And GM will be bankrupt in 10-15 years. You can't last long when you have a huge, non-productive expense (defined benefit pension and health care) that your competitors don't.
I'd have to strongly disagree. First of all, in my experience, the intellectual quality of bloggers really puts syndicated columnists to shame. (I'm talking about the upper end of them -- no doubt you can find lots of bad quality.) They can write much more and link to the basis for their claims. If anything is in error, they'll typically have comment and trackback capability so others can instantly expose them. Rarely will columnists deign to defend their assertions. After reading blogs for a few years, I checked back to some of the syndicated columns I had read (this is what I had in mind) and just marveled at how intellectually shallow they were. In contrast, check out this list of some of the blogs I read:
Yep. And now the label's bigger, and prominent enough.
Great! So McDonald's is never sued anymore for not sufficiently warning consumers.
Oh, wait...
Of course, the label SHOULD say "this coffee is 40 degrees hotter than what you get at home"
Except that for many people that would be a lie.
(I browsed your "infamous" link, and I must say -- a lot of crap. If nothing else, Starbucks gets its big bucks because it has a far better coffee array than McDonald's did fifteen years ago, and they sell their coffee hot because most of the time they add something significantly colder (like frothed milk) to the coffee.)
Some drinks, yes. But not all. None of that changes the fact that Starbucks and McDonald's get routinely sued over hot coffee and the cases are routinely dismissed.
me:(Did you know that juries only get on Oprah if they find for the plaintiff?)
you:Did you know that cases only go to juries if there's a question of fact?
What does that have to do with my comment? Did you not get the point? (I'm guessing "yes".)
Did you know that we have a perfectly good way to correct judicial cases we don't like, by having our legislatures amend the law accordingly?
Yes, it's called "tort reform", and that's exactly what legislators, mainly Republican, have tried to do, and been roundly condemned by people like you. Think about it.
"Bullshit lawsuits are fucking the economy." "Gosh, well, that's something for legislators to handle." "Congress should pass tort reform to control frivolous." "No! Torts are rightly adjudicated by the courts!"
Did you ever ponder why, in the last six years of Republican Congressional Control, we haven't seen a proposed Constitutional Amendment reserving full and explicitly authority to the states to resolve Abortion law?
I'm more interested in learning why you brought this up, or why you just lied. Republicans routinely attempt to ammend the constitution to allow restriction of abortion -- exactly what the amendment you just described would do -- and withdraw them when they find insufficient support.
No, it's to satisfy current the quasi-precedent in product liability the lawyers have been able to secure from mouth-breathing juries. It's only "enough" to head off a lawsuit until a lawyer can convince the *next* jury that it isn't enough. Remember, the infamous McDonald's coffee cup had a warning label! But the jury decided it wasn't prominent enough. So now you're open to being sued if someone fails to read a warning because that warning was buried under too many other warnings, as happened in a Vioxx case. But then, it's always possible to second-guess the order of the warnings. So really, there's no reliable way -- as in a banana republic -- to protect yourself from prosecution.
(Did you know that juries only get on Oprah if they find for the plaintiff?)
Oh, and to all of you who started caring about this issue only when Nintendo -- rather than a faceless greedy corporation -- got sued over Wiimotes: fuck you.
So then, NHTSA and MADD are being deliberately deceptive when they report these alcohol-related auto deaths, I guess. After all, what is the purpose of these numbers? To tell people to what degree alcohol pays a role in auto deaths. But when they deliberately include deaths in the figures that quite clearly had nothing to do with alcohol, that number is no longer giving an accurate picture. So it may not be that 50% of auto deaths are alcohol related, but more like 20%. Then it's no longer "alcohol education might drop auto deaths in half" but "alcohol education might drop auto deaths by a fifth."
(Just to be clear, I actually support harsher penalties for drunk drivers. But I don't support deception to that end.)
Belial6 put it very succinctly, but I wanted to add something because there's a bigger issue at play: the static thinking going into your claim. That line of argumentation appears a lot and it goes like this:
a) Current production input X (which could be labor, oil, real estate, bandwidth or whatever) is cheap. b) Current producers uses production method Y that is efficient mainly because of that input being cheap. c) Ergo, if X were no longer cheap, the industry using Y would collapse and/or be unable to provide that good affordably.
