moving a probe in the direction of interest. In which case, delta-v to orbit around earth, as challenging as that is, is generally irrelevant.
So you DO trust statements that have been repeatedly refuted?
Interesting.
Most people (includign myself) tend to distrust in assertions that have been previosuly refuted, and further, to distrust organisations/groups who make those assertions repeatedly, after they have already been refuted.
Take climate denialists for example. They claim that during the 1970's claims about Global Cooling dominated climate discussion, much as AGW has since the 1980's. But that claim ahs been shown to be ridiculous.
Therefore we tend to distrust the claims of climate denialists.
Then they claimed that the climate was not actually warming. This claim was refuted, but no retraction from the denialists was forthcoming, no explanation as to how their observations were so wrong.
Therefore we tend to distrust the claims of climate denialists.
Then they claimed that the climate was actually warming, but due to solar variation. This claim was refuted, but no retraction from the denialists was forthcoming, no explanation as to how their observations were so wrong.
Therefore we tend to distrust the claims of climate denialists.
Then they claimed that the climate was actually warming, but for reasons unknown, nobody knows why or could ever know, it's impossible to know. This claim was refuted, but no retraction from the denialists was forthcoming, no explanation as to how their methodology got it so wrong.
Therefore we tend to distrust the claims of climate denialists.
Then they claimed that the climate was actually warming, but not warming as much as observation would tend to make us believe because mumble mumble CONSPIRACY. This claim was refuted, but no retraction from the denialists was forthcoming, no explanation as to how their methodology got it so wrong.
Therefore we tend to distrust the claims of climate denialists.
Then they claimed that the climate was actually warming, but not warming as much as observation would tend to make us believe because models something something. This claim was refuted, but no retraction from the denialists was forthcoming, no explanation as to how their methodology got it so wrong.
Therefore we tend to distrust the claims of climate denialists.
asteroid impacts are not an irrational fear, they are an inevitability. if we do nothing to protect ourselves, an asteroid will wipe out mankind... eventually.
There is a fundamental difference between having an idea or belief in your own head, and acting on that idea or belief so that it affects other people.
I dunno that the difference is that fundamental.
In any case attempting to ban beliefs or ideas that contradict your own beliefs would certainly be classed as "acting on [your] idea or belief so that it affects other people.". Don't you think?
I generally find that those who advocate for banning some idea or belief do so without realising that the some mechanism can be applied to their own beliefs.
Nobody owes you a burden of proof." If they want my tax money to spend in an attempt to avoid that possible catastrophe, I think they do owe me that.
So you are motivated by blind greed and this blinds you to the scientific proof. Or you prefer to lie to others about the reliability of the science for your own financial gain.
There is of course, historical precedent. You might think that when the time comes to admit you were wrong, you be able to say "aww shucks sorry about that" and all will be forgiven.
In reality, the delay in addressing climate change, which you helped cause, is costing us. There are a number people working diligently with spreadsheets to understand that cost. You owe us, and we'll collect.
So, you are calling the DoD liars in that article I posted?
Well, someone's lying. Them. You. Don't much care who.
They claim to have found the WMD, but I guess you and the media links you provide must know better than the solders on the ground.
You're only embarrassing yourself. The 'weapons' they found were manufactured during the Iran-Iraq war. They were found on a scrapheap behind an abandoned building. The Iraqis didn't even know they were there. The Rumsfeld/Cheney/Wolfowitz regime claimed that WMD were still being manufactured. Powell claimed there were facilities still producing weapons.
These 'weapons' were about as dangerous as a cup-a-soup. If aluminium tubes frighten you enough that you think it justifies killing 500 000 people, you need to see a psychiatrist.
Why can't introduction to logic be mandatory education in our world already?
It's pretty simple really. If models have no predictive ability, and you can't/won't describe another mechanism which HAS predictive ability, then your assertion that the rate of change in the climate will be "less" than the rate predicted by the models has no basis in fact.
