my argument is that deadly waste is created.
That's just one part your argument - and it's a fact that nobody disagrees with. Your whole argument is (roughly) "Building more nuclear power plants is a bad thing because they produce waste, that waste is long-lived,..." - and it's that argument as a whole that people are disagreeing with.
my argument is not "we need a way to recycle waste," but that is what you seem to think my argument is.
Nobody is this thread has said that that was what you said, thought that you said that, or argued against that point. That delusion exists only in your mind.
my argument is using plastic creates plastic garbage.
Again, that's just a fact, and one I agree is true, but not an entire argument. A reasonable analogy would be "We must use less plastic because using plastic creates plastic garbage."
But if we can recycle plastic, why is not all plastic recycled? There's plastic garbage everywhere
Because it's not a perfect counter to your argument - but that doesn't mean that the fact that (many) plastics are recyclable isn't directly relevant to arguments about whether or not we should use plastics, especially if people are pointing out the (potentially recyclable) trash it produces as a supporting point.
because I didn't say "we need a way to recycle plastic," if you claim to have solved my problem
I have never claimed to have solved the issue with waste, only that your argument is less compelling when recycling is taken into account.
you argued against a position that wasn't precisely mine
No, I haven't. I am allowed bring up new or more detailed information about waste in order to show how strong your argument about waste is. Period.
c/ We need to stop because we're approaching a wall.
y/ Uhm, but the wall is four blocks ahead, and I'm turning at the next right, so I don't think we need to stop.
c/ We need to stop, and that's a straw man!
y/ I understand you'd rather stop, and I'm willing to debate about that, but how is what I said a straw man?
c/ Because I never said that "because of the wall we need to turn", I said we need to stop.
y/ I know what you said, but how is offering an alternate solution a straw man?
c/ *More stuff about straw men that ignores what y has said*...
Nuclear reactors make deadly waste
Right, that's a claim you've made, and as far as I know everyone agrees that it is true.
Nuclear reactors make deadly waste and we need a way to recycle the waste
Nobody in this thread has suggested that you've claimed this, and I'm quite aware that these are different statements.
What you don't seem to grasp is that when you use "nuclear reactors make deadly waste" as an argument against the use of nuclear reactors, anything that reduces the amount of waste, the deadliness of it, the likelihood that it will kill someone, etc. becomes a legitimate way to try to counter your argument. We aren't altering what you've said, we're weakening the support those facts lend to your conclusion.
if you think that because some waste is recycled, all waste is safer
I've never claimed that, but I have claimed that "recycling does affect how dangerous nuclear power generation is". For someone who doesn't know what a straw man is, you use it quite frequently.
If your street is cleaner, it doesn't make all streets any less dirty.
But it does make streets in general less dirty. More importantly, it demonstrates that the dirtiness of streets may be less of a problem than one might otherwise believe.
yes, because clearly "problems with waste" has the exact same meaning as "existence of waste" or "production of waste."
Well, technically "existence of waste" and "production of waste" are examples of your "problems with waste". You can't use apples and oranges and then claim you weren't using any fruit.
You seemed to have grasped 2, 3, & 4
I've grasped them just fine from the beginning. What I don't grasp is why you think a legitimate counterpoint to them is a "straw man".
Because you(s guys) have changed what my points are, and argued successfully against those points
Nobody changed your points. Jurily gave additional information that weakened the support that your points gave your main idea. That is not only not a straw man, but is a basic part of any debate.
Even if its successfully recycled, this doesn't make it safe or safer
Are you really saying that if I take X (which is dangerous) and convert it to Y (which is not) I haven't really made anything less dangerous, because X (in the original form) would still dangerous if it still existed? That takes an excessive amount of insanity.
Even if the process works, there's always the risk that some of it could be used for ill purposes, and, of course, there's always room for mistakes.
Wow! A reasonable argument! Too bad you didn't start with that.
If you have a street sweeper, it doesn't mean all streets are clean.
No it doesn't, but it does have a bearing on any argument about how clean my street can be kept.
statement [a]: More nuclear reactors are a good thing.
Yes, that's the thesis that started all of this.
False. Here's why: argument [B]: [1-4] (thus, statement [a] must be false)
And that's your antithesis - "More nuclear reactors are a not good thing, because of various safety issues"..
argument [c]:But we can recycle the waste! This crackpot process would work if only there wasn't this conspiracy.
