I'll take my own reasoning, which has proven to be the best of anyone I know, regardless of what TFA says.
I'm not sure if you are joking or not, but that is exactly the mistake the article is warning about. If you are actually serious, I think you should give the article a second look and spend some time considering it. Try to look at your actions the way someone else (who isn't aware of your thoughts and motivations) might see them. Spend time looking at the mistakes that other people make and try to imagine what they may have been thinking. Then you might be able to get an idea of what I'm talking about: your mistakes are a lot more obvious to someone who isn't you.
Or try this example. Write a story and then proofread it immediately for errors. Chances are you will overlook many or most of your errors. But if you gave it to someone else to proofread they would likely pick up the ones you missed. That's because they aren't aware of what you were trying to write, they are only aware of what you actually wrote. You can even do this by yourself if you write a document then proofread it much later after you've forgotten most of what you were thinking when you wrote it.
You are proposing that as new technologies are developed, population increases. But the most technically advanced countries tend to have the lowest birthrates. So your conclusion about the likelihood of a society ending calamity resulting from overpopulation brought on by advancements in technology is almost certainly wrong.
Perhaps our most dangerous bias is that we naturally assume that everyone else is more susceptible to thinking errors, a tendency known as the “bias blind spot.” This “meta-bias” is rooted in our ability to spot systematic mistakes in the decisions of others—we excel at noticing the flaws of friends—and inability to spot those same mistakes in ourselves.
So other people, even stupid people, will have a relatively easy time spotting my mistakes? Meaning that all I have to do is listen to them when they try to point them out to me. Problem solved.
The presence of evil does not imply it's necessity.
While it's possible that animal testing has contributed to medical science in the past, these days it's mostly done in the name of developing pharmaceutical products of dubious social value. I would propose to you that by your equation, any such testing would be highly unethical. Especially when you consider that a lot of the drugs developed ultimately do more harm than good.
While your position about defense projects might make sense historically, it's hard to argue that contemporary projects, like UAVs are justified.
Banking, likewise, could have been said to be justified in the past. These days, though, it's pretty clear that it's just a bunch of assholes trying to make a quick buck and screw everyone else over.
All of these industries (pharmaceuticals, defense, and banking) seemed reasonable in the past. If you can't see today that they are totally evil, you probably never will.
There's this rumor that Mr. Rogers was a sniper in Vietnam. These kind of rumors gain traction easily because people want to believe they are true, as if Mr. Rogers being a sniper somehow makes their depravity more justifiable. If you think there's never been a society that valued morality and did not celebrate violence and depravity and injustice, you just haven't looked hard enough, or you haven't believed in what you found.
Missing point: massive nonhuman species die-off affects factors human beings require to survive.
It hasn't so far.
also see: psychological damage from urban life/disturbing cultural changes present in human populations separated from wilderness
This is the typical conservative viewpoint: that any change must be disturbing psychological damaging. In reality people are adaptable to change. Moreover, we aren't talking about eliminating the wilderness, as much of the land which is not presently farmed is not suitable for such a purpose. Presumably, species present in persistent wilderness areas will remain unaffected.
Good job citing an "authoritative" source in your rebuttal that restates my original point.
Secondly, because the argument is inductive (which in this sense implies that the truth of the conclusion cannot be guaranteed by the truth of the premises), it also is fallacious to assert that the conclusion must be true. Such an assertion is a non sequitur; the inductive argument might have probabilistic or statistical merit, but the conclusion does not follow unconditionally in the sense of being logically necessary.
Well, we don't currently have the technology to farm on oceans or ice-covered land, so those are excluded from the equation of how much agriculturally capable land we have left.
So they're fudging the numbers to include only the land we potentially could alter, and ignoring the fact that it only makes up a relatively small portion of the global ecosystem. Also, we do farm fish and seaweed in the ocean, so you're wrong about that.
Short story short, humans alter their environment and ignore the consequences. That's what we're *trying* to deal with!
Are you? Or are you saying that we shouldn't be altering the environment in the first place? Because those two things are very different.
And people don't, and can't ignore the consequences of an altered environment, but often polluters don't/didn't consider the consequences when they decide/used to decide to pollute. These days it's different in the US and in Europe, someday that will probably be a global trend. As with regard to global warming, considering the consequences doesn't just mean making people feel guilty about polluting (that won't actually accomplish much) or convincing they to buy carbon credits (which will probably accomplish even less), it means making efforts to actually mitigate those consequences by building appropriate infrastructure such as irrigation and flood control. We should be building those things in any case.
