FFS. These people are _early adopters_. They'll eat shit, thank you and grin happily.
Then, they'll go out and tell everybody they know that they *love* the iPad. Most likely, all of their friends look to these early adopters for advice on new electronics, etc. By selling to these people and giving them an experience that doesn't suck, Apple is pretty much guaranteed that the product will be a success.
Like it or not, the iPad (and iPad-like devices) are going to be popular.
You are positing an alien presence theory as more plausible than the religious explanation.
In either case, though, the whole conversation is entirely dependent on accepting the biblical account as by and large factual.
Personally, I reject that assumption. I know that many people will find this idea offensive, but I see the bible as just a book. Yes, it has had enormous historical significance, but why should I accept the accounts in there are more reliable than any of the many, many other religious texts?
You seem to be a fan of Erich von Daniken and point out how his theories help "explain" the accounts in the bible and other religious texts. Personally, I prefer an even simpler explanation - People like telling stories, and all of these "ancient mysteries" are all a bunch of sensationalized accounts of perfectly banal events.
I'm asking for a non-religious reason that I should even waste my time looking for explanations of these supernatural claims. Until an event is documented more than once, I'm not going to bother.
If you don't buy Erich's ideas, what's your explanation for the Wheel of Ezekiel?
Simple: I don't need an explanation.
I'm not trolling here. I'm just fed up with people quoting things out of the bible and then demanding how I can explain what is written unless I confess in some supernatural entity. This is begging the question (in the original sense of the term and not in the now common use).
Any serious biblical scholar will tell you that the bible is full of contradictions, metaphors, etc., etc. Unless events described in it can be substantiated from some kind of external, independent source, I don't need to provide any explanation.
The bible is, in the end, just a book that serves as the basis of a religion. There are lots of religions out there with a lot of sacred texts, most of which make flat out irreconcilable claims about the nature of the universe and the history of the earth. Why is one, absent any other independent verification, more reliable than any other?
This problem hinges very greatly on how it is phrased and I think it's more a trick of English converting to statistics than it is a true puzzle.
I would quibble a bit with your wording here, but I think that this is the key observation. I think that the fact that this entire problem hinges on the slight ordering of a few key pieces of information is what makes this a puzzle and not a real exercise in probability theory.
This is why I don't like puzzles. Most of the time is spent decoding the clever trick of the person framing the puzzle and not spent on "real" issues. Of course, some think that finding the clever trick IS the fun, but that isn't my cup of tea...
Protip: Don't argue against tattoos to the tattoo'd. They are maniacally pro-ink (and they MUST be! They'll be inked for the rest of their lives!).
Actually, I think that some of the most vocal opinions on tattoos come from those who DON'T have any. For those of us who have them (I have two that can be easily hidden when in professional circumstances since I recognize that a lot of people actively dislike them), it really isn't a big deal.
I'd be willing to bet that a lot of your colleagues and acquaintances have ink in places that you'll never see, and I'd also be willing to bet that most of them don't care that you don't have any.
Is there a fad to tattoos? Certainly. At the same time, I have tattoos that represent significant moments in my life, and I know that for a lot of people, the tattoos represent very significant personal events.
At this point in time, tattoos are just too widespread to make any blanket statements about the "type" of person who gets one.
Somehow I knew a story about tattoos on Slashdot would trot out a bunch of people who know absolutely nothing on the topic. Now everybody gets to make categorical statements they can't support with anything but opinion.
In other words, just another day here on Slashdot...
I'm talking out of my ass here, but perhaps the observation that the moon has a lot of water suggests that water in the universe isn't particularly rare. If that turns out to be true, water is unlikely to be the motivator for any wars.
Of course the big fallacy of my argument is that earth is covered by water, so the moon isn't any where close to a randomly sampled other part of space.
Unfortunately, if a cop wants to search your car, the cop will come up with a reason. I know someone who had their car searched because they had a frisbee in the back window, which the cop claimed could be used to prepare/take drugs. Yes, that's right, they had a frisbee, which, when combined with dreadlocks, provides enough cause for a cop to start a search.