Whether it's a crackpot process or not has no bearing on the topic of whether or not he's used a straw man, but other than that, yes.
rebuttal [D]:That's a straw man argument because, in fact, its not actually a response to any of the points I made, yet it IS a response to SIMILAR BUT DIFFERENT points that I have NOT made, thus making it APPEAR as though the opposition has responded to my points, but have not.
And that's where you're wrong, because his arguments mean that your points no longer support your antithesis.
1. nuclear reactors make dangerous, deadly waste
True, but if it can be made safe quickly and on-site, that fact only weakly supports your antithesis.
2. the waste is deadly, effectively, forever
True, on its own it would be, but if we can convert it into a non-deadly form, you can't use that fact to support your antithesis.
3. we can't find a safe place to store it
True, but if we don't need to store it, you can't use that fact to support your antithesis.
4. we can't safely move it to storage
True, but if we don't need to transport it, you can't use that fact to support your antithesis.
review: FALLACY (straw man) Recycling the waste doesn't speak to whether or not nuclear reactors make dangerous, deadly waste. They still do, and will.
But recycling does affect how dangerous nuclear power generation is, which is directly relevant to the validity of your antithesis - "More nuclear reactors are a not good thing, because of various safety issues". That's why it's not a straw man.
Interestingly, there's another fallacy at work as well, comes up in the response to [B]:2... token/type, explained in previous post... pretty sure you got that, because you didn't refute it.
That also wasn't a fallacy, but some of us have to work for a living, which limits our troll-baiting time. Time's up!
Just to be clear, a straw man is: "an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position."
His response is (in the form of a "look at this!" link)... he props up an issue that wasn't introduced before (what I was referring to as 'conspiracy').
Yes, introducing new information is a legitimate way to debate someone.
I can't really argue against this accusation of conspiracy, can I?
Yes you can, you just say that you don't trust his source, or find a more credible source that disputes his claim. Even if you can't, that doesn't make his argument a straw man.
So... what I interpreted Jurily was saying was:
The argument you presented isn't even vaguely related to what Jurily actually said.
No, recycling nuclear waste does NOT "clearly make it safer." Nuclear waste is not a singularity. Its a bunch of stuff.
PUREX, the standard reprocessing technique, reduces the amount of waste by reusing plutonium and uranium, which I would argue makes nuclear power safer. More advanced methods can pull out even more heavy metals which can be transmuted in a reactor to less dangerous forms, making the waste itself less radioactive, and thus safer.
didn't answer to, for instance, my claim that nuclear waste is really dangerous.
Yes, it does. In fact it answers it so well, you've called it a "miracle process".
It introduced a whole new thing about some miracle process that's being suppressed. And for a few more posts you and he basically repeated yourselves.
Because you obviously aren't reading what we've written. How many posts did it take to explain to you that, with this technique, nothing was going to be transported anywhere?
introducing conspiracy into the argument is a straw man
Introducing conspiracy into an argument is not a straw man - period.
The summary:... Me - straw man.
That isn't a straw man argument. His facts may be in error, he may be making some other kind of logical fallacy, but unless he's restating or reinterpreting your position in order to make it easier to argue against, he isn't making a straw man.
It's either/or.
I found most of this paragraph incomprehensible, but I'll try:
if you are saying that recycling nuclear waste makes nuclear waste safe
Recycling clearly makes it safer. If Jurily's technology exists as advertised, then it would be completely safe.
Jurily's original crazy statement that was finally outed to be sarcasm... at least I thought
He was being sarcastic about civilian nuclear explosions being a worth it if it encouraged nuclear power, not about nuclear power being a good thing.
Are these nuclear waste recycling plants mobile or portable or something?
They aren't separate 'plants', it would be built into the power plant - just like the heat exchangers, the turbines, and the generators. Nothing gets moved off site.
There's now technology to, like a switch, drop radioactive rods to non-radioactive isotopes within hours? That sounds like fantasy.
Same to me. But even if it is pure fiction, your early posts don't count as an argument against him, because they've completely ignored him.
But I'm still seeing Jurily's response, whatever you want me to call it,... as a straw man argument response
You can gripe about a flaw in his response all you want, but as long as you use the wrong name for that flaw, I'll keep pointing it out.
You are perpetuating the straw man.
You don't know the meaning of "straw man", do you?
a mountain of waste is NOT made safe instantly just because someone has a good idea of what to do with it
Who's making that claim?
How, exactly, do you safely transport the waste to this theoretical nuclear waste recycling plant
Again, nobody is suggesting that anything be transported anywhere.
