Now certainly, I am never going to get the education to really understand what goes on at CERN. But I have the belief that they know what they are doing and not going to anything stupid, and that they are pushing the bounds of human understanding.
The difference, though, as the other poster who responded to you pointed out (but in a somewhat different way), is that you don't really need faith in science the same way that you do in religion. Why?
Because the results of science can be, and are, applied to successfully solve real world problems. Not only is that the ultimate test of science, it's also an easily understood test.
If religion continuously made new claims and, simultaneously, new real-world solutions continuously came out that even the most knowledgeable skeptics ultimately could be convinced were derived from those claims, then religion would have the same standing as science.
But so far, science is the only discipline that continuously makes new (refined) claims and under which real-world solutions are continuously being developed.
And so, the "faith" that you have in science isn't really the same as the "faith" you would have in religion, as the former at least continuously gives you something tangible and useful, in a repeatable way, to show for it.
Hm I hear what you're saying. I guess I just don't feel a vocal conversation (eyes always on the road) impacts my ability to predict traffic, but maybe it will take an accident to change that:) We'll see!
Well, if you wind up in an accident as a result, here's hoping it's a very light one -- just enough to get you to realize what happened and how to prevent it.
The problem with attention and driving is that most people can't judge how much a reduction of their attention to driving as a result of, e.g., talking on the phone or with a passenger, affects their driving. The same is true of people who are drunk -- they think they're perfectly capable of driving and while doing so, don't notice that they're doing anything wrong.
This sort of thing has to be measured from the outside, which is why studies of accident rates and how they correlate with various distractions are important. I honestly don't know if any meaningful data has been analyzed to determine how much a discussion with a passenger distracts from the task of driving. Honestly, I expect that most such conversations are relatively light and so don't tend to impact driving much. Phone conversations (especially "important" ones) are often heavier and demand more attention.
That's why I'm skeptical that talking on the handsfree is as safe as talking to a passenger -- there are far too many differences between the two for the safety impact to likely be the same.
Driving should really be a relaxing experiance as the AC said. He is totally right, just put some music on, and dont worry about going crazy to get where you're going. Keep attention on the road but it really doesnt need that much effort. I guess maybe I'm just one of those 'lucky' people who has never been in an accident in many years of driving.
I think you guys are reading too much into my message.
I said I'll tell the passenger to shut up if I have to. I'm usually able to carry on some conversation with the passenger but only a light one, not one that requires that I do a lot of thinking unless the traffic is light.
Well, let me rephrase that. I could carry on such a conversation, but the end result is that my attention wouldn't be where it belongs: on the traffic. Maybe I'd get lucky and the traffic wouldn't do anything to endanger me and my passenger, but I don't leave things like that to chance because in my experience, the only good things that happen to me do so as a result of conscious action I take. I don't just watch the traffic, I predict the traffic. That takes more than just idle attention.
Yeah, I do suck at multitasking, but not to the degree that I can't drive safely (safely enough, in fact, that the only accident I've been in during the past 20 years was a light tap to someone's rear while waiting to merge into traffic because I thought they had already gone -- I saw them start to accelerate -- and it turns out they hadn't -- they stopped again). The only other accident I've ever been in in my life was when I hit black ice on a road at night.
It doesn't take much effort to handle the basic driving function itself. That's not where your attention should be, and it's not what I'm saying you should concentrate on. Instead, your attention should be on what the rest of the traffic is doing!
If you're driving on a relatively sparse interstate or something, then there basically isn't all that much to pay attention to. That's a situation in which I think it's reasonable to use a handsfree to talk to someone on the phone, or to hold a reasonably deep conversation with a passenger, as long as it doesn't impact your ability to control the car.
But in heavy traffic in the city? That's something else entirely. There are so many people doing so many stupid things that you'd be a complete idiot to divert some of your concentration to something unrelated to the task of driving.
Finally, I do enjoy driving. Quite a lot, actually. I also tend to drive faster than average (which is a safety win, as it turns out). I've managed to avoid accidents because I understand the laws of physics and don't trust the other drivers to get anything right, and take measures to compensate for their stupidity.
So you never have the radio on? Or talk to a passenger in your car? Because the parents was specifically griping about the lack of hands-free features.
I know. I do whatever it takes to keep my concentration on driving. If I have to tell a passenger to shut up, that's what I do.
Handsfree is probably better than nothing, but it's still a major distraction. The person on the cellphone doesn't know when to shut up. The passenger in the car usually does.
And finally, when you're on an "important call" on your cellphone, it's likely more than idle chitchat. In other words, it takes away even more of your concentration than a typical conversation with a passenger would.
No, I stand by what I said before, handsfree or no.
How am I supposed to use it hands-free, especially in the car?
In the car? You're not. You're supposed to keep your concentration on the road and the traffic where it belongs.
All these idiots yapping on their cellphones while they're driving make driving a lot more hazardous for the few of us left who actually know what we're doing.
Is that cellphone call so important that someone's gonna die if you don't take it? No? Then shut the fuck up and drive, because if you don't someone may well die because of your idiotic phone call.
My belief is, if businesses and individuals had to resort to civil remedies for these violations, we'd see much more reasonable and logical outcomes. (EG. A starving college student sharing copies of his/her purchased collection of CDs wouldn't be pressured to "pay back" tens of THOUSANDS of dollars for doing so. Instead, you might see the punishment actually fit the "crime". They might be charged a few hundred bucks, making them rethink how wise it was to offer copyrighted musical works to any and all takers, free of charge. People wouldn't be rushing to condemn the RIAA like they do now, if THIS was the norm.)
I hate to wake you up back into the real world, but a lawsuit is a civil rememdy, not a criminal proceeding.
