Nobody said there aren't extremists, but their existence has nothing to do with the discussion on whether or not climate change might be a problem. Their mention has no relevance in a rational discussion on whether or not it is a good idea to understand climate change, and only serves to manipulate people by pulling emotional strings. You associate one side of the argument with extremists, thereby irrationally tainting that argument by association. "Well who would want to think that, extremists think that".
Honestly, the existence of extremists is not going to change the hard facts about climate change. Their only possible relevance is their unintentional contribution of extra hot air into the atmosphere. No amount of arguing about extremists will change the precise details of the problem out there in objective reality. It's totally besides the point.
This is actually a very real problem. Look how many people on a typical/. thread about global warming are quick to state that there is NO climate change problem because they are afraid of being called "tree-hugger" etc. That's just stupid, it's akin to killing yourself by smoking because your peers implied that not smoking was "uncool".
I believe your argument is known as a "straw-man". You imply we only have two choices: ignore our environmental impact on the planet, or NOT EXIST AT ALL on the planet - the straw-man. And you set up the straw-man so that nobody would rationally choose that 'side', and thus must choose your argument of "we'll do what we want, consequences be damned".
Utter utter crap.
We run this planet now. This isn't about "saving precious mother earth" in it's "precious original state", honestly, grow up. Or at least, do some research. This is about, what can we do on this planet to create a sustainable future for ourselves. WE MAKE THE CHOICES. We decide how much or how little of our original "prestine" environment to keep, we decide whether or not to pollute our rivers, we decide whether or not to have a sustainable future or possibly all dying in a potential collapse of the eco-system. We can choose whether or not to try understand that eco-system, and do what needs to be done to keep it healthy for our own purposes.
You know, scientists aren't debating any more whether or not some major global climate change is or isn't underway. IT IS. We know it is. The questions that remain now are only (a) what is causing it and (b) what can we do about it if it's going to be a problem for us. Both of these questions require huge amounts of additional research whereby we need to learn and understand how our planet works. We don't need to sit around and wait to maybe die or not die, that is just stupid. Man is a problem-solver, we figure things out, we take on problems, study them, learn to understand them, and learn to solve them based on our understanding of them. Why exactly do you want to sit on your ass regarding this one? We can solve this riddle too, with research, LOTS of research, and collaboration. Honestly, we think we're so smart, we should actually be embarassed at how little we know about our own planet's workings.
The bottom line is that we need to do more research to understand how our planet's "physiology" functions. We don't know yet because we just don't know, but all of the data proves that something serious is happening as we speak. If you're waiting for someone to hand you all the answers, worked out, on a sheet of paper in easily digestible sound bytes, because it's "too much for you to handle", then you're a fool.
Seriously.. this is one of mankind's greatest challenges yet: figuring out how our planet works, and ultimately we need to figure out how it works anyway. So if you're tired of all the confusing, conflicting information coming at you, do something about it, go study physics etc, do some research yourself, publish your findings, make some contribution to man's overall understanding of how our planet works.
Science isn't a spectator sport where you wait for the "results at 11". TAKE PART, be useful.
There isn't enough information yet, nor enough of an understanding, to have a "revolutionary proof" for you, stop waiting for one to be handled to you on a silver platter. It's gonna take at least another thirty years of research before we start *understanding* the problems, and by then it may be too late.
Since +/- 1999, there is a new and very important difference between the Republicans and the Democrats: global imperialism. (Probably) never before has a swing to either side (Rs or Ds) had such potentially profound implications for the future of not only the US, but the planet as a whole. Every American really should at least have an opinion on the imperialism issue when they go to the polls this year - either decide if you're for it, or against it.
For once, it really does matter whether the Republicans or the Democrats take power.
Simply this: In peak hours, demand exceeds supply. That is, there are more people trying to get into the restaurant than can physically be accomodated for the evening. Thus some people MUST be rejected anyway. So in order to maximise the restaurant's profit, they would want to reject the poorer people and select the richer people, who are (on average) going to order more expensive items in the restaurant (and are probably also e.g. less likely to e.g. pay with a bad cheque). Thus meter parking prices are adjusted to the point where they encourage only the more wealthy people to use them, but are not set so high as to chase away enough people that restaurant seating demand falls below supply.
