The problem is that we have a religious culture that encourages extremely high levels of obedience, faithfulness and passion. And this is not necessarily going to cause problems, but....
But it's unstable, like a dictatorship. Your first dictator might be a fine Wise Benevolent Leader, and everybody's happy. But then his son takes over, and he's maybe something more on the Cackling Lunatic Leader side of thing. You're trapped in a system that doesn't regulate itself. As long as you're shackled to the ideologies attached to a name, rather than the rationale behind the ideologies themselves, something horrible can go wrong.
No, I put the green line on myself. It seems at least as good a fit to the data as the cyclic one, and I doodled it in 10 seconds.
My point is that with such a small amount of data, you can't just plonk a regression curve onto it and call it a day; you can get any number of different curves of different kinds to make a good fit. Linear, quadratic, some fourier terms... but your choice can be arbitrary and highly leading and suggestive. The one you provided made it appear cyclic. Mine made it appear a distinct upwards trend.
In short, that data is too ambiguous to analyse like that.
Before I do anything else, I want to address this:
"If the problem is CO2 being released into the atmosphere, then why don't they support nuclear power?"
Who are 'they', exactly? Climate scientists just tell us about what the climate is doing, and what we are doing to it. I don't think it's quite within their remit to support anything.
I can see it must be hard, lacking an obvious way to get the pronunciation of _Mis_ter _Sci_entist across correctly in plaintext, and get the sheer contempt across properly. Here's a nice vid you might want to link to in future http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/103850/look-retards
I just looked at that graph. Seriously? That cyclic regression line is so arbitrary from such a small amount of data that it's just ridiculous.
You see those little downward parts right at the start and at the end? Do you really think they are unavoidably necessitated by the data? Because they are not. Not even remotely,
There are natural cycles DOES NOT MEAN THAT all variations are thus accountable.
This... is kind of the problem here.
First, we have natural climate variation. Second, we have possible anthropogenic climate variation.
We know the former happens. This is pretty much a given. So to see whether the latter is significant, we *have* to analyse both. That's what climate scientists do; it's a basic and obvious step.
The conclusions they have come to, as a massive consensus, is that AGW is very much real and significant, and cannot be explained away by natural means.... and then people like you come along and say, hey now, all you smart scientists, what about natural climate change?! I bet you weren't smart enough to think of that!!!!!
That sure is a nice story. A nice story with absolutely no evidence to support it. Please don't treat science like a conspiracy or popularity contest unless you can back yourself up with more than just rhetoric.
So... an entire field of scientists doing their utmost to produce the most accurate models of climate change, with ever-improving accuracy and consensus on their work are being politically manipulated? They are _all_ blindly stupid or complicit? That appears to be what you're saying.
The only reason the science is being contested is the same reason evolution is: because some people have agendas that don't care about facts.
And that's why caring about this is so hard. It's like playing poker without stakes -- you try to take it seriously, appreciating all the subtle flows of information, but most everyone else just wants to press the all-in button as quick as they can. They're not playing the same game as you, and trying to play with them brings your game down too. Ach. It's just saddening, really.
Converting because someone you like prays is like believing in a scientific theory because the professor has a nice bow tie. People swayed by such an irrelevance are of no loss or gain to either side,
I'm not sure how consensual, harmless sex-acts can be described as immoral. Surely any morality worth having means something in terms of consequences, as opposed to just an arbitrary check-list.
* something that is A, and * something that is indistinguishable from A, even in principle?
Is there any difference?
Besides, time is an issue that people have a lot of funny and nonsensical 'common-sense' ideas about, especially in regards to theological causality and creation. There's a lot of layers that need to be peeled away here before we stop being distracted by pretty meaningless baubles and get to the interesting stuff, which I'm not about to go into just for the fun of it.
I'm pro-rationality and curiosity. Science is merely an expression if that. Religion can be a tool of the latter... at best, which isn't usually the case.
What makes 'god' so special? There are any number of concepts, abstract and 'real', simple and complex, plausible and ridiculous, that we just cannot yet say are true or not. We cannot and _do not_ just give everything 50/50 agnosticism; that's naive and stupid in ways I think are too obvious and depressing to go into here, on slashdot.