The copyright cartels have purchased themselves a bunch of laws and the courts (civil and criminal) are forced to follow them.
No, the ultimate reason all this is a problem to begin with is that civil proceedings have a very different (much more lax) set of requirements than criminal proceedings do. As far as I'm concerned, if you file suit against someone else, you should have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the target is guilty of what you charge them with just like you would if they were being charged with a crime. The reason, of course, is that in both cases (civil and criminal), government powers of coercion are being used against the target.
There also need to be serious penalties for abuse of the legal system, over and above much stricter proof requirements. Something like the initiator of a suit paying serious damages to the target if the initiator can't prove his case would work, so long as the damage was capped to something the initiator could reasonably afford to pay (and no, putting the initiator in debt for life doesn't count as "reasonable").
The U.S. is so far gone in so many ways that it hurts to think about it.:-(
I've been thinking about this since you posted it and (full disclosure, I've never even visited the US), this seems something of a defeatist attitude. I take your point that politicians will not/can not fix this for themselves, but at the end of the day America is a very democratic country. If reform was demanded by the voting public then it could and would happen. All that needs to happen is for US citizens at large to actually care.
Even the desires of the people must succumb to the limits of physical reality.
The problem here is that even if the people wanted the kind of reform you're talking about, there is simply no way to get there from here anymore. You can't get an entity to act against its own interests except through coercion, and the people simply don't have the kind of coercive force required here. Said coercive force has a name: "violent revolution", and such a revolution would not succeed without a large amount of support from within the military. The nature of the military is such that I doubt the people would get that kind of support for that kind of action.
This is why brutal dictatorships are able to survive and prosper, the people be damned. Because in the end, it's not about what the people want, it's about who has the power and influence to enforce his will. In the U.S., the people lost that power a while back, and that power continues to diminish on a daily basis.
Even so, I agree Lessig should try if he's of the mind to do so. It's his call, and he more than anyone else will suffer the consequences if he fails. The payoff could be huge, though, and that makes it worth taking the chance. Regardless, it'll literally take a miracle for him to succeed.
What I find disturbing about the whole issue is not the disagreement as to whether ID is science, but the rigidity with which governments and opponents of ID are trying to define science. Many of the advancements to science can be considered outside of what is considered "science" at the time.
I'm sorry, but this is nonsense. You're confused, at least about ID specifically (even if what you say may be true in general).
The "'science' at the time" you're talking about in the above refers to the body of knowledge and set of theories based on that knowledge at any given point in time.
The reason ID isn't science has nothing to do with the current body of knowledge or the currently favored theories based on it. ID isn't science because it involves elements that cannot, even in principle, be disproved.
In other words, the reason ID isn't science is that it's not amenable to the scientific method. That method has not changed over time. ID posits the existence of an intelligent designer, and that is something that simply cannot be disproved, even in principle, because proponents will (and do) simply argue that said designer intentionally arranged the evidence in whatever way it happens to turn out. An hypothesis that cannot be disproved regardless of the evidence is one that doesn't conform to the requirements of science. Ergo, ID isn't science.
I for one would rather not have to sleep in a Faraday cage in order to sleep soundly.
Well, you could always ask them to implant the thing in your head, and then you could wear your tinfoil hat as you normally do in order to sleep soundly.
You do wear your tinfoil hat when you're asleep, right?
Flash forward a few years to Bush's "post 911 mindset". There have been enormous increases in intelligence gathering and law enforcement powers, and yet Bush and his team are too fucking stupid to realize that an Arab country is going to take control over the largest ports in the U.S. until the deal is almost finished.
I don't think the problem was that they didn't know about it. I think the problem is that they didn't care (or, alternatively, actually wanted it to go through), and it was only after the public learned about it and raised a stink that the Bush administration nixed the deal.
You appear to ascribe the various developments in the last 8 years regarding intelligence, police power, etc., to incompetence. While Hanlon's Razor may suggest that you should, I think it's folly to do so in this case. The things that have happened under the Bush administration are simply too consistent with each other for that.
Put another way, I believe the expansion of executive and government power that we've seen, and the corresponding loss of civil liberties, were the goal of this administration. I believe this administration is intentionally trying to set up a police state right here, right now. Whether it is doing so out of lust for power or a misplaced sense of what the "right thing" is I can't say for sure, but the consistency and amount of corruption and favoritism surrounding this administration points heavily at the "lust for power" end of it.
Worst of all, I think they'll succeed, if they haven't already. As crazy as it may sound, I will be somewhat surprised if the presidential election next year isn't "postponed" due to "extraordinary circumstances". This is the first time in my life that I've actually thought that was a real possibility.
Removing completely, yes. But cutting it down by 95% in the US is easy. Just stop the complete abuse of political funding that goes on at present; this really isn't hard.
Not hard conceptually. Impossible in practice.
Why? Because to do so in practice requires that the existing players act against their own selfish interests.
The system itself is at the root of the problem. It's a positive feedback mechanism where the variable in question is the amount of control the corporations have over the government.
It works like this:
Politicians need to be elected. That means they need publicity and exposure.
For the past 50 years, the primary means of achieving this is via the mass media. Over those same 50 years, ownership of the mass media has been concentrating in fewer and fewer hands, until (today) the mass media is owned by a handful of very large corporations.
Advertising in the mass media costs money. Experience shows that the more advertising you do, the greater your chances of winning. It's almost a linear relationship. So a politician tries to collect as much money as possible to spend on the media. Corporations have much more money than individuals, so gaining the favor of corporations is more beneficial to the politician than gaining the favor of most individuals.