Unfortunately, someone beat you to it, that word has already been used, from google: http://www.asa3.org/archive/evolution/199808/0150. html. Although there it seems to be used for a bit of a different meaning - not being able to speak a language. Amazing, only one other occurrence of this word on the Web.
Actually, he/she could even just stay in the US, too: There are still roughly 150 indigenous American languages in use. (Although most of those are going extinct fairly radidly)
I have this theory that the more (theoretically) reliable computer systems we use to assist us with tasks, the more stupid/lazy/unreliable/incompetent the human operators operating the systems become.
My impression is that "in the old days" people made some effort and were thorough in making sure things were done right. Now all people have to do is press a damn button on a computer, and they can't even seem to get that right. You say "no onions", all they have to do is press a single button on a computerised ordering system, they nod "uh-buh, yeah" and you get onions. Or you try get, say, an ISP account disconnected, all they need to do is press a few buttons on a damn computer, they assure you it's getting done and later you discover nothing happened.
Our systems may become more reliable, but I think the human operators become more stupid, and the whole thing sort of balances out in the end.
Just watch, the guy at Jacksonville whose ONLY required task for his job is to sit and point an RFID reader at bags all day, is going to f* it up.
Granted this would probably be an act of terrorisim
Uh, HOW? Disabling a few RFID tags doesn't threaten anyone at all in any way. "Ooooh, I'm so scared, I'm terrified, someone might disable my airline's luggage tracking system!".. get real.
Vandalism, yes, terrorism, puh-lease. Terrorism is when you put bombs in the luggage and blow people up.
Anyway, what's the worst that would happen if you did do this? People would have to spend an hour or two manually re-sorting the luggage. Big f*cking whoop. The most "terrifying" part would be that your flight might be delayed for an hour or two. And that happens every day at airports all over the world.
That is utter crap, even in poor countries people such as celebrities, actors, athletes etc often become millionaires, yet math/science can still be held in esteem, even though those people don't make as much money as the aforementioned.
Also, you say "Any poor country is like that, where your profession is respected for how reliably it puts food on your table", but in the US it's EXACTLY THE SAME - the people who make huge amounts of money (e.g. celebrities) are the most "respected"! What does it have to do with poor countries? This is entirely a cultural difference. Your country rejects mathematicians and engineers, that is purely a cultural thing.
When it comes to messing with people's lives like this, I think we deserve MUCH better. Standardized test scores just give colleges an excuse to be lazy in admitting students instead of allowing students to build up a portfolio of successes in high school and personal life (relevant to academia) to compete with others against on.
Uh, sure. I suffered from depression as a teen, and my marks suffered likewise, so no "portfolio of successes" for me. But once I'd sorted out my various problems by the time I graduated from University, I've been performing extremely well as a C++ software developer in my field. Good thing the Universities didn't "mess with my life" by rejecting me because I didn't have a "portfolio of successes". There goes your theory; adolescent academic success is definitely no better indicator of real-world performance than standardized tests. (Likewise, I know many top performers in school who very quickly faded and amounted to nothing in the "real world" after leaving school.)
Tests are bogus and should be scrapped.
Unless you have something better and more accurate to replace them with, then the tests must remain. You are advocating replacing a poor test with something that is known to be worse - explain to me how that isn't going to end up "messing with more lives"?
Standardized tests do not represent anything of the real world. I can think of very few jobs that resemble standardized test taking.
Whether you like it or not, there is a strong correlation between IQ score and real-world performance. Plain and simple fact is, in the vast majority of cases, a person's IQ score correlates very well with their real-world performance. Only a small minority of people fall under "exceptions to this rule", and simply naming one of the few exceptions (like Bill Bradly), no matter how "big" the example is, does NOT make the rule and it's validity magically "go away".
So hey, sorry bud, I guess there must be something to standardized tests (like IQ) after all.
despite obvious instances of people who do not perform according to their 'score'.