When we convert land to agriculture, don't we usually want it to stay that way? Sometimes I wonder if people appreciate just how harsh the natural environment is for people. I don't think it's reasonable to say we should kill half the population just to restore the environment to it's original condition (if that's even possible). Most people wouldn't want to live that way anyway. Rather, we need to be making decisions about how to deal with the environment change that we expect to occur.
Besides, who's to say if it's 50% or 90%? Since the earth is very large, I'd bet on 90%. Also, why are we excluding oceans and ice covered land from our equation?
Long story short, humans alter their environment. Deal with it.
That's the thing about launch sites, they put them a long way from anything (China is excepted from this rule for some reason). There's nothing it to hit on land that would cause that much damage, unless it somehow landed in Orlando.
So a launch from Cape Canaveral could cause $2.7 Billion in damage? From what? Hitting an ocean liner? And the chances of that are. ..astronomical? I can't imagine the insurance would be very expensive (relative to the cost of a launch).
The thing that concerns me about proposals such as this is that they are usually a smokescreen for a "new" form of government that is actually worse than existing government. Either that, or they are the hopelessly naive rantings of someone who doesn't really know what's wrong but has some big ideas about how to fix it.
Ultimately the problem comes down to a lack of ownership, accountability, and responsibility. In society today, most of what's out there is owned by a relatively small number of people who are supposed to be in charge of and responsible for their property. In reality, people who own property typically rely on tricks to avoid liability while living a lavish lifestyle that is supposedly their reward for a job well done. The rest of society are likewise unwilling to take responsibility for the situation, but are happy to let others be in charge so that they can blame their problems on someone else. The two parties play this off as a conflict, but in reality they both accept the arrangement due to what can only be described as a mental disorder characterized by a delusional world view and dysfunctional/addictive personal habits.
That's where these kind of rantings come from. The haves imagine a world where they can be fee from being hassled by the have-nots who will mindlessly do their bidding. The have-nots imagine a world where the things are taken from the haves and given to the have-nots, or some wise committee of smart people who will surely do a better job of managing them. It's all a ridiculous fantasy, of course, but it keeps people stuck in their various ruts by feeding into their existing delusions about how the world works.
The problem is that you are using "appeal to authority" in the context of education, where it doesn't really fit. If someone tells you something, and you believe it, that's not an appeal to authority because nothing was in dispute.
But if an authority tells you something and it doesn't make sense to you or you think it is wrong I would contend that you should not simply accept it based on the reasoning that they know more than you do (to do so would be fallacious). There are a number of good reasons for this. First of all, just because someone knows more than you does not mean they are always correct or unbiased. Secondly, if they are correct, you don't understand what they've said and you ought to question them for further information.
So no, our schools should certainly not be encouraging people to accept things because scientists say so. Teaching that is the same as teaching ignorance (if that is possible).
In the context of global warming, or evolution, an argument from authority is always going to be fallacious. The other party already knows what scientists have said on the issue and has other reasons to believe otherwise (reasons which you will not discredit by appealing to authority). This carries over to basically any other context where an argument from authority is used.
Water vapor does help transport heat to the upper atmosphere, it warms the upper atmosphere as it condenses and cools the ground as it evaporates, it works kind of like a giant air conditioner. And Nitrogen and Oxygen do trap heat thermally. It's important to keep in mind that the atmosphere is more than just a radiant heat exchange system.
An appeal to authority isa logical fallacy. Saying "some expert says X so you must believe it" doesn't prove anything. It is not a valid counterpoint to any logical argument.
If an expert says something, and that's good enough for you, that's fine. But don't throw that out there and expect people to be impressed by it. You're basically saying you're too busy to look into things for yourself, and you don't have anything useful to say, but you're are chiming in anyway because you like to hear yourself talk.
And we certainly shouldn't teach that kind of "critical thinking" in a "science" class. What's the point of school if you're just teaching people to believe what they're told? Trust me, they do that naturally.
Finally, I would like to point out that modern science is the result of, and is perpetuated by people not simply accepting what they're told. So, it's definitely not reasonable to criticize someone for not accepting a scientific "consensus." Quite the opposite, there is little value is repeating what everyone else is saying, and that's all you're doing when you appeal to authority.
That's not because houses from that era have disintegrated. It's because older house have fallen out of style (they tended to have low ceilings and be poorly ventilated, among other things) and people no longer want to live in them. Any structure left unattended for a long time will fall into disrepair, and even though the structure will remain sound for decades or hundreds of years, it won't often be worthwhile to renovate it. With concrete structures, on the other hand, it is worthwhile to renovate, simply because they are so expensive to knock down.
