I can give you the same story from France and Germany. Even though you're right that many anecdotes do not make data sets, they can support conclusions derived from data sets. And quite frankly, that support is almost a data set of its own.
You're right. However, at this point, the amount of anecdotal evidence is starting to be strong enough that data sets and studies that contradict it need to be very, very carefully looked at. Especially once you understand that it's not simply warming that's the issue, but changes in weather patterns that used to be stable for centuries.
It's funny how easily teen-age idiots identify themselves.
Sign 1: Ignorance on a subject is mistaken for actual knowledge. Sign 2: OMFG. Sign 3: They get terribly pissy when they get slapped around, because they don't take public humiliations as an indicator that they need to learn more. Sign 4: Mom jokes. Sign 5: BO jokes.
Don't worry, the rest of the world might take you seriously once you start acting like a normal person.
Wow. You believe anecdotal stories, but not actual data. Here's a thought: if you don't know something (like do the pictures represent the glacier at different seasons?), go find out. Don't simply complain that not everything is spoon-fed to you, and dismiss the entire discussion.
This is the first cogent description I've seen on how scientists can become beholden to an idea, regardless of its scientific merit or their own morality.
However, I have to point out that I have yet to see a single scientist who has gotten funding for the next 40 years. Or even 10. The only thing I ever saw was profs working from their labs, coddling all kinds of stuff together to do basic and significant research, because their funding would barely cover a student stipend, some reused equipment, and access to NOAA data and Published journals. Trust me, the vast majority of scientists, including reviewers, do not have long-term funding. The only thing they have is tenure and a professor's salary.
Funny. When I read stuff like this, I never know whether to just laugh, or buy some remote island until humanity self-destructs. Do you know who you're talking to? No. You actually have no clue. Yes, probabilities are low that any random person is a climate scientist, but then again, so is the probability of anybody falling into specific category at all. What are my odds that I'm a world-class horse-trainer who works for a high-tech company? The odds that I work the night-shift in a dead-end phone support job? Or that I'm posting this from Germany, where I'm a grad student?
What I always find when people make statements like this is that they are simply incapable of imagining someone not like them. You're like the liar who calls all others liars, because he can't imagine why someone wouldn't lie. You're like the thief who suspects everyone of stealing, because he can't imagine why someone wouldn't steal. You're cynicism does not show street smarts, it merely betrays your own failings.
Actually, the Economist is wrong as well. You don't act on the (implying any) risk of something catastrophic. You act on the function of (risk * cost of outcome). Whichever action comes out lowest, you pick. Otherwise, you'll end up with Cheney's 1% percent doctrine, which means that you are actually not capable of making any rational decision at all.
On one hand: ExxonMobil's stash of cash in the bank. On the other hand: the combined stashes of cash of all environmental groups. Who do you think has more? Which side do you think can generate more funding? Besides, this entire argument is complete bunk. It's utterly irrelevant. It can give you a clue as to how close to look at a paper, but that's about it.
Please stop repeating this idea nonsense that Climate Scientists' sole reason to support Global Warming is that they need it to keep their jobs. It's not only insulting to them, it casts you in a bad light as well.
You started well, so I'll just stick to what I know.
* Monckton mentions that there is a direct correlation between number of sunspots and grain prices falling, attributing it to the fact that more sunspots mean that the sun is hotter. Actually, that's wrong. Sunspots are cooler regions on the surface of the sun (3800 K vs 5400K on the rest of the surface), which means that the sun is actually radiating *less* energy in the visible and infrared spectrum. So his entire point completely falls apart with this basic item of astrophysics.
* Monckton categorically states that the temperature of the oceans has decreased, without using sources. From what I know though, temperatures have increased. Can't find a bullet proof link for it (was looking for NOAA timelines, but no luck), but you can use coral-reef die-offs as a good proxy. There was also a lot of hubbub when people tried to tie the increase in surface temperature of the Gulf of Mexico to the increased strength and number of Hurricanes that hit the US coast.
These are the two things that I categorically to be false. As for the rest of his arguments, they lack the data support I would expect from a debunking report. For example, why exactly did the ICCP remove the old temperature graph that showed in extreme fashion the warm and cold periods of the middle-ages? Besides, the temperature differences are still there - they are just not as blatant as before. There are also his 10 points which he thinks needs to be proven for Global Climate Change to be true, and what he thinks of them. Point 1 is a nice straw man, as someone pointed out already. Point 3 is another one, as people aren't arguing that the sun doesn't influence temperatures. They are arguing that the sun is less important than greenhouse gases. For the other points, I can give him the benefit of the doubt, even though all have significant problems with their wordings and his assessment of them.