What was it you wanted to do with the waste currently overflowing the temporary containment pools?
Convert it into non-radioactive isotopes.
I don't know if you're trying some kind of trolling or have a severe learning disability.
I hate to interrupt, but you clearly aren't reading what Jurily is posting.
1) doesn't make nuclear waste any safer
"resulting debris are constituted by light, natural and stable elements" - i.e. not radioactive
2) doesn't matter whether its 500 years or 10,000 years, whatever "short period" means, its going to be "a long, long time"
"can be of the order of minutes per pellet of radioactive waste" - i.e. not years
3) doesn't make transporting the waste any safer
"Santillis equipment is sufficiently small to be used by nuclear power plants, thus avoiding completely the transportation to a common dump" - i.e. no transport
4) doesn't provide a safe storage method
What???
Call this theoretical, call it fringe science, call it not cost effective, but please read the post before you reply. Thank you.
Will someone PLEASE check Lung Cancer's D20s? - He's rolling an awful lot of 20's lately...
It's not the dice, it's the "-15 carcinogen penalty to saving throws vs. cancer (lung)" that came with tobacco's "+1 to the 'looking cool' skill in Western cultures"
OK, then I'll just point out that even though "superwiz" overstated his case, he wasn't using a straw man argument, and your criticism seems rather weak if you don't have an alternative metric.
I like all of your suggestions, but more efficient and responsive politics is still politics, and I'm never going to like the fact that so much of my life depends on the whims of strangers.
>There was more international trade per capita in 1900 than there is today. Straw-man, there are roughly quadruple the number of people on the planet today as there were in 1900.
I'm confused. Did you misunderstand "per capita"? Or were you making some other point?
And that makes you better than everyone else who stuggles to survive how, exactly?
How did he suggest that he was better than anyone else? He was accused of a crime, took offense to that, and explained the situation.
The fact is, human work is human work, and money is nothing but token for that work.
Work is one valuable thing that people exchange for money, but not the only thing.
Excluding a few immature people who still have to realise the economic pressures they're under, most people work pretty hard.
That's absurd - the vast majority of people in the first world do very little work.
For the same hours, we should all earn the same.
Why? I can't think of any moral or practical reason to support that.
If you earn much more than someone else for an hours' work, then yes, you're stealing it, even if you don't realise that.
A farmer that does a better job and grows more food that his neighbor is not stealing from his neighbor.
That's exactly why the world is in financial melt-down right now: because people have been imagining that they've made money, when in fact, they've made shit up.
You've obviously had a lot of practice at that.
Rowling, along with Scholastic Press (her American publisher) and Warner Bros. (holders of the series' film rights), pre-empted Stouffer in 2002 with a suit of their own seeking a declaratory judgment that they had not infringed on any of Stouffer's works. The court found in their favour, stating that "no reasonable juror could find a likelihood of confusion as to the source of the two parties' works". During the course of the trial, it was proven "by clear and convincing evidence, that Stouffer has perpetrated a fraud on the Court through her submission of fraudulent documents as well as through her untruthful testimony", including changing pages years after the fact to retroactively insert the word "muggle". Her case was dismissed with prejudice and she was fined $50,000 for her "pattern of intentional bad faith conduct" in relation to her employment of fraudulent submissions, along with being ordered to pay a portion of the plaintiffs' legal fees. Stouffer appealed the decision in 2004, but in 2005 the appeals court upheld the ruling. She states on her website that she is planning to republish her books and is entertaining the possibility of another lawsuit against Warner Bros., J. K. Rowling and Scholastic Press.
if you mean consistent but not fully justified by reason then I might be inclined to agree.
Great, we're on the same page.
many things in life are by that definition also non-rational (e.g. the belief that oneself is sane or that deductive reasoning is valid)
I'd agree that no thinking can be completely free of non-rational assumptions. At the same time, I'd also say that it's appropriate to describe a set of ideas as "rational" if it tries to minimize the number of those assumptions, lists those assumptions, and clearly says that its results are contingent on those assumptions. On the other hand, you can almost define "religion" in terms of the extra axioms it requires.
"You also seem to be suggesting that every time a married couple makes a budget that they're participating in a planned economy"
Of course yes.
OK, we'll use your definition of "planned economy". But now "planned economy" is no longer the opposite of "free market", one can easily practice both at the same time! If you disagree, show me where any free-market advocate says that people should not be allowed to combine personal finances through marriage or pool resources to form a corporation.