Was this illegal? You bet, but guess what? If the cop found anything (which he didn't) and if the case went to court, the cop would claim that he saw them hide something, so he searched the car. In the end, nobody would have conclusive proof one way or the other, but you can either believe the cop or the druggies.
Guess who has more credibility to a judge?
The best response I've heard to a request to search is to claim, "I won't resist a search." In legalese, you are NOT consenting to a search, but your response is one of openness and cooperation.
Um... I was being sarcastic in an effort to point out the strange double-think that goes on when people think about sex. My point was that a lot of people have this idea of "I'm not going to have sex before marriage, because sex before marriage is wrong," but then they engage in all kinds of sex that isn't vaginal (and hence "sodomy" in the traditional sense of the word).
It was a poorly worded joke, and I'm sorry (really, really sorry) that you felt that you had to post that response.
While you may be a bionerd, you're missing the point.
All of what you say is correct, but here's the main point - nothing on earth lives in a habitat anywhere near that of Titan. Life is great at adapting to hostile environments, but it needs to adapt to those environments over the course of many, many generations.
Also, there is a big difference between the ability to survive a novel hostile environment (like the bacteria that survived the moon trip) and the ability grow and reproduce in that environment. We're talking about the idea of a living, reproducing contaminant, which is laughable. Life on earth is based upon water. Period, full stop, no exceptions. Yes, there is a chance that something, somewhere exists on earth in some deep crevice that uses some other solvent, but there is nothing on earth that comes anywhere close to a liquid methane environment.
So, sorry, I don't buy the idea that any terrestrial life could colonize Titan.
And yes I'm an armchair underwater mining engineer (but an actual, licensed, systems engineer) and I can't quite believe that BP can't drop a hundred tons of rock over the spill, I'm pretty sure they're trying to find the most "cost effective" way of dealing with it.
How much more do you want to pay for, well, everything?
Well, personally I would prefer to pay the full cost of goods, including all environmental and long term costs associated with growing, harvest, transport, etc.
If gas rises to $8 a gallon, that will create enormous pressure to start doing everything more sustainably, which will suddenly make the potatoes grown half way around the world actually cost more than the ones from the local farmer*. To me, that just makes sense.
Additionally, there will suddenly be a *huge* demand for alternative energy sources, so R&D will be funded like crazy.
Will it be painful for some? You bet, but we have to get there from here.
* Potatoes are listed as an example for illustration purposes only. I have little knowledge of potato manufacture per se, but the pattern of distant import vs. local product is well-known.
(I know that this is an old thread, but I've been out of town.)
If your in the Apocalyptic Global Warming church, how can you argue against Phil Jones?
First off, I'm not arguing against him. If you read the full interview with him, you'll see that when asked point blank, he said that he is sure about global warming and that he agrees with the conclusion that this change is man made.
Second, those who are against global warming are much more like a church than those who choose to believe the scientific evidence. In fact, all the anti global warming rhetoric that I've heard is patterned almost identically after the creationist rhetoric. Specifically, it takes a small snippet of information that seems to contradict the theory, presents it as a major finding, then throws out the entire theory.
This whole debate sickens me, since it shows first and foremost how bad of science education most people seem to have, followed as a close second how bad most scientists are at talking to people without science backgrounds.
So... he's basically saying that our significant emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases since 1995 have not affected global temperatures in any statistically significant way.
That being true, why are we so worked up about CO2 emissions? It doesn't make any sense.
Here is where the science gets tough. Given the noise in annual temperature readings, it is hard to get get statistical significance over short periods of time, but we know that CO2 emissions increase temperature.
Given that temperatures are rising and that we're pumping CO2 into the atmosphere at an unprecedented rate, it seems a good idea to cut C02 emissions.
I'll say this yet again - there are plenty of other reasons to switch to "greener" energy sources, so it's really stupid to postpone a switch to those energy sources until the AGW debate is sufficiently resolved.
Sorry I missed this before, but I agree completely. As far as I can tell, part of the intent of cap & trade is try put economic pressures in places to push green energy.