But the ability to pay isn't enough, because the media also comments on the candidates, thus influencing the opinion of the public. The way to influence the media's comments is to strike deals with the media's owners. In other words, with a small set of large corporations.
Media corporations obviously will use this power to do deals with other corporations, and thus through that mechanism decide which candidate(s) to favor the most.
So: whichever candidate whores himself to corporations the most wins. Said candidate will introduce and attempt to pass legislation that favors those corporations the most. This almost always comes at the expense of the individual, as we've seen.
Corporations gain more power over government, which further reduces the chance that a candidate without corporate favor can win.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
So in the U.S., there's no way out except through violent revolution. And guess who controls all the real guns (not the peashooters the civilians are allowed to have)? Yep: the government. So revolution is basically not an option on the table.
The bad guys have all the exits covered. We lose. Game over.
Bush got elected the first time, and I didn't understand... I thought it was obvious he was an idiot. Time proved me right. But to RE-ELECT him? I was amazed. Granted, I didn't have much confidence that Kerry would be our next great President, but compared to Bush? I voted for Kerry, but not because I really wanted him as President, but because he was the only one who had a chance to get Bush out of office. Getting Bush out of office was my number one priority in that election, and I stand by that decision. Our 2 party system sucks because you essentially only have 2 choices, and in this case it wasn't about choosing which dildo felt the best, it was about choosing which one hurt the least.
If you voted for Bush the first time, you may be forgiven. But if you voted for him the second time, you are a fool and should be ashamed of yourself. All the evidence you needed was in front of your stupid face, yet you chose to ignore it. If you chose not to vote, then fuck you too and stop your complaining. Or, maybe START complaining because it might mean you are starting to care.
Your own words illustrate precisely my point. You didn't vote for who you wanted, you voted against the guy you didn't want to win. You voted that way because you had no real options.
The system is fundamentally rigged so that the people who really have power, those who run the big corporations, keep that power and expand upon it. You don't think they'd be stupid enough to rig it in such a way as to leave any holes open, do you?
I voted in the first election for the person I wanted to win (one of the third parties, I forget which one at this point). I voted for Kerry in the second election as you did. It accomplished nothing. I have a very strong suspicion, as do others, that the 2000 and the 2004 presidential elections were both rigged in favor of Bush. The exit polls clearly show that the same thing was attempted for the 2006 congressional elections as well (well, if the source I cited is to be believed, anyway), and the only reason that didn't work is that the democrats managed to gain enough additional support right before the election to overcome the rigging (you don't rig an election in such a way as to make it obvious it was rigged, you know. You rig it so that the rigging bias is just enough to allow your guy to win. It takes time to plan it and time to make the right preparations). Even so, the same people (more or less) who got the current guys into power are also behind the Democrats. They exert a great deal of control over who lands on the ballots of each of those parties, and cement that control by controlling what the media says about the candidates that wind up on the ballots.
Against forces like this, what can the common man do? Not a whole lot, that's what. Expecting the common man to be able to fix this is to expect a miracle. It basically won't happen.
The politicians are elected by the people. If the politicians do something wrong, it is the fault of the people who voted for them. Stop passing the buck.
The people choose who they elect from a list of politicians not of their own choosing. The people who ultimately choose who gets onto the ballot from (at the very least) the two major parties are precisely the people to whom the politicians are loyal: those who run the big corporations.
And there's no "no confidence" option on the ballot, either.
Really, what do you expect the people to do in this situation? Wave their magic wands or something?
I'm sorry, but this situation has no peaceful solution. All the exits are covered by the bad guys.
The United States Marshals Service is based in Arlington, Virginia and, under the authority and direction of the Attorney General, is headed by a Director, who is assisted by a Deputy Director. USMS Headquarters provides command, control and cooperation for the disparate elements of the service.
In other words, the executive branch. So my statement unfortunately still stands.:-(
And I think you're wrong: he who controls the PRESS controls everything.
Someone with a gun can take away the press from its owner, but the reverse isn't as true. That said, as long as the guy with the gun answers to the guy with the press, the guy with the press wins. That's the situation we have right now, and the only reason it remains that way is that we hold elections. If the elections stop, all bets are off.
Also let's not ignore the People who actually elect the members of Congress.
Although I don't believe the people are entirely innocent in this (they're almost entirely innocent, but not completely), I think they are much less to blame than you may think.
Why? Because the People can only meaningfully choose from among the candidates that are already pre-selected for them. In other words, those candidates that are on the ballot. And the corporatist mass media ensures that the People only really know about the candidates that are willing to do the bidding of the corporations.
And so, we have a self-perpetuating system that ensures that the corporations, not the People, get what they want. And those corporations don't care about education, only about cheap labor (because that means more money for those who run said corporations, and less money for everyone else. Technological progress is generally the only thing that keeps economics from being a zero-sum game).
Those who run the big corporations love China, because it allows them to reap the benefits of the use of slave labor without having to take responsibility for it. You simply cannot compete with slave labor unless you're willing to completely eliminate your standard of living, and live like, well, a slave: on the bare essentials only.
Slave labor is absolutely the cheapest form of human labor. Why else do you think it took a civil war to eliminate slavery in the U.S.? If free actors were cheaper than slaves then someone who refused to use slaves could have economically buried the slaveowners in the U.S. Slaves are much less happy than free actors, of course, but since when has economics ever been about happiness?
The bottom line is that the U.S. government today, and the system that puts people in it, is of the corporations, by the corporations, and for the corporations. The People don't enter into it anymore except as "consumers".
I don't see any way to fix it short of violent revolution (which will be squashed like a bug unless it gets lots of support from within the military).
A Global Warming zealot actually agrees with science. They may be fanatical, but they view science as an ally on the one true path. Hence they are not anti-intellectual.