On the other hand, IBM gross income in 2008 was 16,715 Billion US$ roughly the gross domestic product of countries like Zambia, Bahrein or Jordan, quite more like an apples to apples comparation.
Except that they're only comparable in size and the fact that they use a hierarchy. If you really can't see the vast differences between the IBM, the Red Cross, and Catholicism on one hand, and Zambia, Bahrain, and Jordan on the other, I can't help you.
albeit how fond we are about free market and liberalism, as soon as we are given the chance to put our actions -and money, were our mouth is, we all go for communist-style economics
You do understand that free markets and liberalism still allow people to do things as a group, right? In a liberal society there can be sole proprietorships, small businesses, megacorporations, unions, even full-blown Marxist communes - and as long as you're free to choose what kind of group to join (or not join), it's still a free market.
Now, since examples of successful corporations can be given, each and every one of them are examples of properly planified economy.
You also seem to be suggesting that every time a married couple makes a budget that they're participating in a planned economy - which is really pushing the definition of "economy". I suppose you could have a company town, where the price of everything at the company store is set by that company, the company provides all of the housing, etc, but even then people still have the option of not working there and trading with outsiders. I guess I'm saying that to plan an entire economy you have to control the entire economy, and that even if you can make an interesting analogy between governments and corporations they still are very different types of entities.
We all have some beliefs and core values we subscribe to.
In my experience, when rational people disagree the primary issue usually turns out to be philosophical - what's better or more moral or more acceptable - rather than factual issues about what's objectively true. The problem is that it starts with discussing the facts, later turns to philosophy, and then things end with agreeing to disagree, but with a better understanding of the other side. Lately I've been trying to do both the facts and the opinions at the same time, which I hope makes things clearer at the beginning and leads to less frustration. On the other hand I'm new at this, so I'm probably fumbling it a bit, and it might be a useless effort that just makes things messier. Who knows?
Anyway, my bias is that I tend to favor society making its collective choices through many freely-made individual choices rather than though the decrees of smaller group of people, even if they are elected. That isn't to say I'm a hard-core free marketer, but just like "innocent until proven guilty" in law, the null hypothesis in science, or informed consent in medicine, I think that the people advocating state intervention should have to make a strong case. And not just a case that government intervention is necessary, but that the particular method that they are advocating is the least intrusive/disruptive method that would achieve their goal. In this case a carbon tax would be hard to use as a politically because it wouldn't favor any one industry, it's as close as we can get to refunding the public for the use of a public resource, and it would allow markets to react to changing conditions (if you think that the gas price spike in 2008 caused problems, wait until rationing accidentally messes it up).
Things is, though, oil is also used to produce plastics, and we don't have a good replacement for those.
We may be running out of cheap oil, but there's lots of more expensive stuff. Then there's recycling, which would suffice for quite some time, if it were economical. And that's also ignoring plastic from corn and other sources that would work fairly well, if it were economically practical. So on the whole, I'm thinking that we have a lack of currently economical sources for plastic, not an actual lack of sources.
What I meant was that the state decides that... and allocate those N barrels to the appropriate industry...
But do you really think that the state will make decisions based on what's right, or based on what's politically beneficial? My U.S. Representative would love to restrict/tax gasoline and petroleum-based plastic because that would raise the price of corn (used in ethanol and plastic) and thus help his constituents. Do you really think that the other congress critters are any more likely to be looking at the larger picture?
This is a very clear case there logic shaped doctrine/faith.
Did you miss the part where he said "There's no question that when convenient, religion would like to go along with logic and reason."?
The argument isn't "there can be no logic in theology", it's "religion requires at least some non-rational beliefs - because belief based on faith is religion's defining characteristic".
Many religions are full of self-consistent logic. You just disagree with its axioms.
Well, if you're very strict about the word "logical", then only specific types of argument can be "illogical". But that's not the common use of the word, plus it make almost everything "logical":
A: I believe in astrology.
B: Isn't that illogical?
A: No, I take it as an axiom that astrology is correct.
Ditto for religion, the "Jews/gays/blacks/redheads are inferior" beliefs, UFOs, and the "A Tiger Got Him" theory of the JFK assassination - none of it's illogical with the right axioms.
Slashdot Mirror
my argument is that deadly waste is created. ..." - and it's that argument as a whole that people are disagreeing with.
That's just one part your argument - and it's a fact that nobody disagrees with. Your whole argument is (roughly) "Building more nuclear power plants is a bad thing because they produce waste, that waste is long-lived,
my argument is not "we need a way to recycle waste," but that is what you seem to think my argument is.
