You obviously haven't been paying to international politics recently. Extension of US laws (aka: "harmonisation" or "bringing laws in sync", esp. copyright and drug law) to other countries is part and parcel of negotiations. Often times a country will decide that access to the US as a market for their exports outweighs the consequences of taking onboard more egregious aspects of the US body of law.
You have a messed up view of world economics. The $13 Billion of the Marshall plan was worth about $440 Billion dollars in modern value. The US national debt is something like $13 Trillion; good luck balancing those accounts. And regarding disasters, there are plenty of other nations that pitch in every time something bad happens - France, German, UK, Australia, Japan, pretty much any developed nation. It's only american egocentricity that makes them forget the contributions others make.
As for Chinese invasion of Europe, that's a 1950s mindset: the party leaders long since realised they have a lot more to gain by selling cheap televisions to western markets than they ever did by invading anybody. Invasions are expensive and they take a long time to return investment - but ten million toasters sold at a profit gets you a plush mansion filled with whores in fairly short order.
So sure, take your ball and your bat and go home. We prefer football, anyway.
You want to know what bad thing can happen when you keep felons from voting? You can have a political party take people out of the voting pool by making felons out of them.
Oh for mod points - that's a sane, frightening and compelling argument.
But why? I fail to understand what everybody has against them - sure, they're freaks and not a little creepy (ok, pretty damn creepy), but are they hurting anyone? I remember people used to say the same things about goths, and then suddenly everyone thought it was cool to wear black. Like all bizarro subcultures it'll be weird, then it will be boring, then it will be forgotten about.
You'd be surprised at how regularly random processes can result in design. There are plenty of systems that, when left to their own devices, converge on specific states ('optimal' stable states within that system). Evolution is precisely a 'design' process in the sense that variations on an apparatus are tested with successes further developed and failures discarded. DNA encodes plans for making such structures - it is the blueprint that is constantly being refined.
The question is not whether design is happening. The question is whether that design process is deliberative or not; I have no reason to think that it is.
the death-and-serious-injury rate amoungst Volvo owners, multiplied by the number of Volvo owners, multiplied by some arbitrarily large time period, is small but finite
And if that finite number is less than a recall, they won't do it.
Simply making all cars go 30 kmph slower would go a long way to reducing road fatalities. Remember, energy is quadratic with speed - if we halved the speed, the energy of a collision would only be a quarter of a full-speed impact. Of course, I'm not advocating we make 60 kmph the speed limit (no one would go for it, anyway), but if you were serious about eliminating deadly crashes, that would be the one simple way of doing it.
Exactly! People think China's government doesn't care about its citizens or listen to its people, but it's simply not true. They pay great attention to what people say, and responds immediately if anyone expresses discontent.
And you know, it's been met with public outcry and made certain politicians quite unpopular. The internet filtering thing was only ever a token appeasement move to get certain conservative elements onboard - now that they've run their course, it's being quietly set aside. Realpolitik rules the day.
Your questions make suppositions about my position and imply claims I've not made. I don't think either of us are going to learn more at this point. Thanks for the interesting conversation.
Are you saying climate scientists aren't modeling things we haven't modeled? I expect that's the case, on the basis we haven't modeled them yet...
However, it stands to reason that if a hypothesis based on past data correctly predicts new data, then the current (albeit always incomplete) model is adequate for the task of near-future prediction. Afterall, locally any continuous system is effectively linear.
What you should really be asking is "are unmodeled factors of the system dominant in the near time horizon?" If the data continues to match the predictions of the hypothesis (within acceptable measurement error), then the answer is no; if, increasingly, the model diverges from the data, then there is clearly an unmodeled dynamic at work which must be accounted for. The fields of control theory, filtering and estimation provide methods for doing exactly this.
In the interim, though, it's getting hotter. Much better to do something and be wrong, than do nothing and pay the price for it.
Well, firstly, global climate is an astroundingly complex thing. There are many different factors such as incident solar radiation, local albedo, thermotropic effects, vegetation uptake, UV chemical cycles, ocean thermal flow and trade winds - each and every one of which effects the others. Add into that the fact that measurements of the system are limited, and it gets harder.
This is complicated again by an interesting phenomena called sensitive dependence on initial conditions, which relates to chaos theory. Basically, if you don't have -exact- measurements of all states of the system, you cannot precisely know the behaviour of the system at arbitrary time intervals. What you can do is make predictions on the near future states of the system. And this is what's scary - those near-future states look pretty dire.