If the science corrected itself and the resulting conclusions changed drastically such that they no longer agreed with the global warming zealot's views, do you really think the zealot's views would suddenly change?
No, they probably wouldn't. Because the global warming zealot is a zealot, someone who believes the way he does for reasons other than the evidence. That same person almost certainly also believes that we shouldn't be using nuclear power, despite the fact that it's the cleanest, most environmentally-friendly full-time power source we have available to us (I'd also say "safest" but that depends on how you measure it. Statistically and historically, it is).
So said zealot is anti-intellectual, but on the single issue of global warming is not anti-science. But ask him about a different area of science, like nuclear energy, and you'll likely see a complete about-face.
As far as I'm concerned, that's the kind of ally science doesn't need.
Really, I don't understand how the FBI could "ignore" a ruling. I would think that the judge would respond by naming specific individuals at the FBI, like the Director, and holding them in contempt and in jail, in perpetuity, until compliance occurs.
And who, exactly, would arrest them, huh?
The DOJ? Only if the DOJ were independent of the executive branch. Thanks to GWB, it's not anymore (if it ever was). The DEA? Executive branch. The ATF? Executive branch. The military? Executive branch.
The court's power is enforced through the executive branch. If the executive branch decides it wants to ignore the court, what can the court do?
Not a damned thing, that's what.
He who controls the guns controls everything. Power over life and death is the ultimate power. The executive branch has that. The judicial branch does not.
We know that there are records of this activity by the FBI. Now it is just a matter of time until these records come to light. The beauty of computers and email and automatic logging is that this administrations actions will be very difficult to hide. It's really amazing that the FBI and other Gov't agencies went hog-wild on peoples civil rights, and that they thought somehow that this was OK, that they would get away with it. How blind to the future consequences of their actions are these people? Seriously it's like watching the stooges play gov't.
Yes, they may "come to light", though if they do so it'll be primarily through foreign and "independent" media, rather than the "mainstream" US mass media.
And even if the general population finds out about it, you know what will happen? Nothing. Just as nothing happened with the revelation that the NSA was tapping domestic calls.
Why? The root cause is that the people make their political decisions primarily based on what the mass media tells them, and the mass media is now controlled by a very small number of very large corporations. Those who run these (and other) very large corporations favor fascism because a merger between the corporations and the state (which is what fascism is) gives the corporations the ability to create captive markets through law, something they wouldn't be able to do with a government "by the people and for the people". It also gives the people who own and run these corporations power that they can exercise without responsibility (because the stooges in government wind up taking the blame for the consequences of that exercise, and in a pseudo-democracy like the US is right now the people wind up blaming themselves since they think they have control over who winds up in office -- a fallacy since they don't have control over who winds up on the ballot).
In other words, we're way past the tipping point now, and there's no way short of massive violent revolution to put things right again. And I think violent revolution will fall on its face unless it gets the support of the military.
And that means you'd better get used to the New America, because it looks like it's going to be with us for a long time.
The science itself will work itself out in the long run (and maybe the current consensus will be proven wrong), and politicians should stay out of the scientific debate.
IANAC (I Am Not A Climatologist) but have what I believe to be a reasonable understanding of science (particularly physics) in general and the scientific method in particular, so bear that in mind when reading the below.
Yes, the science itself will indeed work itself out in the long run. The problem in this specific case is that the politicians are being expected to make far-reaching, long-lived policy decisions before we really know if the science already has worked itself out. Climate prediction is probably the most complex field in science today, because it involves many, many different inputs, some (perhaps most) of which are nonlinear in their effect. It's hard to get it right, and the types of policy decisions being asked for are of such a scale that there must be very little uncertainty indeed about the science behind those decisions. I'm not convinced that the science is quite that solid just yet.
This isn't like gravity where the evidence is easily obtainable and easily interpreted. The nature of the problem is such that whether a given explanation lives or dies depends on the smallest details (how much does solar radiation affect the outcome? What about water vapor? Ocean salinity? Distribution of reflectance/absorptiveness? Etc.), and missing even one feedback mechanism can change everything. Are we sure we're not missing any feedback mechanisms that may be in play here?
Worst of all from a science perspective, it's hard to do experiments to confirm or dismiss the hypotheses involved. For much of the work involved, the best we can do is examine historical data and make very near-term predictions. Even the latter isn't terribly fulfilling, since the nonlinear nature of many of the systems means that a slight inaccuracy in the model can cause significant errors in its predictions.
Is climate change happening? Of course. Is the planet warming? Almost certainly. Does man have an effect on the climate? Almost certainly. But none of those questions are the ones that really matter. The two questions that really matter, but which there is more uncertainty in the answers than a politician normally likes, are: how much and in what ways is man affecting the climate, and (just as importantly) what are climactic consequences of a change in his behaviour?
If the answers to those questions aren't known to a very high degree of certainty, then no politician worth anything will make decisions based on those answers. It's that simple.
So, where are the details of the letters you're all sending to your Senators / Congress-people? (You ARE sending them aren't you???) Where is the campaign to change the law? If you lot spent half the time trying to amend legislation that you do bitching about Xandros/Novell, then you might actually achieve something.
Letters such as what you suggest will only go one place: the dustbin. That is, unless they're all accompanied by multi-thousand-dollar bribes (oh, sorry, did I say that? I meant "campaign contributions"). And even then, it's doubtful that it'll have any real impact.
Congresspeople don't care about their constituents. Their constituents aren't the reason they're in office. The reason they're in office is that they had enough in the way of money (which they got from corporate campaign contributions) and good relations with the media corporations to get sufficient media exposure and to avoid getting shown in a bad light by the media. And that's after they struck a deal with the people who run their party and/or the really big corporations to get them onto the ballot to begin with.