In short, he might not be a shill - but there are enough problems in his "debunkation" to make me doubt the sincerity of his approach and his intentions. This might still be ok, if there weren't some massive errors in some of his arguments, which completely invalidate the points he is trying to make. As a result, I'm filing this under "waiting without bated breath to be properly ripped apart by people who know more".
Quite frankly, one reason I'm confident that we are in the beginning of Global Climate Change is that the only counter-arguments I see are poorly thought out, rife with personal attacks, lack data and make lots of statements without supporting data. If a group arguing for a position sounds like a bunch of idiots, I tend to take the opposite view.
Goes to show exactly how little that guy knows. You're right, that's the Stefan-Boltzmann law. The experimental factor subject to measurement is k, which is hidden in epsilon. k is an experimental factor, and therefor subject to change as measurements get craftier.
You know what I'd much rather see? That all the idiots of the "love it or leave it" conviction actually leave and go colonize some empty place (like Palestine - it'll be just like coming to America in 1600). That way, they'd stop ruining what could be a great country.
I don't despise lawyers. I despise lawyers who make shit up to justify doing things that normal people *know* are destructive to society t large.
That said, yes, you're right, it's obviously not feasible to condense all laws into 25 A6 pages. However, what I object to is the proliferation of stupid laws, and the continued existence of laws that have no reason to exist anymore. The "don't spit on Sunday's" law that probably was enacted in 1812 fits both categories. Or a tax code that has grown to 7500 pages - can you honestly say that all 7500 page are needed for clarity?
Here's the other problem - the clarity you claim comes from long reams of case law is far from clear. Why? Because it's case law. Some judge decided that something was defined one way, and that's how it's gonna be forever? That's not clarity, that's personal opinion. Or why do you think that people are itching to get new abortion cases before the Supreme Court? Because they know they only have to find 5 judges there to agree with them to change about 30 years of established law.
Right there is the prime reason why people are getting more and more cynical about this entire democracy thing: here, democracy has degenerated into a simple oligarchy, where the group in power is the group with money. Quite frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if in 50 years, the US would have the same political system that China has now: a central party that is in name democratic, but in practice completely static, and where ascension to posts comes strictly through internal power struggles.
I'm really not one for doomsday scenarios, but I have to say that this kind of crap is how people get disenfranchised and the idea that they have nothing to lose anymore. And what do people do who feel they have nothing to lose? They revolt. Feh.
And you know how they're gonna fix it? By passing a law that allows business method patents except in cases where it method involves the use of a law.
I think #1 problem is that we have TOO MANY laws. Seriously. Cut the big book of laws to a cliff note sized booklet, and we will not have 99% of all the problems we currently have with the law. And to boot, regular citizens will actually be able to understand and follow the law themselves.
Can I claim the same defense when I shoot someone? "Honest, your honor, I had no idea that shooting someone in the head was going to kill them!"
There is something like basic common sense when talking about things. Bush veered long ago into sheer phantasy.
I take it you don't own a Mac, nor have you priced one. I just did. At dell, a desktop with a 2.13 GHz Core 2 Duo, 2 GB of RAM, 250 GB HD and an NVidia 7900 GS with 256 MB of RAM costs you $2214. An iMac with a 2.16 GHz Core 2 Duo and a NVidia 7600 GT (256 MB RAM) costs $2300. The kicker? The iMac comes with a 24-inch widescreen monitor. The dell comes with a 20 inch regular sized monitor. In essence, I trade a slightly slower video card for a much, much nicer screen. And some bells and whistles like bluetooth, wirelesss, etc.
Yes, it's essentially not upgradeable (the videocard is actually soldered in). But I built my PC before, and by the time I had to upgrade, it was a case of having to upgrade everything anyway. Since I use a NAS for storage, I have the same flexibility as with a PC - and the connectivity is actually a lot easier and less troublesome. As for tweaking.... yeah, I used to do that. Now I just don't want to spend hours on fiddling with Memory latencies to squeeze a couple more frames out of Doom. I just want something that works well, does what I want it to do, and does it for a good price. And the iMac is perfect in that sense.