Did you really link to that article to refute AGW? The quote you gave was asking him to speculate on why scientists claim the debate is over, and his statement wasn't addressing the fundamental black and white question of whether there is such a thing as AGW. Instead, he was making the point that we still don't know everything, which is a statement that any scientist worth anything would make.
What about the questions:
E - How confident are you that warming has taken place and that humans are mainly responsible?
I'm 100% confident that the climate has warmed. As to the second question, I would go along with IPCC Chapter 9 - there's evidence that most of the warming since the 1950s is due to human activity.
I - Would it be reasonable looking at the same scientific evidence to take the view that recent warming is not predominantly manmade?
No - see again my answer to D.
You do a wonderful job of taking snippets of things he says and drawing big conclusions, but when you look at his response to point-blank questions, there is clarity.
The planet is warming due to increased concentrations of heat-trapping gases in our atmosphere. A snowy winter in Washington does not alter this fact.
Most of the increase in the concentration of these gases over the last century is due to human activities, especially the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation.
Natural causes always play a role in changing Earth's climate, but are now being overwhelmed by human-induced changes.
Warming the planet will cause many other climatic patterns to change at speeds unprecedented in modern times, including increasing rates of sea-level rise and alterations in the hydrologic cycle. Rising concentrations of carbon dioxide are making the oceans more acidic.
The combination of these complex climate changes threatens coastal communities and cities, our food and water supplies, marine and freshwater ecosystems, forests, high mountain environments, and far more.
For the sake of argument, though, let's pretend that AGW isn't a scientifically well-established. We still have to decide what we want to do about it. If you'll even entertain the possibility that it is real, let's look at the two worst-case scenarios.
If it is not real, but we act to reduce fossil fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, we will have wasted a lot of money creating cleaner energy sources and suffered from some economic hardships as the economies transition.
It it is real, the potential consequences are well documented.
We have to switch off fossil fuels eventually. The fact that they are not renewable makes that statement unquestionable. The only question is when. If you look at the two scenarios above, I choose to do it now.
In this whole debate, I think that there is one major point that is never brought up. You ready?
Climate science is very complicated.
As a direct corollary: Debating specific details of climate science without a lot of background and training is probably a waste of time.
In other words: In the end, assuming you're not a climate scientist, no matter how much you've dug into the details, your opinion on this subject is guided by what other people are saying in the debate.
So, if we can agree on the above points, let's see who's saying what about this scientific issue. Well, the National Academy of Science says that AGW is real and that we need to do something about it. On the other hand, most of the critique that I've seen is coming from a lot of politicians or organizations with questionable credentials.
Which brings us back around to the main question - whose opinion do you believe more, on a scientific issue?
Unfortunately, the fish aren't uniformly distributed across the entire gulf. Instead, they are concentrated where the food sources are.
Take shrimp for example. Shrimp fishing takes place right along the wetland boundaries, where the oil is heading right now. These areas are already in serious danger from a variety of sources - good search a few things like "Louisiana wetland loss" and educate yourself.
When this oil starts to really hit these areas, it stands a damn good chance of destroying this very fragile area.
One of the main ideas behind peak oil isn't that the world is out of oil. Instead, what we are approaching is the point where the energy and financial costs of extracting the oil from the earth is going to make it stop being practical.
This whole disaster is an illustration of this fact. Because they are drilling 4 miles down through the crust, a mile under the ocean, this whole operation is extremely complicated. The more complicated something is, the more likely something is going to go wrong. When things go poorly, costs go up. Even though BP is going to sleaze their way out of as much responsibility as possible, they are still taking a huge financial loss, which is all part of the equation.
Libertarianism does not mean corporatism, as much as you would like to believe. In general, it's the belief that even if you could construct the perfect government program, greed and incompetence will eventually sabotage its operations.
Yes, power will corrupt, and anyone with any power will try to expand their power and never give up powers that have been gained. I see the only alternative to government being a very decentralized system or regular revolutions.