I mean, really. Can you point to any letter writing campaign that wasn't also accompanied by a lot of money changing hands that resulted in any substantive change in Congress' stance on any issue of any importance? No? Didn't think so.
So please feel free to continue to live in a fantasy world where individual voters actually have real influence over the direction of the government. Out here in the real world, they don't. The system is so completely broken that nothing short of violent revolution will fix it, and that's not even something that can work anymore. Not as long as the government controls all the big guns, anyway.
Anyway, the bottom line here is that the best way to influence the system is to somehow exert influence over those who really control the government today: the big multinational corporations. That means somehow screwing up their plans for world domination. If that means turning our backs on those small players who are stupid enough to "make friends" with the enemies of freedom (like Microsoft), so be it. And before you label this flamebait for that last remark, think about all the things Microsoft has done to restrict the freedom of their users (DRM, "Genuine Advantage", activation keys, etc., etc.) and examine their current behaviour regarding patents. There's no pro-freedom actions to be found there...
Umm...I'm looking for passage off this rock. As long as it's a fast ship. And no questions asked. Let's just say I'd like to avoid any imperial entanglements...
Corporations at one time tried to make money for their shareholders, then they began to realize that if they instead working on controlling the public, in what the public bought and thought, the money would come as a consequence.
Governments have always worked on controlling the public, in what they thought and in some governments what they bought.
Want to know why fascism (even if clothed in democracy) is on the rise? This is why.
There's nothing that brings in money more than a captive market, and the best way to ensure a captive market is via the force of law. Fascism is the merger of the corporation and the state, in such a way that the corporation appears to be a separate entity but really isn't. In a fascist state, the corporations are in primary control over the government.
Money is power. Guns are power. Control both and you control it all. Those who run the biggest corporations want that power, but also don't want to take the blame for the consequences of the use of that power. Control of a government gives them that isolation. That isolation is especially good in a pseudo-democratic society in which the population thinks it has some kind of control over who gets into office, and therefore doesn't think to blame anyone but themselves when those in office do the bidding of the corporations and not the voters.
I don't actually think we're in disagreement overall. All I'm saying is that for solar to work, it has to be no more expensive than what it's replacing. That goes for whether it's peak-only or not.
Finally, what is this "clean conventional" source of energy you refer to? And no, I'm not some eco-nut trying to send us back to the stoneage. Perhaps you're simply using the term "conventional" incorrectly. In the energy world, "conventional" sources are . . . well, conventional. They include coal, natural gas, oil, etc. Nuclear, wind, solar, land-fill gas, and biomass are all classified as non-conventional.
I consider nuclear to be conventional. I mean, really -- the technology is mature. The reliability is very high. It's extremely clean as long as you're allowed to use it properly (namely, reprocess the fuel). We've been using it for several decades, and the only real accident of consequence (Chernobyl) was the result of a shitty design that nobody in their right mind would touch combined with immense stupidity on the part of the operators. And finally, nuclear is widely deployed. Given all that, I think it deserves the "conventional" label.
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The difference, though, as the other poster who responded to you pointed out (but in a somewhat different way), is that you don't really need faith in science the same way that you do in religion. Why?
Because the results of science can be, and are, applied to successfully solve real world problems. Not only is that the ultimate test of science, it's also an easily understood test.
If religion continuously made new claims and, simultaneously, new real-world solutions continuously came out that even the most knowledgeable skeptics ultimately could be convinced were derived from those claims, then religion would have the same standing as science.
But so far, science is the only discipline that continuously makes new (refined) claims and under which real-world solutions are continuously being developed.
And so, the "faith" that you have in science isn't really the same as the "faith" you would have in religion, as the former at least continuously gives you something tangible and useful, in a repeatable way, to show for it.
Well, if you wind up in an accident as a result, here's hoping it's a very light one -- just enough to get you to realize what happened and how to prevent it.
The problem with attention and driving is that most people can't judge how much a reduction of their attention to driving as a result of, e.g., talking on the phone or with a passenger, affects their driving. The same is true of people who are drunk -- they think they're perfectly capable of driving and while doing so, don't notice that they're doing anything wrong.
This sort of thing has to be measured from the outside, which is why studies of accident rates and how they correlate with various distractions are important. I honestly don't know if any meaningful data has been analyzed to determine how much a discussion with a passenger distracts from the task of driving. Honestly, I expect that most such conversations are relatively light and so don't tend to impact driving much. Phone conversations (especially "important" ones) are often heavier and demand more attention.
That's why I'm skeptical that talking on the handsfree is as safe as talking to a passenger -- there are far too many differences between the two for the safety impact to likely be the same.
Regardless, good luck and drive safe.
I think you guys are reading too much into my message.
I said I'll tell the passenger to shut up if I have to. I'm usually able to carry on some conversation with the passenger but only a light one, not one that requires that I do a lot of thinking unless the traffic is light.
Well, let me rephrase that. I could carry on such a conversation, but the end result is that my attention wouldn't be where it belongs: on the traffic. Maybe I'd get lucky and the traffic wouldn't do anything to endanger me and my passenger, but I don't leave things like that to chance because in my experience, the only good things that happen to me do so as a result of conscious action I take. I don't just watch the traffic, I predict the traffic. That takes more than just idle attention.
Yeah, I do suck at multitasking, but not to the degree that I can't drive safely (safely enough, in fact, that the only accident I've been in during the past 20 years was a light tap to someone's rear while waiting to merge into traffic because I thought they had already gone -- I saw them start to accelerate -- and it turns out they hadn't -- they stopped again). The only other accident I've ever been in in my life was when I hit black ice on a road at night.