In spite of the fact that exceptions exist, thing like IQ score are still very good, on average in the vast majority of cases as general indicators of overall intelligence. So what exactly is the problem? It may not be perfect, but it's the best damn indicator we have! Or do you know of a better one that contains fewer outlier/exception problems? No? Oh, well STFU then.
Hardly a "scam", what a ridiculous comment. IQ tests etc are good overall intelligence indicators for over 90% of people. There simply is no better test available. Or are you proposing we totally throw out the usage of such tests, just because they're not absolutely 100% reliable? That's just dumb.
Look, it's possible this guy has stumbled across some previously unknown laws of physics that allows energy to be extracted in some new unknown way. Sure. But there are literally thousands of claims like this every day from crackpots and con artists. If scientists/physicists were to attempt to fairly evaluate every single one, they'd never have enough time and resources to do any real science.
Don't worry about it. If this guy's claims are true, and he is selling mass-market retail products with true uber-impressive benefits using his method, people will eventually start taking notice, and the alleged 'science' will be evaluated fairly. If not, and he's just another con artist, let the market take care of him first, while the physicists do some real research. The scientific world doesn't "owe" a fair evaluation to every scamster or nutcase that comes along claiming to have single-handedly thrown into chaos the results of thousands of years of rigorous scientific methodology and slow painstaking well-tested progress. And anyway, when the occasional 'freak' "real genius" does appear 'out of the blue', he/she'll get noticed for what he/she is worth, like Einstein.
Even the phrase "a single cubic centimeter of volume" is meaningless, a cubic centimeter is a volume, but of what?? Quite a remarkable sentence, so much wrongness condensed into only a few elegant words. And starts with "it's a known fact", to boot.
I suspect the poster may have been attempting to refer to the energy in the electro-weak forces that bond protons and neutrons together in the atoms of a single volume of some solid substance, i.e. the energy released when atoms are split in a nuclear chain reaction. Enough to wipe out the solar system, I doubt, but maybe enough to "condense out" (???) a small state?
Alternatively it may have been a well-crafted troll.
So he lied to you, but he didn't "deceive you"? I'm not sure how to resolve that.
Sure jokes can be funny in the right context. IF you're a stand-up comedian in a f*cking night club, moron, not if you're the damn president of the USA who has now led hundreds to their death you don't joke about it. God, I suppose you're one of those people who would think it funny to make anti-Semitic German Nazi jokes to relatives of victims of the holocause. No difference really, "as with any joke, some people will be offended", right?
Indeed. The US government effectively protecting MS after the antitrust trial "in the name of the US economy" can be seen as amounting to an odd form of protectionism (i.e. basically: "well they may be big and fat and badly behaved, but they're a US company, and allowing them to dominate (globally) helps the US economy, so we'll go easy on them... if we allow competition, a foreign competitor may overtake US in the OS market, which would be bad for US IT in general"). However, protectionism in a free market "rewards" fat/slow/inefficient competitors in the short term, i.e. it encourages a company to basically be badly run, which isn't good for anyone (not unlike socialist systems where companies are government-owned and are granted legally protected monopolies). In the longer term, some powerful (possibly foreign) competitor is likely to rise sooner or later in the OS market. And you can be sure that they'll be much more efficient than Microsoft, and have more attractive products, because MS don't know how to compete on those terms.
Uh, is it moral for a company to illegally destroy another company (putting hundreds out of work) then get away with it because the regulatory process is too slow?
"might it not move equally quickly to destroy them"
No, that's just dumb and naive. There are many methods that can be used to unfairly stay at the top when you're in a powerful monopoly position. Study some damn economics, read the damn findings, whatever.
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Nobody said there aren't extremists, but their existence has nothing to do with the discussion on whether or not climate change might be a problem. Their mention has no relevance in a rational discussion on whether or not it is a good idea to understand climate change, and only serves to manipulate people by pulling emotional strings. You associate one side of the argument with extremists, thereby irrationally tainting that argument by association. "Well who would want to think that, extremists think that".