If we have the choice between preparing for catastrophe or not, and the possibility of catastrophe is unknown it is NOT proven that action must be taken.
Nobody owes you a burden of proof.
For example, I can posit that there is an unknown possibility of a catastrophic earth impact from some massive rock out in space. That is an accurate enough statement, but it is not proof that we must immediately start a multi-billion dollar program to combat the threat of our extinction.
We know the likelihood of asteroid impacts to a reasonable degree of certainty. How? Using science. In fact, we use models.
Climate change is in fact a bit different still, because contrary to what alarmists want to believe, the science is pretty clear that catastrophe is NOT coming down on our heads anywhere within the next 100 years.
So you tell us that the science is uncertain, but you yourself are certain of the likelihood of catastrophe. How did you reach that conclusion? did you point bones? chicken entrails?
Is there any plausible reason for us to accept your witchcraft?
I suppose you might panic, but saying the models are wrong doesn't make me panic, because it appears the situation is much better than predicted.
Feel free to point us to a reputable journal is which you've published your analysis of the present situation, including. specifically how you extrapolated from current observations to a prediction of future events.
I don't suppose anybody believes the lies,
That's quite possible.
I've engaged in conversations where denialists make an assertion, and when rebutted, come back a few days later and make the same assertion again. It's impossible to exhibit those behavioural traits without deliberately concealing that you know you are wrong.
You're right : it's quite possible that no denialist actually believes the basic assertions of denialism.
We need to continue to invest (massively) in climate research. At the same time, because there is uncertainty about model predictions we have to assume that the outcome could be worse the predictions, and begin mitigating against those outcomes immediately.
It's a pity that model outcomes could not be more certain.
So I guess Saddam gassing all the Kurds didn't really happen, and we should have never gone in there to put a stop to the systematic genocide Saddam was up to...
Saddam gassed the Kurds with the gas that you gave him. And later Rumsfeld dropped by to shake his hand.
Don't expect to be given the moral high ground over Saddam. During their mercifully brief but incredibly bloody reign, Rumsfeld/Cheney killed more Iraqis than he did during any period of the same length.
That gas was expired long before the lying started: the best the Iraqi Air Force could have done with it would be to hurl it from the plane and hope to hit someone in the head with the canister.
Finance, population statistics, various biological modeling applications, and basically all weather modeling works this way.
Fascinating. So based on 4 examples of modelling based abstraction of trend lines, you feel confident to declare that all modelling is overrated. Even though your examples don't include the model from the article.
As to long trends versus short trends, that's all subjective. What is long or short is arbitrary.
No it isn't.
And that is another big problem with trend lines, they do not show causation. They show correlation. Getting causation from a trend line is almost impossible.
Pretty show nobody is graphing a trend line to find the cause of ebola. We already knew what caused ebola before anybody drew a line.
It is mostly based on the abstraction of trend lines.
Can you provide an example of modelling based on abstraction of trend lines?
Which is the assumption that existing trends will continue. That is less a prediction of hte future than a picture of the present.
In my experience, this false assumption (that arbitrarily short trends, rather than the trends at the granularity of the model) seems to be the assumption made by people asserting that modelling is useless. Mind you, my experience mostly comes from dealing with morons.
Saying "The model's are wrong, we don't know how fast the climate is changing" would naturally induce panic or worse (from the perspective of the denialist cause), massive investment in climate change mitigation. If the climate models are wrong, then there is a possibility that the situation is worse then predicted. Because denialists don't have models they can't tell us how likely that circumstance is, so naturally we must prepare for the worst.
And all the climate change deniers are considered nuts for thinking that the scientists don't have the climate models right?
Without proof? Yes, this amounts to conspiracy theory.
Also climate deniers tend to make a very specific prediction with regard to climate: that the climate will remain pretty much the same regardless of the concentrations of greenhouse gas, or alternatively, that negative feedback will effectively overwhelm any positive feedback (leading to climate staying essentially the same). These assertions require proof, and this proof requires predictive modelling.