It doesn't take much effort to handle the basic driving function itself. That's not where your attention should be, and it's not what I'm saying you should concentrate on. Instead, your attention should be on what the rest of the traffic is doing!
If you're driving on a relatively sparse interstate or something, then there basically isn't all that much to pay attention to. That's a situation in which I think it's reasonable to use a handsfree to talk to someone on the phone, or to hold a reasonably deep conversation with a passenger, as long as it doesn't impact your ability to control the car.
But in heavy traffic in the city? That's something else entirely. There are so many people doing so many stupid things that you'd be a complete idiot to divert some of your concentration to something unrelated to the task of driving.
Finally, I do enjoy driving. Quite a lot, actually. I also tend to drive faster than average (which is a safety win, as it turns out). I've managed to avoid accidents because I understand the laws of physics and don't trust the other drivers to get anything right, and take measures to compensate for their stupidity.
I know. I do whatever it takes to keep my concentration on driving. If I have to tell a passenger to shut up, that's what I do.
Handsfree is probably better than nothing, but it's still a major distraction. The person on the cellphone doesn't know when to shut up. The passenger in the car usually does.
And finally, when you're on an "important call" on your cellphone, it's likely more than idle chitchat. In other words, it takes away even more of your concentration than a typical conversation with a passenger would.
No, I stand by what I said before, handsfree or no.
In the car? You're not. You're supposed to keep your concentration on the road and the traffic where it belongs.
All these idiots yapping on their cellphones while they're driving make driving a lot more hazardous for the few of us left who actually know what we're doing.
Is that cellphone call so important that someone's gonna die if you don't take it? No? Then shut the fuck up and drive, because if you don't someone may well die because of your idiotic phone call.
I hate to wake you up back into the real world, but a lawsuit is a civil rememdy, not a criminal proceeding.
The copyright cartels have purchased themselves a bunch of laws and the courts (civil and criminal) are forced to follow them.
No, the ultimate reason all this is a problem to begin with is that civil proceedings have a very different (much more lax) set of requirements than criminal proceedings do. As far as I'm concerned, if you file suit against someone else, you should have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the target is guilty of what you charge them with just like you would if they were being charged with a crime. The reason, of course, is that in both cases (civil and criminal), government powers of coercion are being used against the target.
There also need to be serious penalties for abuse of the legal system, over and above much stricter proof requirements. Something like the initiator of a suit paying serious damages to the target if the initiator can't prove his case would work, so long as the damage was capped to something the initiator could reasonably afford to pay (and no, putting the initiator in debt for life doesn't count as "reasonable").
The U.S. is so far gone in so many ways that it hurts to think about it. :-(
Even the desires of the people must succumb to the limits of physical reality.
The problem here is that even if the people wanted the kind of reform you're talking about, there is simply no way to get there from here anymore. You can't get an entity to act against its own interests except through coercion, and the people simply don't have the kind of coercive force required here. Said coercive force has a name: "violent revolution", and such a revolution would not succeed without a large amount of support from within the military. The nature of the military is such that I doubt the people would get that kind of support for that kind of action.
This is why brutal dictatorships are able to survive and prosper, the people be damned. Because in the end, it's not about what the people want, it's about who has the power and influence to enforce his will. In the U.S., the people lost that power a while back, and that power continues to diminish on a daily basis.
Even so, I agree Lessig should try if he's of the mind to do so. It's his call, and he more than anyone else will suffer the consequences if he fails. The payoff could be huge, though, and that makes it worth taking the chance. Regardless, it'll literally take a miracle for him to succeed.
I don't believe in miracles.
I'm sorry, but this is nonsense. You're confused, at least about ID specifically (even if what you say may be true in general).
The "'science' at the time" you're talking about in the above refers to the body of knowledge and set of theories based on that knowledge at any given point in time.
The reason ID isn't science has nothing to do with the current body of knowledge or the currently favored theories based on it. ID isn't science because it involves elements that cannot, even in principle, be disproved.
In other words, the reason ID isn't science is that it's not amenable to the scientific method. That method has not changed over time. ID posits the existence of an intelligent designer, and that is something that simply cannot be disproved, even in principle, because proponents will (and do) simply argue that said designer intentionally arranged the evidence in whatever way it happens to turn out. An hypothesis that cannot be disproved regardless of the evidence is one that doesn't conform to the requirements of science. Ergo, ID isn't science.
Well, you could always ask them to implant the thing in your head, and then you could wear your tinfoil hat as you normally do in order to sleep soundly.
You do wear your tinfoil hat when you're asleep, right?
I don't think the problem was that they didn't know about it. I think the problem is that they didn't care (or, alternatively, actually wanted it to go through), and it was only after the public learned about it and raised a stink that the Bush administration nixed the deal.
You appear to ascribe the various developments in the last 8 years regarding intelligence, police power, etc., to incompetence. While Hanlon's Razor may suggest that you should, I think it's folly to do so in this case. The things that have happened under the Bush administration are simply too consistent with each other for that.
Put another way, I believe the expansion of executive and government power that we've seen, and the corresponding loss of civil liberties, were the goal of this administration. I believe this administration is intentionally trying to set up a police state right here, right now. Whether it is doing so out of lust for power or a misplaced sense of what the "right thing" is I can't say for sure, but the consistency and amount of corruption and favoritism surrounding this administration points heavily at the "lust for power" end of it.
Worst of all, I think they'll succeed, if they haven't already. As crazy as it may sound, I will be somewhat surprised if the presidential election next year isn't "postponed" due to "extraordinary circumstances". This is the first time in my life that I've actually thought that was a real possibility.
Not hard conceptually. Impossible in practice.