Nobody is this thread has said that that was what you said, thought that you said that, or argued against that point. That delusion exists only in your mind.
my argument is using plastic creates plastic garbage.
Again, that's just a fact, and one I agree is true, but not an entire argument. A reasonable analogy would be "We must use less plastic because using plastic creates plastic garbage."
But if we can recycle plastic, why is not all plastic recycled? There's plastic garbage everywhere
Because it's not a perfect counter to your argument - but that doesn't mean that the fact that (many) plastics are recyclable isn't directly relevant to arguments about whether or not we should use plastics, especially if people are pointing out the (potentially recyclable) trash it produces as a supporting point.
because I didn't say "we need a way to recycle plastic," if you claim to have solved my problem
I have never claimed to have solved the issue with waste, only that your argument is less compelling when recycling is taken into account.
you argued against a position that wasn't precisely mine
No, I haven't. I am allowed bring up new or more detailed information about waste in order to show how strong your argument about waste is. Period.
And here's my perspective:
c/ We need to stop because we're approaching a wall. ...
y/ Uhm, but the wall is four blocks ahead, and I'm turning at the next right, so I don't think we need to stop.
c/ We need to stop, and that's a straw man!
y/ I understand you'd rather stop, and I'm willing to debate about that, but how is what I said a straw man?
c/ Because I never said that "because of the wall we need to turn", I said we need to stop.
y/ I know what you said, but how is offering an alternate solution a straw man?
c/ *More stuff about straw men that ignores what y has said*
Nuclear reactors make deadly waste
Right, that's a claim you've made, and as far as I know everyone agrees that it is true.
Nuclear reactors make deadly waste and we need a way to recycle the waste
Nobody in this thread has suggested that you've claimed this, and I'm quite aware that these are different statements.
What you don't seem to grasp is that when you use "nuclear reactors make deadly waste" as an argument against the use of nuclear reactors, anything that reduces the amount of waste, the deadliness of it, the likelihood that it will kill someone, etc. becomes a legitimate way to try to counter your argument. We aren't altering what you've said, we're weakening the support those facts lend to your conclusion.
if you think that because some waste is recycled, all waste is safer
I've never claimed that, but I have claimed that "recycling does affect how dangerous nuclear power generation is". For someone who doesn't know what a straw man is, you use it quite frequently.
If your street is cleaner, it doesn't make all streets any less dirty.
But it does make streets in general less dirty. More importantly, it demonstrates that the dirtiness of streets may be less of a problem than one might otherwise believe.
yes, because clearly "problems with waste" has the exact same meaning as "existence of waste" or "production of waste."
Well, technically "existence of waste" and "production of waste" are examples of your "problems with waste". You can't use apples and oranges and then claim you weren't using any fruit.
You seemed to have grasped 2, 3, & 4
I've grasped them just fine from the beginning. What I don't grasp is why you think a legitimate counterpoint to them is a "straw man".
Way back at the beginning you say:
So far, nuclear anything has 2 major problems compounded by 2 obvious ones. First, the obvious: 1) nuclear waste is deadly
But then:
"You were arguing that nuke plants are a "bad thing" because of problems with the waste." - No, I wasn't.
You truly have taken stupid to an epic level. :)
Because you(s guys) have changed what my points are, and argued successfully against those points
Nobody changed your points. Jurily gave additional information that weakened the support that your points gave your main idea. That is not only not a straw man, but is a basic part of any debate.
Even if its successfully recycled, this doesn't make it safe or safer
Are you really saying that if I take X (which is dangerous) and convert it to Y (which is not) I haven't really made anything less dangerous, because X (in the original form) would still dangerous if it still existed? That takes an excessive amount of insanity.
Even if the process works, there's always the risk that some of it could be used for ill purposes, and, of course, there's always room for mistakes.
Wow! A reasonable argument! Too bad you didn't start with that.
If you have a street sweeper, it doesn't mean all streets are clean.
No it doesn't, but it does have a bearing on any argument about how clean my street can be kept.
statement [a]: More nuclear reactors are a good thing.
Yes, that's the thesis that started all of this.
False. Here's why: argument [B]: [1-4] (thus, statement [a] must be false)
And that's your antithesis - "More nuclear reactors are a not good thing, because of various safety issues"..
argument [c]:But we can recycle the waste! This crackpot process would work if only there wasn't this conspiracy.