I think that a lot of the libertarian ideas come from a belief that a free market will become the decentralized system, but I don't agree. It seems that the free market tends to converge to a monopoly, at which point we go back to the first problem.
Personally, I have no idea what the right system is. Any ideas?
I hear what you're saying, and I can't dispute your claims, which seem well-grounded in our current understanding of the universe. I guess that I'm coming from a different perspective.
We managed to make several major breakthroughs in our understanding of the universe (eg, relativity, nuclear physics) very recently relative to human history and relative to the age of the universe).
Given that perspective, I have a hard time with the notion that now we know pretty much everything.
On the other side of the coin, there is technology, which doesn't really need new understanding of physics, just better application. If you go back 100 years, nobody would believe that it would be possible for us to be having this conversation.
In any case, I don't think that I'm going to see interstellar travel anytime in my lifetime. The challenges you point out are just too great. But in 1000 years or 100,000? I have no idea what humanity may or may not achieve, or if it will even still exist.
Slashdot Mirror
Then, they'll go out and tell everybody they know that they *love* the iPad. Most likely, all of their friends look to these early adopters for advice on new electronics, etc. By selling to these people and giving them an experience that doesn't suck, Apple is pretty much guaranteed that the product will be a success.
Like it or not, the iPad (and iPad-like devices) are going to be popular.
I'm not sure that I made myself clear.
You are positing an alien presence theory as more plausible than the religious explanation. In either case, though, the whole conversation is entirely dependent on accepting the biblical account as by and large factual.
Personally, I reject that assumption. I know that many people will find this idea offensive, but I see the bible as just a book. Yes, it has had enormous historical significance, but why should I accept the accounts in there are more reliable than any of the many, many other religious texts?
You seem to be a fan of Erich von Daniken and point out how his theories help "explain" the accounts in the bible and other religious texts. Personally, I prefer an even simpler explanation - People like telling stories, and all of these "ancient mysteries" are all a bunch of sensationalized accounts of perfectly banal events.
I'm asking for a non-religious reason that I should even waste my time looking for explanations of these supernatural claims. Until an event is documented more than once, I'm not going to bother.
Simple: I don't need an explanation.
I'm not trolling here. I'm just fed up with people quoting things out of the bible and then demanding how I can explain what is written unless I confess in some supernatural entity. This is begging the question (in the original sense of the term and not in the now common use).
Any serious biblical scholar will tell you that the bible is full of contradictions, metaphors, etc., etc. Unless events described in it can be substantiated from some kind of external, independent source, I don't need to provide any explanation.
The bible is, in the end, just a book that serves as the basis of a religion. There are lots of religions out there with a lot of sacred texts, most of which make flat out irreconcilable claims about the nature of the universe and the history of the earth. Why is one, absent any other independent verification, more reliable than any other?
I would quibble a bit with your wording here, but I think that this is the key observation. I think that the fact that this entire problem hinges on the slight ordering of a few key pieces of information is what makes this a puzzle and not a real exercise in probability theory.
This is why I don't like puzzles. Most of the time is spent decoding the clever trick of the person framing the puzzle and not spent on "real" issues. Of course, some think that finding the clever trick IS the fun, but that isn't my cup of tea...
Good idea. Stand out from that 40% majority! (see page 23 of the report)
Actually, I think that some of the most vocal opinions on tattoos come from those who DON'T have any. For those of us who have them (I have two that can be easily hidden when in professional circumstances since I recognize that a lot of people actively dislike them), it really isn't a big deal.
I'd be willing to bet that a lot of your colleagues and acquaintances have ink in places that you'll never see, and I'd also be willing to bet that most of them don't care that you don't have any.
Is there a fad to tattoos? Certainly. At the same time, I have tattoos that represent significant moments in my life, and I know that for a lot of people, the tattoos represent very significant personal events.
At this point in time, tattoos are just too widespread to make any blanket statements about the "type" of person who gets one.
In other words, just another day here on Slashdot...
I'm talking out of my ass here, but perhaps the observation that the moon has a lot of water suggests that water in the universe isn't particularly rare. If that turns out to be true, water is unlikely to be the motivator for any wars.