I speak German as my primary language. Yet I'm american. Wanna try that ass-backward argument again? Or are you just generally insulting Germans? Besides, I really don't get your point. There aren't many guns in the US, but it has a deeply ingrained gun culture? And somehow, that gun culture won WWII? If there's a deeply ingrained gun culture, shouldn't there be lots of guns in the country? And what exactly does a gun culture have to do with winning foreign wars? Last I checked, WWII was essentially won due to overwhelming economic resources by the US and massive human sacrifices by the Russians. Gun Culture had nothing to do with it.
Not only that, but flying that close to the ocean, their wings create a "ground effect" (the same effect that allowed the Spruce Goose to lift off, but not to actually fly). I suspect all of these combine to allow the albatross to travel large distances without having to flap its wings... Waves provide energy to create a pressure differential, and the ground effect maximizes its usefulness to the albatross. Very cool stuff.
Dude - you'd be surprised how many people plonk down serious money for software, but then skimp on training or installation help. Besides, services only last for so long. There are more people than I care to remember who had a perfectly working installation when I left, but managed to completely shoot it to hell in less than three weeks.
I take it you haven't actually looked at the costs of running a complex app, or at the manpower required to do so. I'll give you an example: My company sells software packages where the license alone costs you a million or more. Installation can take from 2-3 hours to a day, and fully configuring it can take anywhere from a couple of hours to weeks. Properly administrating the app, as well as taking advantage of the data it spits out, can take anywhere from a lone admin to 20-30 people (administrators as well as a full fledged NOC). Finally, it's complex enough that learning the ins and outs of it can take upwards of a year. Needless to say, one of the biggest problems we have when people buy it is that they screw up the installation, screw up the configuration, or don't have the manpower or processes in place to properly take advantage of it. So what's the alternative?
Well, the same app is available as a hosted service. People buy a temporary license, tell us what they want the app to do, and it's all set up for them. They don't have to buy hardware for it, don't have to administrate it, don't have to configure it, don't have to maintain it, troubleshoot it, write scripts for it or do any of the other things that are difficult and expensive. All they need to do is log into the web interface, look at the pretty pictures, or look into their email for the pretty pictures that the app sends them. They can be complete users of the app, without ever having to go to the trouble of becoming admins. And that is worth a ton of money to them. Not only that, but it gives them time to learn the app without having to worry about screwing things up. Not only that, but they have someone to yell at when something goes wrong.
The end result is that our customers are much happier with the hosted version than with the stand-alone app. This happyness often translates into hosted services customers buying the stand-alone app, but now they're actually power users, and far less likely to shoot themselves in the foot.
There will be an explosion of hosted services in the near future. Actually, you can already see it now. Just beware of anyone who's trying to tell you that they'll completely replace stand-alone apps. There is a place for hosted services and there is a place for stand-alone apps. Don't confuse them, or you'll end up in a world of hurt.
Ah.... an econ degree. That explains all the handwaving about what happens in specific situations. I saw that in all my econ courses - great curves, a little bit of math to provide some foundation, lots of hypothetical examples, but really, nothing concrete.
Care to elaborate exactly why "companies are sucking up profits by not lowering prices to the marginal cost of production"? And show some evidence that this is actually occuring? Also "theyre offshored so quickly theyre never able to advance beyond entry level.. their income is permanently suppressed." Care to do the same exercise here? And please, also explain to me why I managed to completely escape this process. I'd like to know why I'm special.
Otherwise, I'd just have to lump you in the same category as the majority of all the other economists: great talkers, but can't think their way out of a wet paperbag.
Shame I can't just mod you up anymore, so I'll reply. I completely agree with your assessment of the state of IT. Not only is it like the automobile manufacturing of olde, but it's getting more like automobile manufacturing of today: highly automated, lots of processes and lots of knowledge required for a job that doesn't pay that much.
I'm currently weighing getting a different degree as well - for reasons that also go beyond just job considerations. Learning is fun!
Wealth is never created or destroyed? I thought you had a point for a second, but it turns out you're just a statist who doesn't understand where wealth comes from. When a cookie gets created from Milk, butter and flour, wealth is created. When a building burns down to its ashes, wealth gets destroyed.
There is more to debate, but you're a fool who is not worth my time.
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Well, learned something new. Off to Wikipedia and Co. to find out about faculae.
