My counter-proposition is that if religion is abolished, large tracts of population would disappear. Religion/dogma seems to be the only thing that keeps some people going.
You know, I keep hearing that argument, and it's just mind-boggling to me that any intelligent individual could say something so stupid. It's like claiming that abolishing cocaine would cause large tracts of the population to disappear, since cocaine is the the only thing that keeps them going.
Yeah, if you depend on a substance or an ideology, breaking with it is going to be hard. That doesn't mean that you need it to live, or to be happy. It just means you're an addict. If you ditch your addiction, things can only get better.
Not the same thing. I've been dicking around with such images since BartPE first came out. It can be useful for certain things, but it's nothing like having a complete OS running from flash.
You see exactly the same on desktops except there Windwos runs on almost any desktop, OS X only comes on its supported hardware and Linux is fail.
Linux is fail?
I have an 8 gig USB stick that boots into a fully-installed version of Ubuntu. I have used it on at least 6 completely different desktop computers, 4 laptops, and 2 netbooks. Each time I plug it into a different computer it boots and detects the new hardware without a problem. Out of all of those systems, the only exception has been an Asus EEPC on which the wireless card wasn't detected.
I'm not sure how you can consider that "fail". I've yet to see anyone do something comparable with windows.
That's not to say that linux isn't without it's problems - I still use windows as my primary OS - but it certainly does run on just about anything you can throw at it. The only thing keeping me from switching to it permanently is a problem with ATI graphics cards - mine works great... but causes a memory leak which forces me to reboot every few days (annoying, but not an issue for users who actually like to turn off their computers).
It's just as unfair when people expect to plug in any USB printer or gadget in Linux and have it work, but the world isn't fair.
All of my USB gadgets work just fine on Linux. It even detects my old wifi usb dongle, which windows doesn't.
If opensolaris doesn't support much hardware then who exactly is it aimed at?
Small business users, companies like Nexenta which produce their own server hardware/software products, and tech-savvy individuals looking for a home-server solution.
It's not exactly a huge market, but it is a niche (niches?) that needs to be filled. OpenSolaris is currently the best solution for projects such as mine. The ability to build a redundant array with automatic data corruption detection and a simple yet powerful snapshot functionality is what sold me on it. Nothing else on the market can do that, and the solutions which come close would have cost a lot more.
Dude, you've already told us that you think marijuana is a wonder drug; you really didn't need to give us such a graphic demonstration of it's effects.
Of course it didn't. It's not a desktop OS, even if it does have a purdy interface. Go check the hardware compatibility list - it's pretty friggin' small.
When I put together my home file-server, I made damn sure to check the HCL before purchasing any hardware. Even after doing that, I still had an issue with the on-board LAN chipset - had to compile a different set of drivers in order to stop it from dropping the connection every 5 minutes. OpenSolaris is a great server OS, but it's just silly to expect it to be compatible with some random laptop.
Even if Oracle ditches Opensolaris all together, shouldn't the community keep going
I doubt that OpenSolaris has enough of a following. If businesses ditch it due to a lack of support, it's unlikely that there will be enough of a "community" left to prop it up.
Personally, while I use OpenSolaris myself, I'd be more than happy to ditch it if the BTRFS project lives up to the hype. As far as I can see, ZFS is the only reason to prefer OpenSolaris over Linux for personal use, and I know that a significant percentage of the non-business users feel the same way.
and shouldn't third party companies fill the hole left in the market with regards to support?
I believe some already do. NexentaOS is built on OpenSolaris, and they at least provide support for their own products. I'm pretty sure they offer support contracts for OpenSolaris in general.
I think your above post admits that the placebo affect is a real documented effect.
Of course.
That the placebo effect can in fact remove pain completely.
No, the placebo effect doesn't remove anything. The placebo effect is just an observation about the ability of the human body to affect itself.
As for the "remove pain completely" bit, that's also completely wrong. I'm fairly certain that if you were to give burn victims a placebo instead of morphine, they'd notice a pretty big difference.
If such is true, is allowing scam artists to invoke the placebo effect in people and directly improve their lives a bad thing?
Yes. You may as well ask me why it's wrong to sell cocaine to addicts when it clearly makes them feel so good.
I dunno, I think "Does this medicine work?" is a pretty useful line of questioning. Just because the answer is "nope" doesn't mean it shouldn't have been asked. The 2.5 billion dollar price tag is pretty steep, though.