You are suggesting that there is no reason to move god/no-god prior away from that 50/50 line. I am saying that I find the god-concept... incoherent, childish and thoroughly unjustified. I really do see it on exactly the same terms and level as any of mankind's other mythologies, or absurdist constructions. I don't have any need of it, any more than I find any need for rain-making pixies. I dismiss the two, and why not?
I'm not saying Dragonlance is for 13 year olds, but I read it when I was 13. Yes, I really enjoyed it, and as one of my first real experiences of fantasy it was pretty amazing, but... I can't shake the feeling that if I were to revisit it now it would feel like Young Adult Extruded Fantasy Product.
If I was to throw some high-class fantasy series in to the ring, I think I would start with Zelazny's Amber books. After that, well, I love Joe Abercrombie's work, and Bujold's Chalion series should definitely be mentioned.
This... is not a post I would have expected to see given a +5 on Slashdot.
Not only is it uncritical bible apologism, lacking any real meta-awareness and knee-deep in rather simplistic assertions, but that signature does not really lead me towards considering the poster a well-balanced and rational individual. This person does not like complexity to exist in the world.
What is making it so noisy? Is it the engine, the stabilising system, or the 'muscle' equivalents? If it's the engine, I suspect that's something that can be remedied sooner rather than later. I also don't see why they couldn't incorporate wheels too, to make it dual-mode.
Well, I looked at that and hoped to find much, much more. Alas, I found much, much more of the same.
Most of the stuff they patented should be flat-out unpatentable. There were a few instances, such as in choice of icon colours, were I felt Samsung seemed to be needlessly imitating Apple's, but on the whole Apple seem to be trying to patent every nook and cranny they put on the damned iPhone. Some of these things are almost dictated by design constraints and natural analogues from prior OS, and some things are just part of a natural design trend towards minimalism.
I just wish everyone would stop trying to sue each other. It's god-damned ridiculous,
Slashdot Mirror
The problem is that we have a religious culture that encourages extremely high levels of obedience, faithfulness and passion. And this is not necessarily going to cause problems, but....
But it's unstable, like a dictatorship. Your first dictator might be a fine Wise Benevolent Leader, and everybody's happy. But then his son takes over, and he's maybe something more on the Cackling Lunatic Leader side of thing. You're trapped in a system that doesn't regulate itself. As long as you're shackled to the ideologies attached to a name, rather than the rationale behind the ideologies themselves, something horrible can go wrong.
And it has.
As generalisations go, this is somewhat on the sweeping side.
It's really rather hard to take the cries of "Them scientists are lying to us!" very seriously.
No, I put the green line on myself. It seems at least as good a fit to the data as the cyclic one, and I doodled it in 10 seconds.
My point is that with such a small amount of data, you can't just plonk a regression curve onto it and call it a day; you can get any number of different curves of different kinds to make a good fit. Linear, quadratic, some fourier terms... but your choice can be arbitrary and highly leading and suggestive. The one you provided made it appear cyclic. Mine made it appear a distinct upwards trend.
In short, that data is too ambiguous to analyse like that.
Before I do anything else, I want to address this:
"If the problem is CO2 being released into the atmosphere, then why don't they support nuclear power?"
Who are 'they', exactly? Climate scientists just tell us about what the climate is doing, and what we are doing to it. I don't think it's quite within their remit to support anything.
I can see it must be hard, lacking an obvious way to get the pronunciation of _Mis_ter _Sci_entist across correctly in plaintext, and get the sheer contempt across properly. Here's a nice vid you might want to link to in future http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/103850/look-retards
I think he meant *us*, not *the US* ;)
I just looked at that graph. Seriously? That cyclic regression line is so arbitrary from such a small amount of data that it's just ridiculous.
You see those little downward parts right at the start and at the end? Do you really think they are unavoidably necessitated by the data? Because they are not. Not even remotely,
Look at what I came up with in 10 seconds: http://tinypic.com/r/10d8whf/5
SHOCKING!
There are natural cycles DOES NOT MEAN THAT all variations are thus accountable.
This... is kind of the problem here.
First, we have natural climate variation.
Second, we have possible anthropogenic climate variation.
We know the former happens. This is pretty much a given. So to see whether the latter is significant, we *have* to analyse both. That's what climate scientists do; it's a basic and obvious step.