Like all science, there are cavets - we can poke our models ten different ways and get ten different answers, based on the assumptions we make and how much confidence we assign to different measurements. Some of those answers aren't scary; some of those answers are frightening. It's not a perfect crystal ball, but it's the best we can do with our current data and understanding of physics. However, if 9 out of 10 models suggest Bad Things due to anthropogenic effects, it's foolish to ignore it.
Are we absolutely sure of what's causing it? Of course not - but then again, we're not entirely sure what causes gravity, either. That doesn't mean we doubt its existence. Like all science, we can only have hypotheses (they're not guesses, they're theories that fit a set of known facts). But when increasing amounts of additional data strongly supports specific hypotheses and there is a lack of conflicting data, it gives 'not absolutely sure' its correct context.
It seems to me that the truth typically lies in the middle. Sure, sometimes there really is a correct extreme (such as reducing your daily intake of gunshots to the head to a minimum), but they tend to be rare. Yes, sometimes the world is warming. Sometimes the world is cooling. One of those is probably going on right now. The appropriate response is the one that mitigates the risks; if humans are causing warming, it makes sense to do something about it. Even if we aren't, reducing our output into the environment isn't a terrible thing (not-polluting is unlikely to mess things up).
Of course, my friend tells me "But that's Pascal's Wager! It's a logical fallacy!" Well, it might be a logical fallacy, but it's also the lowest risk approach. If we reduce pollution, what does it cost us? "The cost is the national economy!!" he replies. Certainly, but the cost of change must be balanced against the magnitude of risk.
Worst cost: Increased taxes, reduced energy consumption, slower growth of economics, lower standard of living, global economies collapse.
Worst risk: The earth is rendered uninhabitable and everyone perishes.
Of course, it's unlikely to be the extremes (but it might!) However, we can survive economic collapse. We cannot survive an uninhabitable planet.
Suppose we say "I don't believe that it will be that bad - these are just temporary fluctuations!" Ok, no problem. Let's act like we -do- believe it and see if global warming goes away. If it does, great! Break out the SUVs. If we ignore it and say "It probably won't happen", then we might doom humanity to extinction.
And that's the difference between this and Pascal's wager. In Pascal's wager, you never find out if you were right or wrong until it's too late. Here, however, we can continuously readjust our position and change our minds as new data becomes available; but we may only be able to do that if we're conservative.
Do you really believe that the models used by climate scientists have anything at all to do with those used by economists? Economics is applied psychology; climate science is applied physics. Sure, they both have difficult-to-sample systems behind them, but one of those systems obeys understood laws of physics, the other obeys the irrational mechanics of the human mind.
I'm not surprised economic models fail. I'm not even surprised that physics models fail sometimes (that's why they're called models). However, we can refine the precision and distribution of our climate measurements with increasing effort. While there's sensitive dependence on initial conditions, macro-scale thermodynamics is pretty solid. No amount of market research can really tell you exactly what people will do for sure.
I was a bit of a curiosity at my old university - I was the only one doing controls with a practical bend and so I wound up in a laboratory by myself for 4 years, with my only real peer interaction coming at conferences. Sadly, being an aussie, they couldn't afford to send me to many. Doing a post-doc, though, means I'm working hand in hand with people who are doing very similar things and we have a great tutorial relationship, teaching each other stuff we didn't know before.
The big problem with self-teaching is that sometimes you need someone to build bridges to understanding that you just can't manage on your own. When I moved to Yale to do a post-doc I learned much more about advanced maths from discussing with colleagues than I ever learned from reading books on my own. For me, it wasn't because I couldn't learn from books, it was just that the more advanced material is written in impenetrable hieroglyphs that seem designed to obscure actual understanding. Nobody ever learned Lyapunov control from starting with "Consider unit ball B on set R3..." or if they did learn it that way, I doubt they really -understood- it.
However, someone sitting down with you for 15 minutes with a piece of paper can suss out what you already know, fill in the gaps and draw parallels to the things you understand. That's why we -have- teachers to guide us, and not just inanimate rows of books.
It's true - people become a lot more reluctant to die for an ideology when they have a big screen TV and a comfortable life. Why throw that away for whatever the pet cause of the day is?
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The last things the government wants are an introspective military and soldiers that think for themselves.
You obviously haven't been paying to international politics recently. Extension of US laws (aka: "harmonisation" or "bringing laws in sync", esp. copyright and drug law) to other countries is part and parcel of negotiations. Often times a country will decide that access to the US as a market for their exports outweighs the consequences of taking onboard more egregious aspects of the US body of law.