Absolutely, we should be asking those questions. However, there is an infinite number of substances which could be tested for efficacy. Research should be based on some pre-existing evidence, or at least a plausible mechanism. Some of the NCCAM studies looked at "energy fields" and "distance healing", which are a complete waste of time and money.
And yeah, the price tag is pretty damn steep.
I think the best way to do it is to start actually regulating ALL "medicine" the way we do real medicine. If you claim that your Magic Potion can cure the common flu, then you need to provide a properly designed double-blinded study which demonstrates that effect. Until you do, you don't get to sell it. That way we can answer the question "does this medicine work" without wasting billions of taxpayer dollars, or allowing frauds to take advantage of the public.
Hoemopathy has been scientifically disproven, but not accupuncture. In fact, many mainstream physicians use it these days; it has been tested and found effective.
They also found that a chimpanzee in a white coat poking you with toothpicks was every bit as effective as a trained doctor using needles on meridian points and all that nonsense.
Acupuncture works as a placebo. It's been well documented that the more invasive a placebo is, the more "effective" it is. Me hitting you in the head with a rubber mallet is more likely to "cure" your headache than if you just took a sugar pill, but neither one actually has any real effect.
I know several people who had surgeons tell them surgery was their only recourse, only to have a chiropractor fix them good as new.
I know several people who swear that some plastic gizmo in their air-intake doubles their gas mileage. If you're going to base your understanding of reality on the testimony of idiots, you're going to make a lot of frauds and scam-artists very happy.
If people want to play games with their own lives, that's their call. However, exposing children to these kinds of risks isn't just irresponsible, it's criminal. If your stepson had died as a result, you and your wife would both be in jail.
Actually, re-reading what you wrote, I see that you were responsible enough to actually take the kid in for surgery after giving him the "medicine". That's great. Unfortunately, there have been many cases where other couples have rejected medicine entirely, choosing to subject their children solely to homeopathic and "natural" solutions. For instance:
Last year in Melbourne, Australia, Isabella Denley, an epileptic toddler, died after her parents ditched the anti-convulsant medication she had been prescribed by her neurologist. The drugs had terrible side effects, including sleep loss and hyperactivity, so they turned to alternative therapies, visiting a vibrational kinesiologist, a cranial osteopath and a psychic who told them Isabella was suffering from a past-life trauma.
An inquest heard that when she died, the toddler was exclusively on homeopathic medication. Her parents believed they were doing their utmost. But clearly the potential pitfalls of Cams go beyond ruthless charlatans. Indeed, the real peril may be our faith that alternative therapies will inevitably reach - and cure - the parts that allopathic medicines will not.
You're assuming, quite mistakenly, that those that haven't been tested don't work. Many, many herbal remedies have simply never been tested by modern, double-blind methods, so we just don't know how effective they are (and even synthetic pharmaceuticals are very hard to really assess, as the frequent recalls and modified FDA recommendations attest).
That's true. And, at least on the surface, it seems like a valid objection. However, the American "National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine" spent 10 years and 2.5 billion dollars researching "alternative medicine", and essentially found nothing of any use. With those sorts of results, it's safe to say that herbal remedies are generally useless. Sure, there may be one or two out there that have some degree of efficacy, but if you're going to waste your money on those odds you may as well just go and play the lottery.
By the way, those of you who are citizens of the US may want to have a word with your government about maybe putting the next 2.5 billion into researching something useful.
Before I educate myself further on the differences between the two, tell me honestly, is it two different words for snake oil?
Basically, yes. The only difference is that naturopathy has a plausible mechanism by which it might work, whereas homeopathy cannot possibly work.
To put it another way - it's like the difference between "cold fusion" and a "perpetual motion" machine. One is at least theoretically possible, although it may never actually work, while the other would require a violation of many scientific principle and numerous universal laws.
But let me remind you of your original point: someone said that the countries have specific historical gripes with US foreign policy, and you discounted this, saying that Cubans weren't flying planes into American buildings.
Nope.
Which is a BS argument, because both have known and often legit gripes;
Yes, it is, which is why I would never make such an idiotic argument.