Excuse me, it is politically incorrect to doubt the climate change models.
The OP didn't mention climate models nor provide any basis for doubting climate models.
Besides which most people who cast aspersions on the accuracy of climate models fail to recognise the consequences of that argument. If climate models are inaccurate than there can be no basis for the denialist claim that changing the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere won't impact the climate. Denialists need models, and they need those models to agree with them.
Slashdot Mirror
Evil is a thing you do. It's a verb. There's no division into 'good' people and 'evil' people
Well, you're welcome to your viewpoint, but I disagree...
Too bad. You don't get to redefine concepts that are millennia old to suit your purposes.
this is not a Disney cartoon with handsome, prancing heroes and dastardly villains with sycophants as offsiders. There's no musical cue or colouring choice to guide you into knowing whose arrogance and misogyny and murdering you need to contextualise as the forgivable failings of the good and whose wrongdoing arises because they are evil.
What a wonderful way to whitewash the whole subject and remove any responsibility... Everything is relative in your world, everything is ok...
Are you so stupid that you replied to my remarks without reading them?
Thankfully there are rough men (and now women) who are willing to stand up and do what is required, so you can sit there in your safe, warm house and make such absurd comments.
Who are these rough men you are talking about? ISIS?
There is an illusion today among younger people that somehow our world isn't full of evil people,
Evil is a thing you do. It's a verb. There's no division into 'good' people and 'evil' people - this is not a Disney cartoon with handsome, prancing heroes and dastardly villains with sycophants as offsiders. There's no musical cue or colouring choice to guide you into knowing whose arrogance and misogyny and murdering you need to contextualise as the forgivable failings of the good and whose wrongdoing arises because they are evil.
that another Hitler or Stalin won't emerge, that world peace is at hand and that only small regional conflicts far away will happen in the future.
Stalin was an ally - at least for a while. So was Osama Bin Laden. And Saddam Hussein. And the US.
A million people died in Iraq. A million. At this point, nobody as proffered a credible reason why a million people were killed. Were they all teh evil?
Escaping the earth's gravity well is the millstone about the neck of the exploration of the rest of the Universe for the Earthling humans.
Really? I woiuld have thought, by any measure, the sheer size of the galaxy, let alone the universe, is the actual millstone. The delta v required to reach orbit (11.2 km/s) is only a quarter of the size needed to escape the gravity of the sun (42 km/s) and thus escape the solar system. Even then, you will get nowhere, the delta-v required to travel anywhere is measure in fractions of the speed of light, and any practical speed (for the purposes of travelling) is measured in units far above what we can hope to achieve. By way of example, it will take the fastest moving object we have sent to the edge of our solar system millions of years to reach the next star. The galaxy is billions of stars deep.
Clearly, then, if we want to actually explore the universe, we must find a away to do so that doesn't require physically moving a probe in the direction of interest. In which case, delta-v to orbit around earth, as challenging as that is, is generally irrelevant.
Interesting.
Most people (includign myself) tend to distrust in assertions that have been previosuly refuted, and further, to distrust organisations/groups who make those assertions repeatedly, after they have already been refuted. Take climate denialists for example. They claim that during the 1970's claims about Global Cooling dominated climate discussion, much as AGW has since the 1980's. But that claim ahs been shown to be ridiculous.
Therefore we tend to distrust the claims of climate denialists.
Then they claimed that the climate was not actually warming. This claim was refuted, but no retraction from the denialists was forthcoming, no explanation as to how their observations were so wrong.
Therefore we tend to distrust the claims of climate denialists.
Then they claimed that the climate was actually warming, but due to solar variation. This claim was refuted, but no retraction from the denialists was forthcoming, no explanation as to how their observations were so wrong.
Therefore we tend to distrust the claims of climate denialists.