I can give you the same story from France and Germany. Even though you're right that many anecdotes do not make data sets, they can support conclusions derived from data sets. And quite frankly, that support is almost a data set of its own.
You're right. However, at this point, the amount of anecdotal evidence is starting to be strong enough that data sets and studies that contradict it need to be very, very carefully looked at. Especially once you understand that it's not simply warming that's the issue, but changes in weather patterns that used to be stable for centuries.
It's funny how easily teen-age idiots identify themselves.
Sign 1: Ignorance on a subject is mistaken for actual knowledge.
Sign 2: OMFG.
Sign 3: They get terribly pissy when they get slapped around, because they don't take public humiliations as an indicator that they need to learn more.
Sign 4: Mom jokes.
Sign 5: BO jokes.
Don't worry, the rest of the world might take you seriously once you start acting like a normal person.
Wow. You believe anecdotal stories, but not actual data. Here's a thought: if you don't know something (like do the pictures represent the glacier at different seasons?), go find out. Don't simply complain that not everything is spoon-fed to you, and dismiss the entire discussion.
This is the first cogent description I've seen on how scientists can become beholden to an idea, regardless of its scientific merit or their own morality.
However, I have to point out that I have yet to see a single scientist who has gotten funding for the next 40 years. Or even 10. The only thing I ever saw was profs working from their labs, coddling all kinds of stuff together to do basic and significant research, because their funding would barely cover a student stipend, some reused equipment, and access to NOAA data and Published journals. Trust me, the vast majority of scientists, including reviewers, do not have long-term funding. The only thing they have is tenure and a professor's salary.
Funny. When I read stuff like this, I never know whether to just laugh, or buy some remote island until humanity self-destructs. Do you know who you're talking to? No. You actually have no clue. Yes, probabilities are low that any random person is a climate scientist, but then again, so is the probability of anybody falling into specific category at all. What are my odds that I'm a world-class horse-trainer who works for a high-tech company? The odds that I work the night-shift in a dead-end phone support job? Or that I'm posting this from Germany, where I'm a grad student?
What I always find when people make statements like this is that they are simply incapable of imagining someone not like them. You're like the liar who calls all others liars, because he can't imagine why someone wouldn't lie. You're like the thief who suspects everyone of stealing, because he can't imagine why someone wouldn't steal. You're cynicism does not show street smarts, it merely betrays your own failings.
Actually, the Economist is wrong as well. You don't act on the (implying any) risk of something catastrophic. You act on the function of (risk * cost of outcome). Whichever action comes out lowest, you pick. Otherwise, you'll end up with Cheney's 1% percent doctrine, which means that you are actually not capable of making any rational decision at all.
On one hand: ExxonMobil's stash of cash in the bank. On the other hand: the combined stashes of cash of all environmental groups. Who do you think has more? Which side do you think can generate more funding? Besides, this entire argument is complete bunk. It's utterly irrelevant. It can give you a clue as to how close to look at a paper, but that's about it.
Please stop repeating this idea nonsense that Climate Scientists' sole reason to support Global Warming is that they need it to keep their jobs. It's not only insulting to them, it casts you in a bad light as well.
You started well, so I'll just stick to what I know.
* Monckton mentions that there is a direct correlation between number of sunspots and grain prices falling, attributing it to the fact that more sunspots mean that the sun is hotter. Actually, that's wrong. Sunspots are cooler regions on the surface of the sun (3800 K vs 5400K on the rest of the surface), which means that the sun is actually radiating *less* energy in the visible and infrared spectrum. So his entire point completely falls apart with this basic item of astrophysics.
* Monckton categorically states that the temperature of the oceans has decreased, without using sources. From what I know though, temperatures have increased. Can't find a bullet proof link for it (was looking for NOAA timelines, but no luck), but you can use coral-reef die-offs as a good proxy. There was also a lot of hubbub when people tried to tie the increase in surface temperature of the Gulf of Mexico to the increased strength and number of Hurricanes that hit the US coast.
These are the two things that I categorically to be false. As for the rest of his arguments, they lack the data support I would expect from a debunking report. For example, why exactly did the ICCP remove the old temperature graph that showed in extreme fashion the warm and cold periods of the middle-ages? Besides, the temperature differences are still there - they are just not as blatant as before. There are also his 10 points which he thinks needs to be proven for Global Climate Change to be true, and what he thinks of them. Point 1 is a nice straw man, as someone pointed out already. Point 3 is another one, as people aren't arguing that the sun doesn't influence temperatures. They are arguing that the sun is less important than greenhouse gases. For the other points, I can give him the benefit of the doubt, even though all have significant problems with their wordings and his assessment of them.