Now I'm not here to teach ESL or critical thinking classes, so don't expect me to break this down into TOO much detail, but I'll give you a quick recap:
He argued that "corrupted religion" and "historical gripes" were both to blame. I pointed out that plenty of people with "historical gripes" don't resort to terrorism. Since we've determined that "historical gripes" are present in situations where people do not resort to terrorism, the logical conclusion is that they are simply a condition to which people can react in any number of ways. "Historical gripes" can exist without causing terrorism, and terrorism can exist in the absence of "historical gripes". Ergo terrorism is caused by a factor other than "historical gripes".
Porn give unrealistic expectations to a blank mind.
So do Barney and Friends, and the Teletubbies. So does religion. Are you really going to argue against all fiction?
Vicarious sex thrills for immature people gives them expectations that are tough to fulfill
So does watching professional sports. So what?
and as an additional problem, gives them body image goals that also might be unrealistic.
Eh?
I guess if your son is gay, this might be an issue. Won't be a problem for most people. And it's a silly line of argument, anyway. By that logic you should keep them from seeing any expensive cars, since they can't afford to have one and it might make them feel bad.
We shield children from sex and violence until they have a context to understand it, and so they won't be unwittingly be used by others.
Yes, I know that many people try to do that. I also know it's foolish and counterproductive. It's like shielding your kid from any kind of flame, until they have the context to understand that getting burned hurts. Sorry, but it doesn't work that way. You can't shield people from experiencing something while simultaneously expecting them to develop an understanding of it.
If you are successful in shielding your children from these things, all you're doing is stunting their development and forcing them to confront these issues later on in life. Instead of helping them, you're putting them at a disadvantage in comparison to their peers.
Luckily, most parents attempts to "shield" their children are completely unsuccessful.
I'm not sure that you actually read what I wrote, and I'm too tired to try and re-explain it now. I'll get back to you after I've had some sleep - meantime, maybe you could re-read what I wrote and see whether your response actually makes any sense.
If we actually entered a post-apocalyptic world where the dollar was useless, you'd quickly find gold to be equally useless- people would want food, ammo, medicine, sex, they'd have no use for gold.
That's one of the things I loved about Fallout 3 - the idea of using bottle-caps as currency was sheer genius. If we're going to pick arbitrary metals as a system of exchange for our post-apocalyptic world, why not have some fun with it.
An example of this would be a hypothetical economy where the value of products and services is determined by the resources (labor, energy and and raw materials) required for providing said products and services.
I've heard that argument before, and it's never been convincing. The first major problem that comes to mind is that under such a system, an old 26" black-and-white CRT television set would be worth roughly the same as a modern 56" LCD. Likewise, a Chinese knockoff of an iPhone would be worth exactly the same as the genuine article, even though it's complete crap. Your system makes no allowance for depreciation, or differences in quality. The other problem is that your system encourages inefficiency and laziness. If you take 10 hours and $5 in raw materials to make a chair, and I take 50 hours and $20 in raw materials to make a shittier chair, I can sell my product for a much higher price even though yours is actually superior.
Of course, the biggest problem is that nobody has the right to tell me what I can charge for my product, or what I can pay for yours. Implementing your "hypothetical economy" would require a regime more oppressive than the old USSR. I, for one, have no interest in seeing Orwell's vision brought to life.
Hardly. You called them theistic fascists for deciding to wage war.
Hardly. I called them theistic fascists because they're theistic fascists. The fact that they decided to wage a war just allows me to add the word "warlike" to the preexisting description.
For many of them, violence is the normal and possible response to their treatment by the West.
For many of them, public executions are the normal and possible response to a woman not being covered from head to toe by a massive burlap sack. Did you have a point to make, or are you going to continue making pointless statements which nobody disputes?
We could solve the problem without violence, just as a little more flexibility between George III and Parliament could have avoided the American revolt.
Perhaps. And a little less flexibility in the League of Nations (or even just among the French) could have prevented WW2. Alternate Histories is a fun game to play, but it's largely ineffective as a rhetorical device.
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My counter-proposition is that if religion is abolished, large tracts of population would disappear. Religion/dogma seems to be the only thing that keeps some people going.
You know, I keep hearing that argument, and it's just mind-boggling to me that any intelligent individual could say something so stupid. It's like claiming that abolishing cocaine would cause large tracts of the population to disappear, since cocaine is the the only thing that keeps them going.