Honestly, the existence of extremists is not going to change the hard facts about climate change. Their only possible relevance is their unintentional contribution of extra hot air into the atmosphere. No amount of arguing about extremists will change the precise details of the problem out there in objective reality. It's totally besides the point.
This is actually a very real problem. Look how many people on a typical /. thread about global warming are quick to state that there is NO climate change problem because they are afraid of being called "tree-hugger" etc. That's just stupid, it's akin to killing yourself by smoking because your peers implied that not smoking was "uncool".
I believe your argument is known as a "straw-man". You imply we only have two choices: ignore our environmental impact on the planet, or NOT EXIST AT ALL on the planet - the straw-man. And you set up the straw-man so that nobody would rationally choose that 'side', and thus must choose your argument of "we'll do what we want, consequences be damned".
Utter utter crap.
We run this planet now. This isn't about "saving precious mother earth" in it's "precious original state", honestly, grow up. Or at least, do some research. This is about, what can we do on this planet to create a sustainable future for ourselves. WE MAKE THE CHOICES. We decide how much or how little of our original "prestine" environment to keep, we decide whether or not to pollute our rivers, we decide whether or not to have a sustainable future or possibly all dying in a potential collapse of the eco-system. We can choose whether or not to try understand that eco-system, and do what needs to be done to keep it healthy for our own purposes.
So you choose to do nothing?
You know, scientists aren't debating any more whether or not some major global climate change is or isn't underway. IT IS. We know it is. The questions that remain now are only (a) what is causing it and (b) what can we do about it if it's going to be a problem for us. Both of these questions require huge amounts of additional research whereby we need to learn and understand how our planet works. We don't need to sit around and wait to maybe die or not die, that is just stupid. Man is a problem-solver, we figure things out, we take on problems, study them, learn to understand them, and learn to solve them based on our understanding of them. Why exactly do you want to sit on your ass regarding this one? We can solve this riddle too, with research, LOTS of research, and collaboration. Honestly, we think we're so smart, we should actually be embarassed at how little we know about our own planet's workings.
The bottom line is that we need to do more research to understand how our planet's "physiology" functions. We don't know yet because we just don't know, but all of the data proves that something serious is happening as we speak. If you're waiting for someone to hand you all the answers, worked out, on a sheet of paper in easily digestible sound bytes, because it's "too much for you to handle", then you're a fool.
Seriously .. this is one of mankind's greatest challenges yet: figuring out how our planet works, and ultimately we need to figure out how it works anyway. So if you're tired of all the confusing, conflicting information coming at you, do something about it, go study physics etc, do some research yourself, publish your findings, make some contribution to man's overall understanding of how our planet works.
Science isn't a spectator sport where you wait for the "results at 11". TAKE PART, be useful.
There isn't enough information yet, nor enough of an understanding, to have a "revolutionary proof" for you, stop waiting for one to be handled to you on a silver platter. It's gonna take at least another thirty years of research before we start *understanding* the problems, and by then it may be too late.
Just checking, dumping is bad when other countries do it to the US, but it's OK when the US does it to other countries?
Uh, dude, he's 'retro-quoting' from ... hmm .. late 80s or early 90s. Notice the quotation marks. That's the sort of stuff we used to say ..
Since +/- 1999, there is a new and very important difference between the Republicans and the Democrats: global imperialism. (Probably) never before has a swing to either side (Rs or Ds) had such potentially profound implications for the future of not only the US, but the planet as a whole. Every American really should at least have an opinion on the imperialism issue when they go to the polls this year - either decide if you're for it, or against it.
For once, it really does matter whether the Republicans or the Democrats take power.
It's simple: economies of scale make complex electronics cheap.
Simply this: In peak hours, demand exceeds supply. That is, there are more people trying to get into the restaurant than can physically be accomodated for the evening. Thus some people MUST be rejected anyway. So in order to maximise the restaurant's profit, they would want to reject the poorer people and select the richer people, who are (on average) going to order more expensive items in the restaurant (and are probably also e.g. less likely to e.g. pay with a bad cheque). Thus meter parking prices are adjusted to the point where they encourage only the more wealthy people to use them, but are not set so high as to chase away enough people that restaurant seating demand falls below supply.