Then they claimed that the climate was actually warming, but for reasons unknown, nobody knows why or could ever know, it's impossible to know. This claim was refuted, but no retraction from the denialists was forthcoming, no explanation as to how their methodology got it so wrong.
Therefore we tend to distrust the claims of climate denialists.
Then they claimed that the climate was actually warming, but not warming as much as observation would tend to make us believe because mumble mumble CONSPIRACY. This claim was refuted, but no retraction from the denialists was forthcoming, no explanation as to how their methodology got it so wrong.
Therefore we tend to distrust the claims of climate denialists.
Then they claimed that the climate was actually warming, but not warming as much as observation would tend to make us believe because models something something. This claim was refuted, but no retraction from the denialists was forthcoming, no explanation as to how their methodology got it so wrong.
Therefore we tend to distrust the claims of climate denialists.
Should I go on?
How ironic.
asteroid impacts are not an irrational fear, they are an inevitability. if we do nothing to protect ourselves, an asteroid will wipe out mankind... eventually.
Really?
Do you have the numbers on that?
There is a fundamental difference between having an idea or belief in your own head, and acting on that idea or belief so that it affects other people.
I dunno that the difference is that fundamental.
In any case attempting to ban beliefs or ideas that contradict your own beliefs would certainly be classed as "acting on [your] idea or belief so that it affects other people.". Don't you think?
I generally find that those who advocate for banning some idea or belief do so without realising that the some mechanism can be applied to their own beliefs.
Good to know, I'll be sure to mention this if I see you posting on this topic again and you are inclined to repeat your earlier lies.
Nobody owes you a burden of proof." If they want my tax money to spend in an attempt to avoid that possible catastrophe, I think they do owe me that.
So you are motivated by blind greed and this blinds you to the scientific proof. Or you prefer to lie to others about the reliability of the science for your own financial gain.
There is of course, historical precedent. You might think that when the time comes to admit you were wrong, you be able to say "aww shucks sorry about that" and all will be forgiven.
In reality, the delay in addressing climate change, which you helped cause, is costing us. There are a number people working diligently with spreadsheets to understand that cost. You owe us, and we'll collect.
So, you are calling the DoD liars in that article I posted?
Well, someone's lying. Them. You. Don't much care who.
They claim to have found the WMD, but I guess you and the media links you provide must know better than the solders on the ground.
You're only embarrassing yourself. The 'weapons' they found were manufactured during the Iran-Iraq war. They were found on a scrapheap behind an abandoned building. The Iraqis didn't even know they were there. The Rumsfeld/Cheney/Wolfowitz regime claimed that WMD were still being manufactured. Powell claimed there were facilities still producing weapons.
These 'weapons' were about as dangerous as a cup-a-soup. If aluminium tubes frighten you enough that you think it justifies killing 500 000 people, you need to see a psychiatrist.
Why can't introduction to logic be mandatory education in our world already?
It's pretty simple really. If models have no predictive ability, and you can't/won't describe another mechanism which HAS predictive ability, then your assertion that the rate of change in the climate will be "less" than the rate predicted by the models has no basis in fact.
If we have the choice between preparing for catastrophe or not, and the possibility of catastrophe is unknown it is NOT proven that action must be taken.
Nobody owes you a burden of proof.
For example, I can posit that there is an unknown possibility of a catastrophic earth impact from some massive rock out in space. That is an accurate enough statement, but it is not proof that we must immediately start a multi-billion dollar program to combat the threat of our extinction.
We know the likelihood of asteroid impacts to a reasonable degree of certainty. How? Using science. In fact, we use models.
Climate change is in fact a bit different still, because contrary to what alarmists want to believe, the science is pretty clear that catastrophe is NOT coming down on our heads anywhere within the next 100 years.
So you tell us that the science is uncertain, but you yourself are certain of the likelihood of catastrophe. How did you reach that conclusion? did you point bones? chicken entrails?
Is there any plausible reason for us to accept your witchcraft?
I suppose you might panic, but saying the models are wrong doesn't make me panic, because it appears the situation is much better than predicted.