Yeah, if you depend on a substance or an ideology, breaking with it is going to be hard. That doesn't mean that you need it to live, or to be happy. It just means you're an addict. If you ditch your addiction, things can only get better.
Worked out great for the Soviets.
Wow, you're the first right-wing-nutjob I've met who can openly admit that. I'm impressed! You're SO going on my friends list!
Sounds fun. Just give me a few minutes notice so that I can pause my torrents.
Not the same thing. I've been dicking around with such images since BartPE first came out. It can be useful for certain things, but it's nothing like having a complete OS running from flash.
You see exactly the same on desktops except there Windwos runs on almost any desktop, OS X only comes on its supported hardware and Linux is fail.
Linux is fail?
I have an 8 gig USB stick that boots into a fully-installed version of Ubuntu. I have used it on at least 6 completely different desktop computers, 4 laptops, and 2 netbooks. Each time I plug it into a different computer it boots and detects the new hardware without a problem. Out of all of those systems, the only exception has been an Asus EEPC on which the wireless card wasn't detected.
I'm not sure how you can consider that "fail". I've yet to see anyone do something comparable with windows.
That's not to say that linux isn't without it's problems - I still use windows as my primary OS - but it certainly does run on just about anything you can throw at it. The only thing keeping me from switching to it permanently is a problem with ATI graphics cards - mine works great ... but causes a memory leak which forces me to reboot every few days (annoying, but not an issue for users who actually like to turn off their computers).
It's just as unfair when people expect to plug in any USB printer or gadget in Linux and have it work, but the world isn't fair.
All of my USB gadgets work just fine on Linux. It even detects my old wifi usb dongle, which windows doesn't.
If opensolaris doesn't support much hardware then who exactly is it aimed at?
Small business users, companies like Nexenta which produce their own server hardware/software products, and tech-savvy individuals looking for a home-server solution.
It's not exactly a huge market, but it is a niche (niches?) that needs to be filled. OpenSolaris is currently the best solution for projects such as mine. The ability to build a redundant array with automatic data corruption detection and a simple yet powerful snapshot functionality is what sold me on it. Nothing else on the market can do that, and the solutions which come close would have cost a lot more.
Dude, you've already told us that you think marijuana is a wonder drug; you really didn't need to give us such a graphic demonstration of it's effects.
However, it didn't detect ...
Of course it didn't. It's not a desktop OS, even if it does have a purdy interface. Go check the hardware compatibility list - it's pretty friggin' small.
When I put together my home file-server, I made damn sure to check the HCL before purchasing any hardware. Even after doing that, I still had an issue with the on-board LAN chipset - had to compile a different set of drivers in order to stop it from dropping the connection every 5 minutes. OpenSolaris is a great server OS, but it's just silly to expect it to be compatible with some random laptop.
Even if Oracle ditches Opensolaris all together, shouldn't the community keep going
I doubt that OpenSolaris has enough of a following. If businesses ditch it due to a lack of support, it's unlikely that there will be enough of a "community" left to prop it up.
Personally, while I use OpenSolaris myself, I'd be more than happy to ditch it if the BTRFS project lives up to the hype. As far as I can see, ZFS is the only reason to prefer OpenSolaris over Linux for personal use, and I know that a significant percentage of the non-business users feel the same way.
and shouldn't third party companies fill the hole left in the market with regards to support?
I believe some already do. NexentaOS is built on OpenSolaris, and they at least provide support for their own products. I'm pretty sure they offer support contracts for OpenSolaris in general.
I think your above post admits that the placebo affect is a real documented effect.
Of course.
That the placebo effect can in fact remove pain completely.
No, the placebo effect doesn't remove anything. The placebo effect is just an observation about the ability of the human body to affect itself.
As for the "remove pain completely" bit, that's also completely wrong. I'm fairly certain that if you were to give burn victims a placebo instead of morphine, they'd notice a pretty big difference.
If such is true, is allowing scam artists to invoke the placebo effect in people and directly improve their lives a bad thing?
Yes. You may as well ask me why it's wrong to sell cocaine to addicts when it clearly makes them feel so good.
I dunno, I think "Does this medicine work?" is a pretty useful line of questioning. Just because the answer is "nope" doesn't mean it shouldn't have been asked. The 2.5 billion dollar price tag is pretty steep, though.