Whether it's a crackpot process or not has no bearing on the topic of whether or not he's used a straw man, but other than that, yes.
rebuttal [D]:That's a straw man argument because, in fact, its not actually a response to any of the points I made, yet it IS a response to SIMILAR BUT DIFFERENT points that I have NOT made, thus making it APPEAR as though the opposition has responded to my points, but have not.
And that's where you're wrong, because his arguments mean that your points no longer support your antithesis.
1. nuclear reactors make dangerous, deadly waste
True, but if it can be made safe quickly and on-site, that fact only weakly supports your antithesis.
2. the waste is deadly, effectively, forever
True, on its own it would be, but if we can convert it into a non-deadly form, you can't use that fact to support your antithesis.
3. we can't find a safe place to store it
True, but if we don't need to store it, you can't use that fact to support your antithesis.
4. we can't safely move it to storage
True, but if we don't need to transport it, you can't use that fact to support your antithesis.
review: FALLACY (straw man) Recycling the waste doesn't speak to whether or not nuclear reactors make dangerous, deadly waste. They still do, and will.
But recycling does affect how dangerous nuclear power generation is, which is directly relevant to the validity of your antithesis - "More nuclear reactors are a not good thing, because of various safety issues". That's why it's not a straw man.
Interestingly, there's another fallacy at work as well, comes up in the response to [B]:2... token/type, explained in previous post... pretty sure you got that, because you didn't refute it.
That also wasn't a fallacy, but some of us have to work for a living, which limits our troll-baiting time. Time's up!
Just to be clear, a straw man is: "an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position."
His response is (in the form of a "look at this!" link)... he props up an issue that wasn't introduced before (what I was referring to as 'conspiracy').
Yes, introducing new information is a legitimate way to debate someone.
I can't really argue against this accusation of conspiracy, can I?
Yes you can, you just say that you don't trust his source, or find a more credible source that disputes his claim. Even if you can't, that doesn't make his argument a straw man.
So... what I interpreted Jurily was saying was:
The argument you presented isn't even vaguely related to what Jurily actually said.
No, recycling nuclear waste does NOT "clearly make it safer." Nuclear waste is not a singularity. Its a bunch of stuff.
PUREX, the standard reprocessing technique, reduces the amount of waste by reusing plutonium and uranium, which I would argue makes nuclear power safer. More advanced methods can pull out even more heavy metals which can be transmuted in a reactor to less dangerous forms, making the waste itself less radioactive, and thus safer.
didn't answer to, for instance, my claim that nuclear waste is really dangerous.
Yes, it does. In fact it answers it so well, you've called it a "miracle process".
It introduced a whole new thing about some miracle process that's being suppressed. And for a few more posts you and he basically repeated yourselves.
Because you obviously aren't reading what we've written. How many posts did it take to explain to you that, with this technique, nothing was going to be transported anywhere?
introducing conspiracy into the argument is a straw man
Introducing conspiracy into an argument is not a straw man - period.
The summary: ... Me - straw man.
That isn't a straw man argument. His facts may be in error, he may be making some other kind of logical fallacy, but unless he's restating or reinterpreting your position in order to make it easier to argue against, he isn't making a straw man.
It's either/or.
I found most of this paragraph incomprehensible, but I'll try:
if you are saying that recycling nuclear waste makes nuclear waste safe
Recycling clearly makes it safer. If Jurily's technology exists as advertised, then it would be completely safe.
Jurily's original crazy statement that was finally outed to be sarcasm... at least I thought
He was being sarcastic about civilian nuclear explosions being a worth it if it encouraged nuclear power, not about nuclear power being a good thing.
Are these nuclear waste recycling plants mobile or portable or something?
They aren't separate 'plants', it would be built into the power plant - just like the heat exchangers, the turbines, and the generators. Nothing gets moved off site.
There's now technology to, like a switch, drop radioactive rods to non-radioactive isotopes within hours? That sounds like fantasy.
Same to me. But even if it is pure fiction, your early posts don't count as an argument against him, because they've completely ignored him.
But I'm still seeing Jurily's response, whatever you want me to call it, ... as a straw man argument response
You can gripe about a flaw in his response all you want, but as long as you use the wrong name for that flaw, I'll keep pointing it out.
I wish they had "-1 Libertarian" mod here...
And I wish they had "+1 Libertarian" mod here....
Well, as a libertarian would say, "to each his own".
Start with: free to pursue their own interest
Add a bit: free to pursue their own interests in whatever method they want
Straw men - so easy, so convincing, so wrong.
You are perpetuating the straw man.