You have a messed up view of world economics. The $13 Billion of the Marshall plan was worth about $440 Billion dollars in modern value. The US national debt is something like $13 Trillion; good luck balancing those accounts. And regarding disasters, there are plenty of other nations that pitch in every time something bad happens - France, German, UK, Australia, Japan, pretty much any developed nation. It's only american egocentricity that makes them forget the contributions others make.
As for Chinese invasion of Europe, that's a 1950s mindset: the party leaders long since realised they have a lot more to gain by selling cheap televisions to western markets than they ever did by invading anybody. Invasions are expensive and they take a long time to return investment - but ten million toasters sold at a profit gets you a plush mansion filled with whores in fairly short order.
So sure, take your ball and your bat and go home. We prefer football, anyway.
Just change it to "John Smith" and be done with it - plausible deniability forever. "Oh, that must be some other John Smith"
You want to know what bad thing can happen when you keep felons from voting? You can have a political party take people out of the voting pool by making felons out of them.
Oh for mod points - that's a sane, frightening and compelling argument.
But why? I fail to understand what everybody has against them - sure, they're freaks and not a little creepy (ok, pretty damn creepy), but are they hurting anyone? I remember people used to say the same things about goths, and then suddenly everyone thought it was cool to wear black. Like all bizarro subcultures it'll be weird, then it will be boring, then it will be forgotten about.
I think you'll find many of the truths we hold to be self-evident depend largely upon ones point of view.
You'd be surprised at how regularly random processes can result in design. There are plenty of systems that, when left to their own devices, converge on specific states ('optimal' stable states within that system). Evolution is precisely a 'design' process in the sense that variations on an apparatus are tested with successes further developed and failures discarded. DNA encodes plans for making such structures - it is the blueprint that is constantly being refined.
The question is not whether design is happening. The question is whether that design process is deliberative or not; I have no reason to think that it is.
If you have the technology to grow a leg from the groin, you'll put another industry out of business: porn.
the death-and-serious-injury rate amoungst Volvo owners, multiplied by the number of Volvo owners, multiplied by some arbitrarily large time period, is small but finite
And if that finite number is less than a recall, they won't do it.
Simply making all cars go 30 kmph slower would go a long way to reducing road fatalities. Remember, energy is quadratic with speed - if we halved the speed, the energy of a collision would only be a quarter of a full-speed impact. Of course, I'm not advocating we make 60 kmph the speed limit (no one would go for it, anyway), but if you were serious about eliminating deadly crashes, that would be the one simple way of doing it.
Now just imagine what they could do if they combined this kind of advanced optics with an orbital observatory that's...
Wait. Nevermind.
Exactly! People think China's government doesn't care about its citizens or listen to its people, but it's simply not true. They pay great attention to what people say, and responds immediately if anyone expresses discontent.
And you know, it's been met with public outcry and made certain politicians quite unpopular. The internet filtering thing was only ever a token appeasement move to get certain conservative elements onboard - now that they've run their course, it's being quietly set aside. Realpolitik rules the day.
Your questions make suppositions about my position and imply claims I've not made. I don't think either of us are going to learn more at this point. Thanks for the interesting conversation.
Sure - which is why we need to keep measuring data to make sure our models are accurate. Unlike Pascal's wager, science is an ongoing process.
And in the meantime, it pays to be cautious. I would rather not risk the future of the species on the off-chance that such bacteria does exist.
Are you saying climate scientists aren't modeling things we haven't modeled? I expect that's the case, on the basis we haven't modeled them yet...
However, it stands to reason that if a hypothesis based on past data correctly predicts new data, then the current (albeit always incomplete) model is adequate for the task of near-future prediction. Afterall, locally any continuous system is effectively linear.
What you should really be asking is "are unmodeled factors of the system dominant in the near time horizon?" If the data continues to match the predictions of the hypothesis (within acceptable measurement error), then the answer is no; if, increasingly, the model diverges from the data, then there is clearly an unmodeled dynamic at work which must be accounted for. The fields of control theory, filtering and estimation provide methods for doing exactly this.
In the interim, though, it's getting hotter. Much better to do something and be wrong, than do nothing and pay the price for it.
Well, firstly, global climate is an astroundingly complex thing. There are many different factors such as incident solar radiation, local albedo, thermotropic effects, vegetation uptake, UV chemical cycles, ocean thermal flow and trade winds - each and every one of which effects the others. Add into that the fact that measurements of the system are limited, and it gets harder.