Why? Because to do so in practice requires that the existing players act against their own selfish interests.
The system itself is at the root of the problem. It's a positive feedback mechanism where the variable in question is the amount of control the corporations have over the government.
It works like this:
So in the U.S., there's no way out except through violent revolution. And guess who controls all the real guns (not the peashooters the civilians are allowed to have)? Yep: the government. So revolution is basically not an option on the table.
The bad guys have all the exits covered. We lose. Game over.
Lessig can try to fix this, but he'll fail.
Your own words illustrate precisely my point. You didn't vote for who you wanted, you voted against the guy you didn't want to win. You voted that way because you had no real options.
The system is fundamentally rigged so that the people who really have power, those who run the big corporations, keep that power and expand upon it. You don't think they'd be stupid enough to rig it in such a way as to leave any holes open, do you?
I voted in the first election for the person I wanted to win (one of the third parties, I forget which one at this point). I voted for Kerry in the second election as you did. It accomplished nothing. I have a very strong suspicion, as do others, that the 2000 and the 2004 presidential elections were both rigged in favor of Bush. The exit polls clearly show that the same thing was attempted for the 2006 congressional elections as well (well, if the source I cited is to be believed, anyway), and the only reason that didn't work is that the democrats managed to gain enough additional support right before the election to overcome the rigging (you don't rig an election in such a way as to make it obvious it was rigged, you know. You rig it so that the rigging bias is just enough to allow your guy to win. It takes time to plan it and time to make the right preparations). Even so, the same people (more or less) who got the current guys into power are also behind the Democrats. They exert a great deal of control over who lands on the ballots of each of those parties, and cement that control by controlling what the media says about the candidates that wind up on the ballots.
Against forces like this, what can the common man do? Not a whole lot, that's what. Expecting the common man to be able to fix this is to expect a miracle. It basically won't happen.
The only way out of this is in fire.
The people choose who they elect from a list of politicians not of their own choosing. The people who ultimately choose who gets onto the ballot from (at the very least) the two major parties are precisely the people to whom the politicians are loyal: those who run the big corporations.
And there's no "no confidence" option on the ballot, either.
Really, what do you expect the people to do in this situation? Wave their magic wands or something?
I'm sorry, but this situation has no peaceful solution. All the exits are covered by the bad guys.
From the same Wikipedia link you referred to:
In other words, the executive branch. So my statement unfortunately still stands. :-(
Someone with a gun can take away the press from its owner, but the reverse isn't as true. That said, as long as the guy with the gun answers to the guy with the press, the guy with the press wins. That's the situation we have right now, and the only reason it remains that way is that we hold elections. If the elections stop, all bets are off.
Although I don't believe the people are entirely innocent in this (they're almost entirely innocent, but not completely), I think they are much less to blame than you may think.
Why? Because the People can only meaningfully choose from among the candidates that are already pre-selected for them. In other words, those candidates that are on the ballot. And the corporatist mass media ensures that the People only really know about the candidates that are willing to do the bidding of the corporations.
And so, we have a self-perpetuating system that ensures that the corporations, not the People, get what they want. And those corporations don't care about education, only about cheap labor (because that means more money for those who run said corporations, and less money for everyone else. Technological progress is generally the only thing that keeps economics from being a zero-sum game).
Those who run the big corporations love China, because it allows them to reap the benefits of the use of slave labor without having to take responsibility for it. You simply cannot compete with slave labor unless you're willing to completely eliminate your standard of living, and live like, well, a slave: on the bare essentials only.
Slave labor is absolutely the cheapest form of human labor. Why else do you think it took a civil war to eliminate slavery in the U.S.? If free actors were cheaper than slaves then someone who refused to use slaves could have economically buried the slaveowners in the U.S. Slaves are much less happy than free actors, of course, but since when has economics ever been about happiness?
The bottom line is that the U.S. government today, and the system that puts people in it, is of the corporations, by the corporations, and for the corporations. The People don't enter into it anymore except as "consumers".
I don't see any way to fix it short of violent revolution (which will be squashed like a bug unless it gets lots of support from within the military).
If the science corrected itself and the resulting conclusions changed drastically such that they no longer agreed with the global warming zealot's views, do you really think the zealot's views would suddenly change?
No, they probably wouldn't. Because the global warming zealot is a zealot, someone who believes the way he does for reasons other than the evidence. That same person almost certainly also believes that we shouldn't be using nuclear power, despite the fact that it's the cleanest, most environmentally-friendly full-time power source we have available to us (I'd also say "safest" but that depends on how you measure it. Statistically and historically, it is).
So said zealot is anti-intellectual, but on the single issue of global warming is not anti-science. But ask him about a different area of science, like nuclear energy, and you'll likely see a complete about-face.
As far as I'm concerned, that's the kind of ally science doesn't need.
And who, exactly, would arrest them, huh?
The DOJ? Only if the DOJ were independent of the executive branch. Thanks to GWB, it's not anymore (if it ever was). The DEA? Executive branch. The ATF? Executive branch. The military? Executive branch.
The court's power is enforced through the executive branch. If the executive branch decides it wants to ignore the court, what can the court do?
Not a damned thing, that's what.
He who controls the guns controls everything. Power over life and death is the ultimate power. The executive branch has that. The judicial branch does not.
Yes, they may "come to light", though if they do so it'll be primarily through foreign and "independent" media, rather than the "mainstream" US mass media.
And even if the general population finds out about it, you know what will happen? Nothing. Just as nothing happened with the revelation that the NSA was tapping domestic calls.