Unfortunately, someone beat you to it, that word has already been used, from google: http://www.asa3.org/archive/evolution/199808/0150. html. Although there it seems to be used for a bit of a different meaning - not being able to speak a language. Amazing, only one other occurrence of this word on the Web.
Actually, he/she could even just stay in the US, too: There are still roughly 150 indigenous American languages in use. (Although most of those are going extinct fairly radidly)
I have this theory that the more (theoretically) reliable computer systems we use to assist us with tasks, the more stupid/lazy/unreliable/incompetent the human operators operating the systems become.
My impression is that "in the old days" people made some effort and were thorough in making sure things were done right. Now all people have to do is press a damn button on a computer, and they can't even seem to get that right. You say "no onions", all they have to do is press a single button on a computerised ordering system, they nod "uh-buh, yeah" and you get onions. Or you try get, say, an ISP account disconnected, all they need to do is press a few buttons on a damn computer, they assure you it's getting done and later you discover nothing happened.
Our systems may become more reliable, but I think the human operators become more stupid, and the whole thing sort of balances out in the end.
Just watch, the guy at Jacksonville whose ONLY required task for his job is to sit and point an RFID reader at bags all day, is going to f* it up.
Ditto, I have "\n"s in probably thousands of lines of code all over the place, haven't noticed any such problem either.
Granted this would probably be an act of terrorisim
Uh, HOW? Disabling a few RFID tags doesn't threaten anyone at all in any way. "Ooooh, I'm so scared, I'm terrified, someone might disable my airline's luggage tracking system!" .. get real.
Vandalism, yes, terrorism, puh-lease. Terrorism is when you put bombs in the luggage and blow people up.
Anyway, what's the worst that would happen if you did do this? People would have to spend an hour or two manually re-sorting the luggage. Big f*cking whoop. The most "terrifying" part would be that your flight might be delayed for an hour or two. And that happens every day at airports all over the world.
Um, sure, it's not a problem: http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/biztech/01/03/spam.co sts.ap/
That is utter crap, even in poor countries people such as celebrities, actors, athletes etc often become millionaires, yet math/science can still be held in esteem, even though those people don't make as much money as the aforementioned.
Also, you say "Any poor country is like that, where your profession is respected for how reliably it puts food on your table", but in the US it's EXACTLY THE SAME - the people who make huge amounts of money (e.g. celebrities) are the most "respected"! What does it have to do with poor countries? This is entirely a cultural difference. Your country rejects mathematicians and engineers, that is purely a cultural thing.
When it comes to messing with people's lives like this, I think we deserve MUCH better. Standardized test scores just give colleges an excuse to be lazy in admitting students instead of allowing students to build up a portfolio of successes in high school and personal life (relevant to academia) to compete with others against on.
Uh, sure. I suffered from depression as a teen, and my marks suffered likewise, so no "portfolio of successes" for me. But once I'd sorted out my various problems by the time I graduated from University, I've been performing extremely well as a C++ software developer in my field. Good thing the Universities didn't "mess with my life" by rejecting me because I didn't have a "portfolio of successes". There goes your theory; adolescent academic success is definitely no better indicator of real-world performance than standardized tests. (Likewise, I know many top performers in school who very quickly faded and amounted to nothing in the "real world" after leaving school.)
Tests are bogus and should be scrapped.
Unless you have something better and more accurate to replace them with, then the tests must remain. You are advocating replacing a poor test with something that is known to be worse - explain to me how that isn't going to end up "messing with more lives"?
Standardized tests do not represent anything of the real world. I can think of very few jobs that resemble standardized test taking.
Whether you like it or not, there is a strong correlation between IQ score and real-world performance. Plain and simple fact is, in the vast majority of cases, a person's IQ score correlates very well with their real-world performance. Only a small minority of people fall under "exceptions to this rule", and simply naming one of the few exceptions (like Bill Bradly), no matter how "big" the example is, does NOT make the rule and it's validity magically "go away".