The conclusions they have come to, as a massive consensus, is that AGW is very much real and significant, and cannot be explained away by natural means. ... and then people like you come along and say, hey now, all you smart scientists, what about natural climate change?! I bet you weren't smart enough to think of that!!!!!
That sure is a nice story. A nice story with absolutely no evidence to support it. Please don't treat science like a conspiracy or popularity contest unless you can back yourself up with more than just rhetoric.
FACT!!!!!!1!!!1!!1
The data says it's a cycle. No. If the data says it's going to be a cycle, then you are using a model upon that data. Please, show me that model.
So... an entire field of scientists doing their utmost to produce the most accurate models of climate change, with ever-improving accuracy and consensus on their work are being politically manipulated? They are _all_ blindly stupid or complicit? That appears to be what you're saying.
The only reason the science is being contested is the same reason evolution is: because some people have agendas that don't care about facts.
And that's why caring about this is so hard. It's like playing poker without stakes -- you try to take it seriously, appreciating all the subtle flows of information, but most everyone else just wants to press the all-in button as quick as they can. They're not playing the same game as you, and trying to play with them brings your game down too. Ach. It's just saddening, really.
Converting because someone you like prays is like believing in a scientific theory because the professor has a nice bow tie. People swayed by such an irrelevance are of no loss or gain to either side,
I'm not sure how consensual, harmless sex-acts can be described as immoral. Surely any morality worth having means something in terms of consequences, as opposed to just an arbitrary check-list.
What is the difference between:
* something that is A, and
* something that is indistinguishable from A, even in principle?
Is there any difference?
Besides, time is an issue that people have a lot of funny and nonsensical 'common-sense' ideas about, especially in regards to theological causality and creation. There's a lot of layers that need to be peeled away here before we stop being distracted by pretty meaningless baubles and get to the interesting stuff, which I'm not about to go into just for the fun of it.
That's just a theory.
Yes. You do.
I'm pro-rationality and curiosity. Science is merely an expression if that. Religion can be a tool of the latter... at best, which isn't usually the case.
What makes 'god' so special? There are any number of concepts, abstract and 'real', simple and complex, plausible and ridiculous, that we just cannot yet say are true or not. We cannot and _do not_ just give everything 50/50 agnosticism; that's naive and stupid in ways I think are too obvious and depressing to go into here, on slashdot.
You are suggesting that there is no reason to move god/no-god prior away from that 50/50 line. I am saying that I find the god-concept... incoherent, childish and thoroughly unjustified. I really do see it on exactly the same terms and level as any of mankind's other mythologies, or absurdist constructions. I don't have any need of it, any more than I find any need for rain-making pixies. I dismiss the two, and why not?
I'm not saying Dragonlance is for 13 year olds, but I read it when I was 13. Yes, I really enjoyed it, and as one of my first real experiences of fantasy it was pretty amazing, but... I can't shake the feeling that if I were to revisit it now it would feel like Young Adult Extruded Fantasy Product.
If I was to throw some high-class fantasy series in to the ring, I think I would start with Zelazny's Amber books. After that, well, I love Joe Abercrombie's work, and Bujold's Chalion series should definitely be mentioned.
This... is not a post I would have expected to see given a +5 on Slashdot.
Not only is it uncritical bible apologism, lacking any real meta-awareness and knee-deep in rather simplistic assertions, but that signature does not really lead me towards considering the poster a well-balanced and rational individual. This person does not like complexity to exist in the world.
What is making it so noisy? Is it the engine, the stabilising system, or the 'muscle' equivalents? If it's the engine, I suspect that's something that can be remedied sooner rather than later. I also don't see why they couldn't incorporate wheels too, to make it dual-mode.
I was moved by your plea, and in a position to effect your desires.
(So I effected your desires.)
Well, I looked at that and hoped to find much, much more. Alas, I found much, much more of the same.
Most of the stuff they patented should be flat-out unpatentable. There were a few instances, such as in choice of icon colours, were I felt Samsung seemed to be needlessly imitating Apple's, but on the whole Apple seem to be trying to patent every nook and cranny they put on the damned iPhone. Some of these things are almost dictated by design constraints and natural analogues from prior OS, and some things are just part of a natural design trend towards minimalism.
I just wish everyone would stop trying to sue each other. It's god-damned ridiculous,