Why? The root cause is that the people make their political decisions primarily based on what the mass media tells them, and the mass media is now controlled by a very small number of very large corporations. Those who run these (and other) very large corporations favor fascism because a merger between the corporations and the state (which is what fascism is) gives the corporations the ability to create captive markets through law, something they wouldn't be able to do with a government "by the people and for the people". It also gives the people who own and run these corporations power that they can exercise without responsibility (because the stooges in government wind up taking the blame for the consequences of that exercise, and in a pseudo-democracy like the US is right now the people wind up blaming themselves since they think they have control over who winds up in office -- a fallacy since they don't have control over who winds up on the ballot).
In other words, we're way past the tipping point now, and there's no way short of massive violent revolution to put things right again. And I think violent revolution will fall on its face unless it gets the support of the military.
And that means you'd better get used to the New America, because it looks like it's going to be with us for a long time.
IANAC (I Am Not A Climatologist) but have what I believe to be a reasonable understanding of science (particularly physics) in general and the scientific method in particular, so bear that in mind when reading the below.
Yes, the science itself will indeed work itself out in the long run. The problem in this specific case is that the politicians are being expected to make far-reaching, long-lived policy decisions before we really know if the science already has worked itself out. Climate prediction is probably the most complex field in science today, because it involves many, many different inputs, some (perhaps most) of which are nonlinear in their effect. It's hard to get it right, and the types of policy decisions being asked for are of such a scale that there must be very little uncertainty indeed about the science behind those decisions. I'm not convinced that the science is quite that solid just yet.
This isn't like gravity where the evidence is easily obtainable and easily interpreted. The nature of the problem is such that whether a given explanation lives or dies depends on the smallest details (how much does solar radiation affect the outcome? What about water vapor? Ocean salinity? Distribution of reflectance/absorptiveness? Etc.), and missing even one feedback mechanism can change everything. Are we sure we're not missing any feedback mechanisms that may be in play here?
Worst of all from a science perspective, it's hard to do experiments to confirm or dismiss the hypotheses involved. For much of the work involved, the best we can do is examine historical data and make very near-term predictions. Even the latter isn't terribly fulfilling, since the nonlinear nature of many of the systems means that a slight inaccuracy in the model can cause significant errors in its predictions.
Is climate change happening? Of course. Is the planet warming? Almost certainly. Does man have an effect on the climate? Almost certainly. But none of those questions are the ones that really matter. The two questions that really matter, but which there is more uncertainty in the answers than a politician normally likes, are: how much and in what ways is man affecting the climate, and (just as importantly) what are climactic consequences of a change in his behaviour?
If the answers to those questions aren't known to a very high degree of certainty, then no politician worth anything will make decisions based on those answers. It's that simple.
Yeah, I'd say so...I can't remember anything for more than a few minutes, let alone two whole days!
What day did you say it is again?
Letters such as what you suggest will only go one place: the dustbin. That is, unless they're all accompanied by multi-thousand-dollar bribes (oh, sorry, did I say that? I meant "campaign contributions"). And even then, it's doubtful that it'll have any real impact.
Congresspeople don't care about their constituents. Their constituents aren't the reason they're in office. The reason they're in office is that they had enough in the way of money (which they got from corporate campaign contributions) and good relations with the media corporations to get sufficient media exposure and to avoid getting shown in a bad light by the media. And that's after they struck a deal with the people who run their party and/or the really big corporations to get them onto the ballot to begin with.
I mean, really. Can you point to any letter writing campaign that wasn't also accompanied by a lot of money changing hands that resulted in any substantive change in Congress' stance on any issue of any importance? No? Didn't think so.
So please feel free to continue to live in a fantasy world where individual voters actually have real influence over the direction of the government. Out here in the real world, they don't. The system is so completely broken that nothing short of violent revolution will fix it, and that's not even something that can work anymore. Not as long as the government controls all the big guns, anyway.
Anyway, the bottom line here is that the best way to influence the system is to somehow exert influence over those who really control the government today: the big multinational corporations. That means somehow screwing up their plans for world domination. If that means turning our backs on those small players who are stupid enough to "make friends" with the enemies of freedom (like Microsoft), so be it. And before you label this flamebait for that last remark, think about all the things Microsoft has done to restrict the freedom of their users (DRM, "Genuine Advantage", activation keys, etc., etc.) and examine their current behaviour regarding patents. There's no pro-freedom actions to be found there...
You mean that look like this?
Umm...I'm looking for passage off this rock. As long as it's a fast ship. And no questions asked. Let's just say I'd like to avoid any imperial entanglements...
Want to know why fascism (even if clothed in democracy) is on the rise? This is why.
There's nothing that brings in money more than a captive market, and the best way to ensure a captive market is via the force of law. Fascism is the merger of the corporation and the state, in such a way that the corporation appears to be a separate entity but really isn't. In a fascist state, the corporations are in primary control over the government.
Money is power. Guns are power. Control both and you control it all. Those who run the biggest corporations want that power, but also don't want to take the blame for the consequences of the use of that power. Control of a government gives them that isolation. That isolation is especially good in a pseudo-democratic society in which the population thinks it has some kind of control over who gets into office, and therefore doesn't think to blame anyone but themselves when those in office do the bidding of the corporations and not the voters.
I don't actually think we're in disagreement overall. All I'm saying is that for solar to work, it has to be no more expensive than what it's replacing. That goes for whether it's peak-only or not.
I consider nuclear to be conventional. I mean, really -- the technology is mature. The reliability is very high. It's extremely clean as long as you're allowed to use it properly (namely, reprocess the fuel). We've been using it for several decades, and the only real accident of consequence (Chernobyl) was the result of a shitty design that nobody in their right mind would touch combined with immense stupidity on the part of the operators. And finally, nuclear is widely deployed. Given all that, I think it deserves the "conventional" label.