Feel free to point us to a reputable journal is which you've published your analysis of the present situation, including. specifically how you extrapolated from current observations to a prediction of future events.
I don't suppose anybody believes the lies,
That's quite possible.
I've engaged in conversations where denialists make an assertion, and when rebutted, come back a few days later and make the same assertion again. It's impossible to exhibit those behavioural traits without deliberately concealing that you know you are wrong.
You're right : it's quite possible that no denialist actually believes the basic assertions of denialism.
We need to continue to invest (massively) in climate research. At the same time, because there is uncertainty about model predictions we have to assume that the outcome could be worse the predictions, and begin mitigating against those outcomes immediately.
It's a pity that model outcomes could not be more certain.
Heck, WMD were found: http://www.defense.gov/News/Ne... [defense.gov] http://www.nytimes.com/interac... [nytimes.com]
You're embarrassing yourself.
So I guess Saddam gassing all the Kurds didn't really happen, and we should have never gone in there to put a stop to the systematic genocide Saddam was up to...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H... [wikipedia.org]
Saddam gassed the Kurds with the gas that you gave him. And later Rumsfeld dropped by to shake his hand.
Don't expect to be given the moral high ground over Saddam. During their mercifully brief but incredibly bloody reign, Rumsfeld/Cheney killed more Iraqis than he did during any period of the same length.
That gas was expired long before the lying started: the best the Iraqi Air Force could have done with it would be to hurl it from the plane and hope to hit someone in the head with the canister.
Finance, population statistics, various biological modeling applications, and basically all weather modeling works this way.
Fascinating. So based on 4 examples of modelling based abstraction of trend lines, you feel confident to declare that all modelling is overrated. Even though your examples don't include the model from the article.
As to long trends versus short trends, that's all subjective. What is long or short is arbitrary.
No it isn't.
And that is another big problem with trend lines, they do not show causation. They show correlation. Getting causation from a trend line is almost impossible.
Pretty show nobody is graphing a trend line to find the cause of ebola. We already knew what caused ebola before anybody drew a line.
Computer modeling is vastly overrated.
I'm not convinced.
It is mostly based on the abstraction of trend lines.
Can you provide an example of modelling based on abstraction of trend lines?
Which is the assumption that existing trends will continue. That is less a prediction of hte future than a picture of the present.
In my experience, this false assumption (that arbitrarily short trends, rather than the trends at the granularity of the model) seems to be the assumption made by people asserting that modelling is useless. Mind you, my experience mostly comes from dealing with morons.
Why?
Not to suggest that the current surveillance is at all acceptable but it is not in the same league as the actions of the previous regime.
Luckily for them, nobody believes their lies.
And all the climate change deniers are considered nuts for thinking that the scientists don't have the climate models right?
Without proof? Yes, this amounts to conspiracy theory.
Also climate deniers tend to make a very specific prediction with regard to climate: that the climate will remain pretty much the same regardless of the concentrations of greenhouse gas, or alternatively, that negative feedback will effectively overwhelm any positive feedback (leading to climate staying essentially the same). These assertions require proof, and this proof requires predictive modelling.
Excuse me, it is politically incorrect to doubt the climate change models.
The OP didn't mention climate models nor provide any basis for doubting climate models.
Besides which most people who cast aspersions on the accuracy of climate models fail to recognise the consequences of that argument. If climate models are inaccurate than there can be no basis for the denialist claim that changing the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere won't impact the climate. Denialists need models, and they need those models to agree with them.
Machinery doesn't need life support. Thats the challenge.
Maybe we should send a comatose guy and a woman in an iron lung up there. For the challenge.
Try operating a machine like Opportunity on a planet like Venus or Earth for ten years. That would be very difficult.
And we could eat a bag of pine cones as well.
I'd rate landing on Mars and then driving about for 10 years to be a higher achievement than landing on the Moon and staying for a few hours.
What moth?