So hey, sorry bud, I guess there must be something to standardized tests (like IQ) after all.
despite obvious instances of people who do not perform according to their 'score'.
In spite of the fact that exceptions exist, thing like IQ score are still very good, on average in the vast majority of cases as general indicators of overall intelligence. So what exactly is the problem? It may not be perfect, but it's the best damn indicator we have! Or do you know of a better one that contains fewer outlier/exception problems? No? Oh, well STFU then.
Hardly a "scam", what a ridiculous comment. IQ tests etc are good overall intelligence indicators for over 90% of people. There simply is no better test available. Or are you proposing we totally throw out the usage of such tests, just because they're not absolutely 100% reliable? That's just dumb.
Look, it's possible this guy has stumbled across some previously unknown laws of physics that allows energy to be extracted in some new unknown way. Sure. But there are literally thousands of claims like this every day from crackpots and con artists. If scientists/physicists were to attempt to fairly evaluate every single one, they'd never have enough time and resources to do any real science.
Don't worry about it. If this guy's claims are true, and he is selling mass-market retail products with true uber-impressive benefits using his method, people will eventually start taking notice, and the alleged 'science' will be evaluated fairly. If not, and he's just another con artist, let the market take care of him first, while the physicists do some real research. The scientific world doesn't "owe" a fair evaluation to every scamster or nutcase that comes along claiming to have single-handedly thrown into chaos the results of thousands of years of rigorous scientific methodology and slow painstaking well-tested progress. And anyway, when the occasional 'freak' "real genius" does appear 'out of the blue', he/she'll get noticed for what he/she is worth, like Einstein.
Even the phrase "a single cubic centimeter of volume" is meaningless, a cubic centimeter is a volume, but of what?? Quite a remarkable sentence, so much wrongness condensed into only a few elegant words. And starts with "it's a known fact", to boot.
I suspect the poster may have been attempting to refer to the energy in the electro-weak forces that bond protons and neutrons together in the atoms of a single volume of some solid substance, i.e. the energy released when atoms are split in a nuclear chain reaction. Enough to wipe out the solar system, I doubt, but maybe enough to "condense out" (???) a small state?
Alternatively it may have been a well-crafted troll.
So he lied to you, but he didn't "deceive you"? I'm not sure how to resolve that.
Sure jokes can be funny in the right context. IF you're a stand-up comedian in a f*cking night club, moron, not if you're the damn president of the USA who has now led hundreds to their death you don't joke about it. God, I suppose you're one of those people who would think it funny to make anti-Semitic German Nazi jokes to relatives of victims of the holocause. No difference really, "as with any joke, some people will be offended", right?
Indeed. The US government effectively protecting MS after the antitrust trial "in the name of the US economy" can be seen as amounting to an odd form of protectionism (i.e. basically: "well they may be big and fat and badly behaved, but they're a US company, and allowing them to dominate (globally) helps the US economy, so we'll go easy on them ... if we allow competition, a foreign competitor may overtake US in the OS market, which would be bad for US IT in general"). However, protectionism in a free market "rewards" fat/slow/inefficient competitors in the short term, i.e. it encourages a company to basically be badly run, which isn't good for anyone (not unlike socialist systems where companies are government-owned and are granted legally protected monopolies). In the longer term, some powerful (possibly foreign) competitor is likely to rise sooner or later in the OS market. And you can be sure that they'll be much more efficient than Microsoft, and have more attractive products, because MS don't know how to compete on those terms.
Firstly get a basic economics textbook and look up "product tying". Secondly, read the antitrust trial findings. Inform yourself.
Uh, is it moral for a company to illegally destroy another company (putting hundreds out of work) then get away with it because the regulatory process is too slow?
"might it not move equally quickly to destroy them"
No, that's just dumb and naive. There are many methods that can be used to unfairly stay at the top when you're in a powerful monopoly position. Study some damn economics, read the damn findings, whatever.