Of course, that's wrong. Producers have many options and they pick the one that's (seemingly) optimal given current input prices. We only see the one they actually pick -- the Y. We don't see the ones they turned down, but conceivably could use if only input prices were different. They chose Y because of X's price. If X were no longer cheap, they would use any of a zillion alternatives not requiring that X be cheap. Now, specific investors who have large sunk costs may have to shut down, but that's different from saying that the good can't be feasibly provided anymore.
In the farm labor example, the higher labor costs will simply lead producers to mechanize more of the work and/or divert production to staple foods requiring less work to begin with. I personally doubt people would even notice the price shift after the chain of production and distribution adjusts.
I can't read the site because it's loading sooooooooooooooooooo damn slow. Oddly enough, cnn.com and msn.com load instantly. So, unfortunately, I can't read his defense of net non-neutrality. I guess I'll just check out some of these shopping links instead.
All theories require future data to validate. There is nothing wrong with an empirical model if it works.
Agree and don't see where you formed the opinion I wouldn't. See sig.
Your apparent distain for 'curve-fitting'
I don't disdain it. I disdain it when it is not validated by later predictions, and when it is not recognized that this step is necessary.
Just because there isn't a theoretical explaination as to why a model is correct does not mean it isn't correct. Having said that, even theoretical and experimental hypotheses both require validation.
Agree and don't see where you formed the opinion I wouldn't. See sig.
If you can't prove the model/theory, it is not science.
Agree and reserve the right to squeal when I use the term "prove" in this same context and then get lectured by someone (possibly but not necessarily you) that "you never prove anything in science".
But, how do you know if future observations will prove or disprove your theory? You don't. You test it and work from there.
Agree and don't see where you formed the opinion I wouldn't. See sig.
What makes you so sure that the current model is wrong?
I was careful not to claim that at all. My point wasn't that it's wrong, but that it's *not science* because it hasn't undergone empirical (and statistically valid) validation. It can be defended on a number of grounds, but not that it is a scientific conclusion.
Even if it is not perfect, it might not have to be.... I can't tell you if the current model will hold up to future scrutiny just as you can't tell me if the model will fail.
Agree and don't see where you formed the opinion I wouldn't. See sig.
However, you're also talking about scientists intentionally manipulating data to "fit" their proposed hypothesis.
No. It's more like this:
1) They make a model of the earth c. 1900 and generate the results over the century using scientific equations (e.g. Navier Stokes equations, etc). 2) Obviously, on this first try, it doesn't match the 20th century time history. 3) They say, "well, the model neglected this factor/region/whatever. Add that to the model." Repeat. 4) It still doesn't match. "Okay, the problem is that the model is too coarse. Let's make it finer." Repeat. 5) It's closer, but still far off. "Well, what if the sun's emissions were a tad stronger than we assumed? Let's try that." Repeat.
Then, finally, they have something that matches the 20th century. Now, nothing in the above is unethical. It's simply seeking out factors to rectify a problem of theory not matching practice. But is, fundamentally, curve-fitting that requires future data to validate. If the future data requires us to "reconsider" the factors in the model, well, we're just not there yet.
Now, what condescending remark are you going to make?
Actually, you can do a valid scientific test if the predictions aren't the material you derived the hypothesized relationship from, whether or not the measurements are of events from the past.
True, however:
a) Because the scientist already knows the time history, he doesn't have to put his neck on the line; he can always add and remove factors he chooses to deem "significant", thus making it an exercise in curve-fitting.
b) The predictions came from one material (weather observations) and are of that material (weather observations).
And the predictions that those would happen were on record as being the scientific consensus before they happened, and the predictions that have gone on record were right far more often than they were wrong (i.e., no John Edward), and this happened frequently enough to be statistically significant?