Absolutely, we should be asking those questions. However, there is an infinite number of substances which could be tested for efficacy. Research should be based on some pre-existing evidence, or at least a plausible mechanism. Some of the NCCAM studies looked at "energy fields" and "distance healing", which are a complete waste of time and money.
And yeah, the price tag is pretty damn steep.
I think the best way to do it is to start actually regulating ALL "medicine" the way we do real medicine. If you claim that your Magic Potion can cure the common flu, then you need to provide a properly designed double-blinded study which demonstrates that effect. Until you do, you don't get to sell it. That way we can answer the question "does this medicine work" without wasting billions of taxpayer dollars, or allowing frauds to take advantage of the public.
Hoemopathy has been scientifically disproven, but not accupuncture. In fact, many mainstream physicians use it these days; it has been tested and found effective.
They also found that a chimpanzee in a white coat poking you with toothpicks was every bit as effective as a trained doctor using needles on meridian points and all that nonsense.
Acupuncture works as a placebo. It's been well documented that the more invasive a placebo is, the more "effective" it is. Me hitting you in the head with a rubber mallet is more likely to "cure" your headache than if you just took a sugar pill, but neither one actually has any real effect.
I know several people who had surgeons tell them surgery was their only recourse, only to have a chiropractor fix them good as new.
I know several people who swear that some plastic gizmo in their air-intake doubles their gas mileage. If you're going to base your understanding of reality on the testimony of idiots, you're going to make a lot of frauds and scam-artists very happy.
When combined with carbon in sugars and starches, it stays in the body when consumed.
Well then we gotta do something! NO MORE SUGARS! DEATH TO BIG STARCHES!
Do you have any idea how lucky you are?
If people want to play games with their own lives, that's their call. However, exposing children to these kinds of risks isn't just irresponsible, it's criminal. If your stepson had died as a result, you and your wife would both be in jail.
Actually, re-reading what you wrote, I see that you were responsible enough to actually take the kid in for surgery after giving him the "medicine". That's great. Unfortunately, there have been many cases where other couples have rejected medicine entirely, choosing to subject their children solely to homeopathic and "natural" solutions. For instance:
Last year in Melbourne, Australia, Isabella Denley, an epileptic toddler, died after her parents ditched the anti-convulsant medication she had been prescribed by her neurologist. The drugs had terrible side effects, including sleep loss and hyperactivity, so they turned to alternative therapies, visiting a vibrational kinesiologist, a cranial osteopath and a psychic who told them Isabella was suffering from a past-life trauma.
An inquest heard that when she died, the toddler was exclusively on homeopathic medication. Her parents believed they were doing their utmost. But clearly the potential pitfalls of Cams go beyond ruthless charlatans. Indeed, the real peril may be our faith that alternative therapies will inevitably reach - and cure - the parts that allopathic medicines will not.
I seriously believe that if I spent an hour bashing my face into a brick wall, this would make perfect sense.
No, you have to dilute the bricks first.
You're assuming, quite mistakenly, that those that haven't been tested don't work. Many, many herbal remedies have simply never been tested by modern, double-blind methods, so we just don't know how effective they are (and even synthetic pharmaceuticals are very hard to really assess, as the frequent recalls and modified FDA recommendations attest).
That's true. And, at least on the surface, it seems like a valid objection. However, the American "National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine" spent 10 years and 2.5 billion dollars researching "alternative medicine", and essentially found nothing of any use. With those sorts of results, it's safe to say that herbal remedies are generally useless. Sure, there may be one or two out there that have some degree of efficacy, but if you're going to waste your money on those odds you may as well just go and play the lottery.
By the way, those of you who are citizens of the US may want to have a word with your government about maybe putting the next 2.5 billion into researching something useful.
Before I educate myself further on the differences between the two, tell me honestly, is it two different words for snake oil?
Basically, yes. The only difference is that naturopathy has a plausible mechanism by which it might work, whereas homeopathy cannot possibly work.
To put it another way - it's like the difference between "cold fusion" and a "perpetual motion" machine. One is at least theoretically possible, although it may never actually work, while the other would require a violation of many scientific principle and numerous universal laws.
But let me remind you of your original point: someone said that the countries have specific historical gripes with US foreign policy, and you discounted this, saying that Cubans weren't flying planes into American buildings.
Nope.
Which is a BS argument, because both have known and often legit gripes;
Yes, it is, which is why I would never make such an idiotic argument.