You are wrong about the scarcity of concrete, of course. It is really very abundant, it's the expense of building with it that keeps people from using it.
Think of it like rope. The longer the length of rope you have, the more you can do with it, but it's also much easer for it to get tangled up in knots.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not sure if you are joking or not, but that is exactly the mistake the article is warning about. If you are actually serious, I think you should give the article a second look and spend some time considering it. Try to look at your actions the way someone else (who isn't aware of your thoughts and motivations) might see them. Spend time looking at the mistakes that other people make and try to imagine what they may have been thinking. Then you might be able to get an idea of what I'm talking about: your mistakes are a lot more obvious to someone who isn't you.
Or try this example. Write a story and then proofread it immediately for errors. Chances are you will overlook many or most of your errors. But if you gave it to someone else to proofread they would likely pick up the ones you missed. That's because they aren't aware of what you were trying to write, they are only aware of what you actually wrote. You can even do this by yourself if you write a document then proofread it much later after you've forgotten most of what you were thinking when you wrote it.
You are proposing that as new technologies are developed, population increases. But the most technically advanced countries tend to have the lowest birthrates. So your conclusion about the likelihood of a society ending calamity resulting from overpopulation brought on by advancements in technology is almost certainly wrong.
As populations become urbanized, the birth rate falls. No global catastrophe is necessary.
So other people, even stupid people, will have a relatively easy time spotting my mistakes? Meaning that all I have to do is listen to them when they try to point them out to me. Problem solved.
The presence of evil does not imply it's necessity.
While it's possible that animal testing has contributed to medical science in the past, these days it's mostly done in the name of developing pharmaceutical products of dubious social value. I would propose to you that by your equation, any such testing would be highly unethical. Especially when you consider that a lot of the drugs developed ultimately do more harm than good.
While your position about defense projects might make sense historically, it's hard to argue that contemporary projects, like UAVs are justified.
Banking, likewise, could have been said to be justified in the past. These days, though, it's pretty clear that it's just a bunch of assholes trying to make a quick buck and screw everyone else over.
All of these industries (pharmaceuticals, defense, and banking) seemed reasonable in the past. If you can't see today that they are totally evil, you probably never will.
There's this rumor that Mr. Rogers was a sniper in Vietnam. These kind of rumors gain traction easily because people want to believe they are true, as if Mr. Rogers being a sniper somehow makes their depravity more justifiable. If you think there's never been a society that valued morality and did not celebrate violence and depravity and injustice, you just haven't looked hard enough, or you haven't believed in what you found.
Congress just needs to stop using NASA as a pork receptacle.
It hasn't so far.
This is the typical conservative viewpoint: that any change must be disturbing psychological damaging. In reality people are adaptable to change. Moreover, we aren't talking about eliminating the wilderness, as much of the land which is not presently farmed is not suitable for such a purpose. Presumably, species present in persistent wilderness areas will remain unaffected.
You have to do what seems right to you.
I hear Apple may be releasing a higher resolution monitor on monday. We'll see. . .
Good job citing an "authoritative" source in your rebuttal that restates my original point.
So they're fudging the numbers to include only the land we potentially could alter, and ignoring the fact that it only makes up a relatively small portion of the global ecosystem. Also, we do farm fish and seaweed in the ocean, so you're wrong about that.
Are you? Or are you saying that we shouldn't be altering the environment in the first place? Because those two things are very different.
And people don't, and can't ignore the consequences of an altered environment, but often polluters don't/didn't consider the consequences when they decide/used to decide to pollute. These days it's different in the US and in Europe, someday that will probably be a global trend. As with regard to global warming, considering the consequences doesn't just mean making people feel guilty about polluting (that won't actually accomplish much) or convincing they to buy carbon credits (which will probably accomplish even less), it means making efforts to actually mitigate those consequences by building appropriate infrastructure such as irrigation and flood control. We should be building those things in any case.
When we convert land to agriculture, don't we usually want it to stay that way? Sometimes I wonder if people appreciate just how harsh the natural environment is for people. I don't think it's reasonable to say we should kill half the population just to restore the environment to it's original condition (if that's even possible). Most people wouldn't want to live that way anyway. Rather, we need to be making decisions about how to deal with the environment change that we expect to occur.
Besides, who's to say if it's 50% or 90%? Since the earth is very large, I'd bet on 90%. Also, why are we excluding oceans and ice covered land from our equation?
Long story short, humans alter their environment. Deal with it.
That's the thing about launch sites, they put them a long way from anything (China is excepted from this rule for some reason). There's nothing it to hit on land that would cause that much damage, unless it somehow landed in Orlando.