You don't know the meaning of "straw man", do you?
a mountain of waste is NOT made safe instantly just because someone has a good idea of what to do with it
Who's making that claim?
How, exactly, do you safely transport the waste to this theoretical nuclear waste recycling plant
Again, nobody is suggesting that anything be transported anywhere.
What was it you wanted to do with the waste currently overflowing the temporary containment pools?
Convert it into non-radioactive isotopes.
I don't know if you're trying some kind of trolling or have a severe learning disability.
I hate to interrupt, but you clearly aren't reading what Jurily is posting.
1) doesn't make nuclear waste any safer
"resulting debris are constituted by light, natural and stable elements" - i.e. not radioactive
2) doesn't matter whether its 500 years or 10,000 years, whatever "short period" means, its going to be "a long, long time"
"can be of the order of minutes per pellet of radioactive waste" - i.e. not years
3) doesn't make transporting the waste any safer
"Santillis equipment is sufficiently small to be used by nuclear power plants, thus avoiding completely the transportation to a common dump" - i.e. no transport
4) doesn't provide a safe storage method
What???
Call this theoretical, call it fringe science, call it not cost effective, but please read the post before you reply. Thank you.
Will someone PLEASE check Lung Cancer's D20s? - He's rolling an awful lot of 20's lately...
It's not the dice, it's the "-15 carcinogen penalty to saving throws vs. cancer (lung)" that came with tobacco's "+1 to the 'looking cool' skill in Western cultures"
OK, then I'll just point out that even though "superwiz" overstated his case, he wasn't using a straw man argument, and your criticism seems rather weak if you don't have an alternative metric.
I like all of your suggestions, but more efficient and responsive politics is still politics, and I'm never going to like the fact that so much of my life depends on the whims of strangers.
>There was more international trade per capita in 1900 than there is today.
Straw-man, there are roughly quadruple the number of people on the planet today as there were in 1900.
I'm confused. Did you misunderstand "per capita"? Or were you making some other point?
And that makes you better than everyone else who stuggles to survive how, exactly?
How did he suggest that he was better than anyone else? He was accused of a crime, took offense to that, and explained the situation.
The fact is, human work is human work, and money is nothing but token for that work.
Work is one valuable thing that people exchange for money, but not the only thing.
Excluding a few immature people who still have to realise the economic pressures they're under, most people work pretty hard.
That's absurd - the vast majority of people in the first world do very little work.
For the same hours, we should all earn the same.
Why? I can't think of any moral or practical reason to support that.
If you earn much more than someone else for an hours' work, then yes, you're stealing it, even if you don't realise that.
A farmer that does a better job and grows more food that his neighbor is not stealing from his neighbor.
That's exactly why the world is in financial melt-down right now: because people have been imagining that they've made money, when in fact, they've made shit up.
You've obviously had a lot of practice at that.
Rowling, along with Scholastic Press (her American publisher) and Warner Bros. (holders of the series' film rights), pre-empted Stouffer in 2002 with a suit of their own seeking a declaratory judgment that they had not infringed on any of Stouffer's works. The court found in their favour, stating that "no reasonable juror could find a likelihood of confusion as to the source of the two parties' works". During the course of the trial, it was proven "by clear and convincing evidence, that Stouffer has perpetrated a fraud on the Court through her submission of fraudulent documents as well as through her untruthful testimony", including changing pages years after the fact to retroactively insert the word "muggle". Her case was dismissed with prejudice and she was fined $50,000 for her "pattern of intentional bad faith conduct" in relation to her employment of fraudulent submissions, along with being ordered to pay a portion of the plaintiffs' legal fees. Stouffer appealed the decision in 2004, but in 2005 the appeals court upheld the ruling. She states on her website that she is planning to republish her books and is entertaining the possibility of another lawsuit against Warner Bros., J. K. Rowling and Scholastic Press.
if you mean consistent but not fully justified by reason then I might be inclined to agree.
Great, we're on the same page.
many things in life are by that definition also non-rational (e.g. the belief that oneself is sane or that deductive reasoning is valid)
I'd agree that no thinking can be completely free of non-rational assumptions. At the same time, I'd also say that it's appropriate to describe a set of ideas as "rational" if it tries to minimize the number of those assumptions, lists those assumptions, and clearly says that its results are contingent on those assumptions. On the other hand, you can almost define "religion" in terms of the extra axioms it requires.
"You also seem to be suggesting that every time a married couple makes a budget that they're participating in a planned economy"
Of course yes.