Honest question, I promise. Claiming the conclusion is "scientific" would seem to imply that scientists have been able to make accurate, statistically signfiicant predictions of climate change, given existing C02 etc. emission measurements. That's *future* predictions, not curve-fitting the past. To rule out chance, you'd probably need over 20 years of data.
What kind of models even fit on computers 20 years ago?
I don't doubt that GW predictions follow from current scientific knowledge, but for those predictions to be "science", don't they need to have experienced statistically significant validation already?
Are you talking about their S&P and total stock market index funds? Sure, but once Sony tanks, they're delisted from the index and Vanguard dumps them too.
Good question. When I picked it up, I actually completely forgot that he would have been willing to buy it. Oddly enough, I even considered calling a different co-worker, whom I knew better, to see if he'd know anybody at work who wanted one, but still didn't make the connection that someone at work had told me he was in the market for one.
Yeah, I suck.
He and I had a good laugh about that when we came back from the break.
eBay scalping of systems bought in the U.S. to U.S. customers isn't grey market. It's just plain scalping.
So what would you say is the appropriate metaphorical color of the ebay resale market? Would you be happy with calling ebay sales "off-white"? Beige? Light green for that tinge of capitalism?
I wouldn't believe all the internet rumors you hear.
Well, believe this one.
I work with someone with a lot of disposable income who had wanted a PS3 but wrote it off as being impossible to get until March. Two days ago I pointed out the oversupply of the them relative to demand and that he could probably find one easily on ebay if nothing else. The next day he said he found one on Amazon for retail (with no tax and shipping costs) and ordered it.
The summary didn't like the recent thread about this, so there you go.
That said, profit margin statements can get misleading. With listing costs the same for both consoles, the Wii's profit margin is overstated. Guess what guys -- you're not going to take home the difference between ebay and the retail price, esp if you offer free shipping, as sometimes you have to do to get bidders.
By the way, if anyone knows the one-word adverb for "against the spirit of the moderation system", I'd like to hear it. Apparently, you shouldn't use the word "unjustly" for it.
So in other words, you failed to understand that in that remark I was responding to the someone's claim that "the lack of an apostrophe is better due to the lack of ambiguity", rather than to scholars' opinions (making your response irrelevant)?
That's fine, but there are more succinct ways to say that!
Slashdot Mirror
So it's due in 3 to 5 years
And GM will be bankrupt in 10-15 years. You can't last long when you have a huge, non-productive expense (defined benefit pension and health care) that your competitors don't.
... and that difference isn't relevant. "Comedy" *and* "comic" have changed in meaning.
So, remind me again where the error in calling an angsty "graphic novel" a "comic book"?
"Comic book" is not a title.
No, but that's only because the meaning of the word "comedy" has changed over time
DING DING DING DING DING DING DING!
Kinda like how the meaning of the "comic" in "comic books" has changed due to popular usage!
I'd have to strongly disagree. First of all, in my experience, the intellectual quality of bloggers really puts syndicated columnists to shame. (I'm talking about the upper end of them -- no doubt you can find lots of bad quality.) They can write much more and link to the basis for their claims. If anything is in error, they'll typically have comment and trackback capability so others can instantly expose them. Rarely will columnists deign to defend their assertions. After reading blogs for a few years, I checked back to some of the syndicated columns I had read (this is what I had in mind) and just marveled at how intellectually shallow they were. In contrast, check out this list of some of the blogs I read:
http://econlog.econlib.org/
http://www.overcomingbias.com/
http://www.economist.com/debate/freeexchange/
http://www.janegalt.net/
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/
http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/
http://patrick.net/wp/
Several of those are professors. Now, tell me they're not more refined than the columns you'd read in the paper.
Yep. And now the label's bigger, and prominent enough.
Great! So McDonald's is never sued anymore for not sufficiently warning consumers.
Oh, wait...
Of course, the label SHOULD say "this coffee is 40 degrees hotter than what you get at home"
Except that for many people that would be a lie.
(I browsed your "infamous" link, and I must say -- a lot of crap. If nothing else, Starbucks gets its big bucks because it has a far better coffee array than McDonald's did fifteen years ago, and they sell their coffee hot because most of the time they add something significantly colder (like frothed milk) to the coffee.)