This is complicated again by an interesting phenomena called sensitive dependence on initial conditions, which relates to chaos theory. Basically, if you don't have -exact- measurements of all states of the system, you cannot precisely know the behaviour of the system at arbitrary time intervals. What you can do is make predictions on the near future states of the system. And this is what's scary - those near-future states look pretty dire.
Like all science, there are cavets - we can poke our models ten different ways and get ten different answers, based on the assumptions we make and how much confidence we assign to different measurements. Some of those answers aren't scary; some of those answers are frightening. It's not a perfect crystal ball, but it's the best we can do with our current data and understanding of physics. However, if 9 out of 10 models suggest Bad Things due to anthropogenic effects, it's foolish to ignore it.
Are we absolutely sure of what's causing it? Of course not - but then again, we're not entirely sure what causes gravity, either. That doesn't mean we doubt its existence. Like all science, we can only have hypotheses (they're not guesses, they're theories that fit a set of known facts). But when increasing amounts of additional data strongly supports specific hypotheses and there is a lack of conflicting data, it gives 'not absolutely sure' its correct context.
It seems to me that the truth typically lies in the middle. Sure, sometimes there really is a correct extreme (such as reducing your daily intake of gunshots to the head to a minimum), but they tend to be rare. Yes, sometimes the world is warming. Sometimes the world is cooling. One of those is probably going on right now. The appropriate response is the one that mitigates the risks; if humans are causing warming, it makes sense to do something about it. Even if we aren't, reducing our output into the environment isn't a terrible thing (not-polluting is unlikely to mess things up).
Of course, my friend tells me "But that's Pascal's Wager! It's a logical fallacy!" Well, it might be a logical fallacy, but it's also the lowest risk approach. If we reduce pollution, what does it cost us? "The cost is the national economy!!" he replies. Certainly, but the cost of change must be balanced against the magnitude of risk.
Worst cost: Increased taxes, reduced energy consumption, slower growth of economics, lower standard of living, global economies collapse.
Worst risk: The earth is rendered uninhabitable and everyone perishes.
Of course, it's unlikely to be the extremes (but it might!) However, we can survive economic collapse. We cannot survive an uninhabitable planet.
Suppose we say "I don't believe that it will be that bad - these are just temporary fluctuations!" Ok, no problem. Let's act like we -do- believe it and see if global warming goes away. If it does, great! Break out the SUVs. If we ignore it and say "It probably won't happen", then we might doom humanity to extinction.
And that's the difference between this and Pascal's wager. In Pascal's wager, you never find out if you were right or wrong until it's too late. Here, however, we can continuously readjust our position and change our minds as new data becomes available; but we may only be able to do that if we're conservative.
It's not the computer, it's the program it runs.
Do you really believe that the models used by climate scientists have anything at all to do with those used by economists? Economics is applied psychology; climate science is applied physics. Sure, they both have difficult-to-sample systems behind them, but one of those systems obeys understood laws of physics, the other obeys the irrational mechanics of the human mind.
I'm not surprised economic models fail. I'm not even surprised that physics models fail sometimes (that's why they're called models). However, we can refine the precision and distribution of our climate measurements with increasing effort. While there's sensitive dependence on initial conditions, macro-scale thermodynamics is pretty solid. No amount of market research can really tell you exactly what people will do for sure.
I was a bit of a curiosity at my old university - I was the only one doing controls with a practical bend and so I wound up in a laboratory by myself for 4 years, with my only real peer interaction coming at conferences. Sadly, being an aussie, they couldn't afford to send me to many. Doing a post-doc, though, means I'm working hand in hand with people who are doing very similar things and we have a great tutorial relationship, teaching each other stuff we didn't know before.
The big problem with self-teaching is that sometimes you need someone to build bridges to understanding that you just can't manage on your own. When I moved to Yale to do a post-doc I learned much more about advanced maths from discussing with colleagues than I ever learned from reading books on my own. For me, it wasn't because I couldn't learn from books, it was just that the more advanced material is written in impenetrable hieroglyphs that seem designed to obscure actual understanding. Nobody ever learned Lyapunov control from starting with "Consider unit ball B on set R3..." or if they did learn it that way, I doubt they really -understood- it.
However, someone sitting down with you for 15 minutes with a piece of paper can suss out what you already know, fill in the gaps and draw parallels to the things you understand. That's why we -have- teachers to guide us, and not just inanimate rows of books.
It's a good thing you guys never elected him then.
Oh wait.
Given half a chance, Liechtenstein would kill you, and everyone you care about.
It's true - people become a lot more reluctant to die for an ideology when they have a big screen TV and a comfortable life. Why throw that away for whatever the pet cause of the day is?