Of course the big fallacy of my argument is that earth is covered by water, so the moon isn't any where close to a randomly sampled other part of space.
Unfortunately, if a cop wants to search your car, the cop will come up with a reason. I know someone who had their car searched because they had a frisbee in the back window, which the cop claimed could be used to prepare/take drugs. Yes, that's right, they had a frisbee, which, when combined with dreadlocks, provides enough cause for a cop to start a search.
Was this illegal? You bet, but guess what? If the cop found anything (which he didn't) and if the case went to court, the cop would claim that he saw them hide something, so he searched the car. In the end, nobody would have conclusive proof one way or the other, but you can either believe the cop or the druggies.
Guess who has more credibility to a judge?
The best response I've heard to a request to search is to claim, "I won't resist a search." In legalese, you are NOT consenting to a search, but your response is one of openness and cooperation.
Um... I was being sarcastic in an effort to point out the strange double-think that goes on when people think about sex. My point was that a lot of people have this idea of "I'm not going to have sex before marriage, because sex before marriage is wrong," but then they engage in all kinds of sex that isn't vaginal (and hence "sodomy" in the traditional sense of the word).
It was a poorly worded joke, and I'm sorry (really, really sorry) that you felt that you had to post that response.
According to scripture, premarital sex is a sin, which is why a lot of kids engage in morally upstanding and biblically correct acts of sodomy.
That way, you can be "pure" on your wedding night.
While you may be a bionerd, you're missing the point.
All of what you say is correct, but here's the main point - nothing on earth lives in a habitat anywhere near that of Titan. Life is great at adapting to hostile environments, but it needs to adapt to those environments over the course of many, many generations.
Also, there is a big difference between the ability to survive a novel hostile environment (like the bacteria that survived the moon trip) and the ability grow and reproduce in that environment. We're talking about the idea of a living, reproducing contaminant, which is laughable. Life on earth is based upon water. Period, full stop, no exceptions. Yes, there is a chance that something, somewhere exists on earth in some deep crevice that uses some other solvent, but there is nothing on earth that comes anywhere close to a liquid methane environment.
So, sorry, I don't buy the idea that any terrestrial life could colonize Titan.
And, yes, I am a molecular biologist.
The BBC has a great summary of why that idea and other simple ideas won't work.
Don't forget to teach Intelligent Falling while we're at it!
Well, personally I would prefer to pay the full cost of goods, including all environmental and long term costs associated with growing, harvest, transport, etc.
If gas rises to $8 a gallon, that will create enormous pressure to start doing everything more sustainably, which will suddenly make the potatoes grown half way around the world actually cost more than the ones from the local farmer*. To me, that just makes sense.
Additionally, there will suddenly be a *huge* demand for alternative energy sources, so R&D will be funded like crazy.
Will it be painful for some? You bet, but we have to get there from here.
* Potatoes are listed as an example for illustration purposes only. I have little knowledge of potato manufacture per se, but the pattern of distant import vs. local product is well-known.
(I know that this is an old thread, but I've been out of town.)
First off, I'm not arguing against him. If you read the full interview with him, you'll see that when asked point blank, he said that he is sure about global warming and that he agrees with the conclusion that this change is man made.
Second, those who are against global warming are much more like a church than those who choose to believe the scientific evidence. In fact, all the anti global warming rhetoric that I've heard is patterned almost identically after the creationist rhetoric. Specifically, it takes a small snippet of information that seems to contradict the theory, presents it as a major finding, then throws out the entire theory.
This whole debate sickens me, since it shows first and foremost how bad of science education most people seem to have, followed as a close second how bad most scientists are at talking to people without science backgrounds.
Here is where the science gets tough. Given the noise in annual temperature readings, it is hard to get get statistical significance over short periods of time, but we know that CO2 emissions increase temperature.
Given that temperatures are rising and that we're pumping CO2 into the atmosphere at an unprecedented rate, it seems a good idea to cut C02 emissions.