OK, we'll use your definition of "planned economy". But now "planned economy" is no longer the opposite of "free market", one can easily practice both at the same time! If you disagree, show me where any free-market advocate says that people should not be allowed to combine personal finances through marriage or pool resources to form a corporation.
On the other hand, IBM gross income in 2008 was 16,715 Billion US$ roughly the gross domestic product of countries like Zambia, Bahrein or Jordan, quite more like an apples to apples comparation.
Except that they're only comparable in size and the fact that they use a hierarchy. If you really can't see the vast differences between the IBM, the Red Cross, and Catholicism on one hand, and Zambia, Bahrain, and Jordan on the other, I can't help you.
albeit how fond we are about free market and liberalism, as soon as we are given the chance to put our actions -and money, were our mouth is, we all go for communist-style economics
You do understand that free markets and liberalism still allow people to do things as a group, right? In a liberal society there can be sole proprietorships, small businesses, megacorporations, unions, even full-blown Marxist communes - and as long as you're free to choose what kind of group to join (or not join), it's still a free market.
Now, since examples of successful corporations can be given, each and every one of them are examples of properly planified economy.
You also seem to be suggesting that every time a married couple makes a budget that they're participating in a planned economy - which is really pushing the definition of "economy". I suppose you could have a company town, where the price of everything at the company store is set by that company, the company provides all of the housing, etc, but even then people still have the option of not working there and trading with outsiders. I guess I'm saying that to plan an entire economy you have to control the entire economy, and that even if you can make an interesting analogy between governments and corporations they still are very different types of entities.
We all have some beliefs and core values we subscribe to.
In my experience, when rational people disagree the primary issue usually turns out to be philosophical - what's better or more moral or more acceptable - rather than factual issues about what's objectively true. The problem is that it starts with discussing the facts, later turns to philosophy, and then things end with agreeing to disagree, but with a better understanding of the other side. Lately I've been trying to do both the facts and the opinions at the same time, which I hope makes things clearer at the beginning and leads to less frustration. On the other hand I'm new at this, so I'm probably fumbling it a bit, and it might be a useless effort that just makes things messier. Who knows?
Anyway, my bias is that I tend to favor society making its collective choices through many freely-made individual choices rather than though the decrees of smaller group of people, even if they are elected. That isn't to say I'm a hard-core free marketer, but just like "innocent until proven guilty" in law, the null hypothesis in science, or informed consent in medicine, I think that the people advocating state intervention should have to make a strong case. And not just a case that government intervention is necessary, but that the particular method that they are advocating is the least intrusive/disruptive method that would achieve their goal. In this case a carbon tax would be hard to use as a politically because it wouldn't favor any one industry, it's as close as we can get to refunding the public for the use of a public resource, and it would allow markets to react to changing conditions (if you think that the gas price spike in 2008 caused problems, wait until rationing accidentally messes it up).
Things is, though, oil is also used to produce plastics, and we don't have a good replacement for those.
We may be running out of cheap oil, but there's lots of more expensive stuff. Then there's recycling, which would suffice for quite some time, if it were economical. And that's also ignoring plastic from corn and other sources that would work fairly well, if it were economically practical. So on the whole, I'm thinking that we have a lack of currently economical sources for plastic, not an actual lack of sources.
What I meant was that the state decides that ... and allocate those N barrels to the appropriate industry ...
But do you really think that the state will make decisions based on what's right, or based on what's politically beneficial? My U.S. Representative would love to restrict/tax gasoline and petroleum-based plastic because that would raise the price of corn (used in ethanol and plastic) and thus help his constituents. Do you really think that the other congress critters are any more likely to be looking at the larger picture?
This is a very clear case there logic shaped doctrine/faith.
Did you miss the part where he said "There's no question that when convenient, religion would like to go along with logic and reason."?
The argument isn't "there can be no logic in theology", it's "religion requires at least some non-rational beliefs - because belief based on faith is religion's defining characteristic".
Many religions are full of self-consistent logic. You just disagree with its axioms.
Well, if you're very strict about the word "logical", then only specific types of argument can be "illogical". But that's not the common use of the word, plus it make almost everything "logical":
A: I believe in astrology.
B: Isn't that illogical?
A: No, I take it as an axiom that astrology is correct.
Ditto for religion, the "Jews/gays/blacks/redheads are inferior" beliefs, UFOs, and the "A Tiger Got Him" theory of the JFK assassination - none of it's illogical with the right axioms.