Now I'm not here to teach ESL or critical thinking classes, so don't expect me to break this down into TOO much detail, but I'll give you a quick recap:
He argued that "corrupted religion" and "historical gripes" were both to blame. I pointed out that plenty of people with "historical gripes" don't resort to terrorism. Since we've determined that "historical gripes" are present in situations where people do not resort to terrorism, the logical conclusion is that they are simply a condition to which people can react in any number of ways. "Historical gripes" can exist without causing terrorism, and terrorism can exist in the absence of "historical gripes". Ergo terrorism is caused by a factor other than "historical gripes".
Clear as mud?
Porn give unrealistic expectations to a blank mind.
So do Barney and Friends, and the Teletubbies. So does religion. Are you really going to argue against all fiction?
Vicarious sex thrills for immature people gives them expectations that are tough to fulfill
So does watching professional sports. So what?
and as an additional problem, gives them body image goals that also might be unrealistic.
Eh?
I guess if your son is gay, this might be an issue. Won't be a problem for most people. And it's a silly line of argument, anyway. By that logic you should keep them from seeing any expensive cars, since they can't afford to have one and it might make them feel bad.
We shield children from sex and violence until they have a context to understand it, and so they won't be unwittingly be used by others.
Yes, I know that many people try to do that. I also know it's foolish and counterproductive. It's like shielding your kid from any kind of flame, until they have the context to understand that getting burned hurts. Sorry, but it doesn't work that way. You can't shield people from experiencing something while simultaneously expecting them to develop an understanding of it.
If you are successful in shielding your children from these things, all you're doing is stunting their development and forcing them to confront these issues later on in life. Instead of helping them, you're putting them at a disadvantage in comparison to their peers.
Luckily, most parents attempts to "shield" their children are completely unsuccessful.
Most men consumer porn. Most boys should not.
If you're defining "boy" as including males who are 14 or even older, I'd love to see you try and explain the reasoning behind that statement.
I wonder how they rectify this situation, or if they just fall back to the "what people pay for it" explanation.
They usually mumble something about property being theft, and then quickly change the subject.
I'm not sure that you actually read what I wrote, and I'm too tired to try and re-explain it now. I'll get back to you after I've had some sleep - meantime, maybe you could re-read what I wrote and see whether your response actually makes any sense.
If we actually entered a post-apocalyptic world where the dollar was useless, you'd quickly find gold to be equally useless- people would want food, ammo, medicine, sex, they'd have no use for gold.
That's one of the things I loved about Fallout 3 - the idea of using bottle-caps as currency was sheer genius. If we're going to pick arbitrary metals as a system of exchange for our post-apocalyptic world, why not have some fun with it.
An example of this would be a hypothetical economy where the value of products and services is determined by the resources (labor, energy and and raw materials) required for providing said products and services.
I've heard that argument before, and it's never been convincing. The first major problem that comes to mind is that under such a system, an old 26" black-and-white CRT television set would be worth roughly the same as a modern 56" LCD. Likewise, a Chinese knockoff of an iPhone would be worth exactly the same as the genuine article, even though it's complete crap. Your system makes no allowance for depreciation, or differences in quality. The other problem is that your system encourages inefficiency and laziness. If you take 10 hours and $5 in raw materials to make a chair, and I take 50 hours and $20 in raw materials to make a shittier chair, I can sell my product for a much higher price even though yours is actually superior.
Of course, the biggest problem is that nobody has the right to tell me what I can charge for my product, or what I can pay for yours. Implementing your "hypothetical economy" would require a regime more oppressive than the old USSR. I, for one, have no interest in seeing Orwell's vision brought to life.
Hardly. You called them theistic fascists for deciding to wage war.
Hardly. I called them theistic fascists because they're theistic fascists. The fact that they decided to wage a war just allows me to add the word "warlike" to the preexisting description.
For many of them, violence is the normal and possible response to their treatment by the West.
For many of them, public executions are the normal and possible response to a woman not being covered from head to toe by a massive burlap sack. Did you have a point to make, or are you going to continue making pointless statements which nobody disputes?
We could solve the problem without violence, just as a little more flexibility between George III and Parliament could have avoided the American revolt.
Perhaps. And a little less flexibility in the League of Nations (or even just among the French) could have prevented WW2. Alternate Histories is a fun game to play, but it's largely ineffective as a rhetorical device.