So a launch from Cape Canaveral could cause $2.7 Billion in damage? From what? Hitting an ocean liner? And the chances of that are. . .astronomical? I can't imagine the insurance would be very expensive (relative to the cost of a launch).
The thing that concerns me about proposals such as this is that they are usually a smokescreen for a "new" form of government that is actually worse than existing government. Either that, or they are the hopelessly naive rantings of someone who doesn't really know what's wrong but has some big ideas about how to fix it.
Ultimately the problem comes down to a lack of ownership, accountability, and responsibility. In society today, most of what's out there is owned by a relatively small number of people who are supposed to be in charge of and responsible for their property. In reality, people who own property typically rely on tricks to avoid liability while living a lavish lifestyle that is supposedly their reward for a job well done. The rest of society are likewise unwilling to take responsibility for the situation, but are happy to let others be in charge so that they can blame their problems on someone else. The two parties play this off as a conflict, but in reality they both accept the arrangement due to what can only be described as a mental disorder characterized by a delusional world view and dysfunctional/addictive personal habits.
That's where these kind of rantings come from. The haves imagine a world where they can be fee from being hassled by the have-nots who will mindlessly do their bidding. The have-nots imagine a world where the things are taken from the haves and given to the have-nots, or some wise committee of smart people who will surely do a better job of managing them. It's all a ridiculous fantasy, of course, but it keeps people stuck in their various ruts by feeding into their existing delusions about how the world works.
No, if you maintain that something must be true because it was claimed by an authority that is a fallacy no matter how authoritative the source is.
The problem is that you are using "appeal to authority" in the context of education, where it doesn't really fit. If someone tells you something, and you believe it, that's not an appeal to authority because nothing was in dispute.
But if an authority tells you something and it doesn't make sense to you or you think it is wrong I would contend that you should not simply accept it based on the reasoning that they know more than you do (to do so would be fallacious). There are a number of good reasons for this. First of all, just because someone knows more than you does not mean they are always correct or unbiased. Secondly, if they are correct, you don't understand what they've said and you ought to question them for further information.
So no, our schools should certainly not be encouraging people to accept things because scientists say so. Teaching that is the same as teaching ignorance (if that is possible).
In the context of global warming, or evolution, an argument from authority is always going to be fallacious. The other party already knows what scientists have said on the issue and has other reasons to believe otherwise (reasons which you will not discredit by appealing to authority). This carries over to basically any other context where an argument from authority is used.
Water vapor does help transport heat to the upper atmosphere, it warms the upper atmosphere as it condenses and cools the ground as it evaporates, it works kind of like a giant air conditioner. And Nitrogen and Oxygen do trap heat thermally. It's important to keep in mind that the atmosphere is more than just a radiant heat exchange system.
And you do not need to be an expert in order to do so.
An appeal to authority isa logical fallacy. Saying "some expert says X so you must believe it" doesn't prove anything. It is not a valid counterpoint to any logical argument.
If an expert says something, and that's good enough for you, that's fine. But don't throw that out there and expect people to be impressed by it. You're basically saying you're too busy to look into things for yourself, and you don't have anything useful to say, but you're are chiming in anyway because you like to hear yourself talk.
And we certainly shouldn't teach that kind of "critical thinking" in a "science" class. What's the point of school if you're just teaching people to believe what they're told? Trust me, they do that naturally.
Finally, I would like to point out that modern science is the result of, and is perpetuated by people not simply accepting what they're told. So, it's definitely not reasonable to criticize someone for not accepting a scientific "consensus." Quite the opposite, there is little value is repeating what everyone else is saying, and that's all you're doing when you appeal to authority.
It doesn't sound like you consider Apple to be the good guy here. That's all I'm saying.
I somehow doubt you'll ever find a case where a patent troll is the "good guy."
That's not because houses from that era have disintegrated. It's because older house have fallen out of style (they tended to have low ceilings and be poorly ventilated, among other things) and people no longer want to live in them. Any structure left unattended for a long time will fall into disrepair, and even though the structure will remain sound for decades or hundreds of years, it won't often be worthwhile to renovate it. With concrete structures, on the other hand, it is worthwhile to renovate, simply because they are so expensive to knock down.
You are wrong about the scarcity of concrete, of course. It is really very abundant, it's the expense of building with it that keeps people from using it.
Think of it like rope. The longer the length of rope you have, the more you can do with it, but it's also much easer for it to get tangled up in knots.
You could make a solar still.
This is true for forests as well. Lodgepole pine, for example, typically require high temperatures for their cones to open.