Sorry I missed this before, but I agree completely. As far as I can tell, part of the intent of cap & trade is try put economic pressures in places to push green energy.
Did you really link to that article to refute AGW? The quote you gave was asking him to speculate on why scientists claim the debate is over, and his statement wasn't addressing the fundamental black and white question of whether there is such a thing as AGW. Instead, he was making the point that we still don't know everything, which is a statement that any scientist worth anything would make.
What about the questions:
You do a wonderful job of taking snippets of things he says and drawing big conclusions, but when you look at his response to point-blank questions, there is clarity.
Here's a simple heuristic for you - believe the vast majority scientists.
You can also look for statements from reputable scientists in reputable journals and see what they say.
Some nice points from the above linked article:
For the sake of argument, though, let's pretend that AGW isn't a scientifically well-established. We still have to decide what we want to do about it. If you'll even entertain the possibility that it is real, let's look at the two worst-case scenarios.
If it is not real, but we act to reduce fossil fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, we will have wasted a lot of money creating cleaner energy sources and suffered from some economic hardships as the economies transition.
It it is real, the potential consequences are well documented.
We have to switch off fossil fuels eventually. The fact that they are not renewable makes that statement unquestionable. The only question is when. If you look at the two scenarios above, I choose to do it now.
In this whole debate, I think that there is one major point that is never brought up. You ready?
Climate science is very complicated.
As a direct corollary: Debating specific details of climate science without a lot of background and training is probably a waste of time.
In other words: In the end, assuming you're not a climate scientist, no matter how much you've dug into the details, your opinion on this subject is guided by what other people are saying in the debate.
So, if we can agree on the above points, let's see who's saying what about this scientific issue. Well, the National Academy of Science says that AGW is real and that we need to do something about it. On the other hand, most of the critique that I've seen is coming from a lot of politicians or organizations with questionable credentials.
Which brings us back around to the main question - whose opinion do you believe more, on a scientific issue?
I agree completely.
Unfortunately, the fish aren't uniformly distributed across the entire gulf. Instead, they are concentrated where the food sources are.
Take shrimp for example. Shrimp fishing takes place right along the wetland boundaries, where the oil is heading right now. These areas are already in serious danger from a variety of sources - good search a few things like "Louisiana wetland loss" and educate yourself.
When this oil starts to really hit these areas, it stands a damn good chance of destroying this very fragile area.
One of the main ideas behind peak oil isn't that the world is out of oil. Instead, what we are approaching is the point where the energy and financial costs of extracting the oil from the earth is going to make it stop being practical.
This whole disaster is an illustration of this fact. Because they are drilling 4 miles down through the crust, a mile under the ocean, this whole operation is extremely complicated. The more complicated something is, the more likely something is going to go wrong. When things go poorly, costs go up. Even though BP is going to sleaze their way out of as much responsibility as possible, they are still taking a huge financial loss, which is all part of the equation.
Yes, power will corrupt, and anyone with any power will try to expand their power and never give up powers that have been gained. I see the only alternative to government being a very decentralized system or regular revolutions.
I think that a lot of the libertarian ideas come from a belief that a free market will become the decentralized system, but I don't agree. It seems that the free market tends to converge to a monopoly, at which point we go back to the first problem.
Personally, I have no idea what the right system is. Any ideas?
I hear what you're saying, and I can't dispute your claims, which seem well-grounded in our current understanding of the universe. I guess that I'm coming from a different perspective.
We managed to make several major breakthroughs in our understanding of the universe (eg, relativity, nuclear physics) very recently relative to human history and relative to the age of the universe).
Given that perspective, I have a hard time with the notion that now we know pretty much everything.
On the other side of the coin, there is technology, which doesn't really need new understanding of physics, just better application. If you go back 100 years, nobody would believe that it would be possible for us to be having this conversation.
In any case, I don't think that I'm going to see interstellar travel anytime in my lifetime. The challenges you point out are just too great. But in 1000 years or 100,000? I have no idea what humanity may or may not achieve, or if it will even still exist.