In short, he might not be a shill - but there are enough problems in his "debunkation" to make me doubt the sincerity of his approach and his intentions. This might still be ok, if there weren't some massive errors in some of his arguments, which completely invalidate the points he is trying to make. As a result, I'm filing this under "waiting without bated breath to be properly ripped apart by people who know more".
Quite frankly, one reason I'm confident that we are in the beginning of Global Climate Change is that the only counter-arguments I see are poorly thought out, rife with personal attacks, lack data and make lots of statements without supporting data. If a group arguing for a position sounds like a bunch of idiots, I tend to take the opposite view.
Goes to show exactly how little that guy knows. You're right, that's the Stefan-Boltzmann law. The experimental factor subject to measurement is k, which is hidden in epsilon. k is an experimental factor, and therefor subject to change as measurements get craftier.
You know what I'd much rather see? That all the idiots of the "love it or leave it" conviction actually leave and go colonize some empty place (like Palestine - it'll be just like coming to America in 1600). That way, they'd stop ruining what could be a great country.
I don't despise lawyers. I despise lawyers who make shit up to justify doing things that normal people *know* are destructive to society t large.
That said, yes, you're right, it's obviously not feasible to condense all laws into 25 A6 pages. However, what I object to is the proliferation of stupid laws, and the continued existence of laws that have no reason to exist anymore. The "don't spit on Sunday's" law that probably was enacted in 1812 fits both categories. Or a tax code that has grown to 7500 pages - can you honestly say that all 7500 page are needed for clarity?
Here's the other problem - the clarity you claim comes from long reams of case law is far from clear. Why? Because it's case law. Some judge decided that something was defined one way, and that's how it's gonna be forever? That's not clarity, that's personal opinion. Or why do you think that people are itching to get new abortion cases before the Supreme Court? Because they know they only have to find 5 judges there to agree with them to change about 30 years of established law.
This is not clarity, this is a jungle.
"Ain't democracy great?"
Right there is the prime reason why people are getting more and more cynical about this entire democracy thing: here, democracy has degenerated into a simple oligarchy, where the group in power is the group with money. Quite frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if in 50 years, the US would have the same political system that China has now: a central party that is in name democratic, but in practice completely static, and where ascension to posts comes strictly through internal power struggles.
I'm really not one for doomsday scenarios, but I have to say that this kind of crap is how people get disenfranchised and the idea that they have nothing to lose anymore. And what do people do who feel they have nothing to lose? They revolt. Feh.
And you know how they're gonna fix it? By passing a law that allows business method patents except in cases where it method involves the use of a law.
I think #1 problem is that we have TOO MANY laws. Seriously. Cut the big book of laws to a cliff note sized booklet, and we will not have 99% of all the problems we currently have with the law. And to boot, regular citizens will actually be able to understand and follow the law themselves.
Hush! Don't give them any ideas! And to anyone thinking about modding this funny - go away. I'm dead serious.
Can I claim the same defense when I shoot someone? "Honest, your honor, I had no idea that shooting someone in the head was going to kill them!" There is something like basic common sense when talking about things. Bush veered long ago into sheer phantasy.
I take it you don't own a Mac, nor have you priced one. I just did. At dell, a desktop with a 2.13 GHz Core 2 Duo, 2 GB of RAM, 250 GB HD and an NVidia 7900 GS with 256 MB of RAM costs you $2214. An iMac with a 2.16 GHz Core 2 Duo and a NVidia 7600 GT (256 MB RAM) costs $2300. The kicker? The iMac comes with a 24-inch widescreen monitor. The dell comes with a 20 inch regular sized monitor. In essence, I trade a slightly slower video card for a much, much nicer screen. And some bells and whistles like bluetooth, wirelesss, etc.
Yes, it's essentially not upgradeable (the videocard is actually soldered in). But I built my PC before, and by the time I had to upgrade, it was a case of having to upgrade everything anyway. Since I use a NAS for storage, I have the same flexibility as with a PC - and the connectivity is actually a lot easier and less troublesome. As for tweaking.... yeah, I used to do that. Now I just don't want to spend hours on fiddling with Memory latencies to squeeze a couple more frames out of Doom. I just want something that works well, does what I want it to do, and does it for a good price. And the iMac is perfect in that sense.
I speak German as my primary language. Yet I'm american. Wanna try that ass-backward argument again? Or are you just generally insulting Germans? Besides, I really don't get your point. There aren't many guns in the US, but it has a deeply ingrained gun culture? And somehow, that gun culture won WWII? If there's a deeply ingrained gun culture, shouldn't there be lots of guns in the country? And what exactly does a gun culture have to do with winning foreign wars? Last I checked, WWII was essentially won due to overwhelming economic resources by the US and massive human sacrifices by the Russians. Gun Culture had nothing to do with it.
Not only that, but flying that close to the ocean, their wings create a "ground effect" (the same effect that allowed the Spruce Goose to lift off, but not to actually fly). I suspect all of these combine to allow the albatross to travel large distances without having to flap its wings... Waves provide energy to create a pressure differential, and the ground effect maximizes its usefulness to the albatross. Very cool stuff.
Dude - you'd be surprised how many people plonk down serious money for software, but then skimp on training or installation help. Besides, services only last for so long. There are more people than I care to remember who had a perfectly working installation when I left, but managed to completely shoot it to hell in less than three weeks.
I take it you haven't actually looked at the costs of running a complex app, or at the manpower required to do so. I'll give you an example:
My company sells software packages where the license alone costs you a million or more. Installation can take from 2-3 hours to a day, and fully configuring it can take anywhere from a couple of hours to weeks. Properly administrating the app, as well as taking advantage of the data it spits out, can take anywhere from a lone admin to 20-30 people (administrators as well as a full fledged NOC). Finally, it's complex enough that learning the ins and outs of it can take upwards of a year. Needless to say, one of the biggest problems we have when people buy it is that they screw up the installation, screw up the configuration, or don't have the manpower or processes in place to properly take advantage of it. So what's the alternative?
Well, the same app is available as a hosted service. People buy a temporary license, tell us what they want the app to do, and it's all set up for them. They don't have to buy hardware for it, don't have to administrate it, don't have to configure it, don't have to maintain it, troubleshoot it, write scripts for it or do any of the other things that are difficult and expensive. All they need to do is log into the web interface, look at the pretty pictures, or look into their email for the pretty pictures that the app sends them. They can be complete users of the app, without ever having to go to the trouble of becoming admins. And that is worth a ton of money to them. Not only that, but it gives them time to learn the app without having to worry about screwing things up. Not only that, but they have someone to yell at when something goes wrong.
The end result is that our customers are much happier with the hosted version than with the stand-alone app. This happyness often translates into hosted services customers buying the stand-alone app, but now they're actually power users, and far less likely to shoot themselves in the foot.
There will be an explosion of hosted services in the near future. Actually, you can already see it now. Just beware of anyone who's trying to tell you that they'll completely replace stand-alone apps. There is a place for hosted services and there is a place for stand-alone apps. Don't confuse them, or you'll end up in a world of hurt.
Ah.... an econ degree. That explains all the handwaving about what happens in specific situations. I saw that in all my econ courses - great curves, a little bit of math to provide some foundation, lots of hypothetical examples, but really, nothing concrete. Care to elaborate exactly why "companies are sucking up profits by not lowering prices to the marginal cost of production"? And show some evidence that this is actually occuring? Also "theyre offshored so quickly theyre never able to advance beyond entry level.. their income is permanently suppressed." Care to do the same exercise here? And please, also explain to me why I managed to completely escape this process. I'd like to know why I'm special. Otherwise, I'd just have to lump you in the same category as the majority of all the other economists: great talkers, but can't think their way out of a wet paperbag.
Shame I can't just mod you up anymore, so I'll reply. I completely agree with your assessment of the state of IT. Not only is it like the automobile manufacturing of olde, but it's getting more like automobile manufacturing of today: highly automated, lots of processes and lots of knowledge required for a job that doesn't pay that much.
I'm currently weighing getting a different degree as well - for reasons that also go beyond just job considerations. Learning is fun!
Wealth is never created or destroyed? I thought you had a point for a second, but it turns out you're just a statist who doesn't understand where wealth comes from. When a cookie gets created from Milk, butter and flour, wealth is created. When a building burns down to its ashes, wealth gets destroyed.
There is more to debate, but you're a fool who is not worth my time.