Some drinks, yes. But not all. None of that changes the fact that Starbucks and McDonald's get routinely sued over hot coffee and the cases are routinely dismissed.
me:(Did you know that juries only get on Oprah if they find for the plaintiff?)
you:Did you know that cases only go to juries if there's a question of fact?
What does that have to do with my comment? Did you not get the point? (I'm guessing "yes".)
Did you know that we have a perfectly good way to correct judicial cases we don't like, by having our legislatures amend the law accordingly?
Yes, it's called "tort reform", and that's exactly what legislators, mainly Republican, have tried to do, and been roundly condemned by people like you. Think about it.
"Bullshit lawsuits are fucking the economy."
"Gosh, well, that's something for legislators to handle."
"Congress should pass tort reform to control frivolous."
"No! Torts are rightly adjudicated by the courts!"
Did you ever ponder why, in the last six years of Republican Congressional Control, we haven't seen a proposed Constitutional Amendment reserving full and explicitly authority to the states to resolve Abortion law?
I'm more interested in learning why you brought this up, or why you just lied. Republicans routinely attempt to ammend the constitution to allow restriction of abortion -- exactly what the amendment you just described would do -- and withdraw them when they find insufficient support.
Does the title of The Divine Comedy imply humor?
No, it's to satisfy current the quasi-precedent in product liability the lawyers have been able to secure from mouth-breathing juries. It's only "enough" to head off a lawsuit until a lawyer can convince the *next* jury that it isn't enough. Remember, the infamous McDonald's coffee cup had a warning label! But the jury decided it wasn't prominent enough. So now you're open to being sued if someone fails to read a warning because that warning was buried under too many other warnings, as happened in a Vioxx case. But then, it's always possible to second-guess the order of the warnings. So really, there's no reliable way -- as in a banana republic -- to protect yourself from prosecution.
(Did you know that juries only get on Oprah if they find for the plaintiff?)
Oh, and to all of you who started caring about this issue only when Nintendo -- rather than a faceless greedy corporation -- got sued over Wiimotes: fuck you.
So then, NHTSA and MADD are being deliberately deceptive when they report these alcohol-related auto deaths, I guess. After all, what is the purpose of these numbers? To tell people to what degree alcohol pays a role in auto deaths. But when they deliberately include deaths in the figures that quite clearly had nothing to do with alcohol, that number is no longer giving an accurate picture. So it may not be that 50% of auto deaths are alcohol related, but more like 20%. Then it's no longer "alcohol education might drop auto deaths in half" but "alcohol education might drop auto deaths by a fifth."
(Just to be clear, I actually support harsher penalties for drunk drivers. But I don't support deception to that end.)
Belial6 put it very succinctly, but I wanted to add something because there's a bigger issue at play: the static thinking going into your claim. That line of argumentation appears a lot and it goes like this:
a) Current production input X (which could be labor, oil, real estate, bandwidth or whatever) is cheap.
b) Current producers uses production method Y that is efficient mainly because of that input being cheap.
c) Ergo, if X were no longer cheap, the industry using Y would collapse and/or be unable to provide that good affordably.
Of course, that's wrong. Producers have many options and they pick the one that's (seemingly) optimal given current input prices. We only see the one they actually pick -- the Y. We don't see the ones they turned down, but conceivably could use if only input prices were different. They chose Y because of X's price. If X were no longer cheap, they would use any of a zillion alternatives not requiring that X be cheap. Now, specific investors who have large sunk costs may have to shut down, but that's different from saying that the good can't be feasibly provided anymore.
In the farm labor example, the higher labor costs will simply lead producers to mechanize more of the work and/or divert production to staple foods requiring less work to begin with. I personally doubt people would even notice the price shift after the chain of production and distribution adjusts.
I know, Mrs. Lincoln, but what I'm trying to get at is, other than that, didn't you basically enjoy the play?
I can't read the site because it's loading sooooooooooooooooooo damn slow. Oddly enough, cnn.com and msn.com load instantly. So, unfortunately, I can't read his defense of net non-neutrality. I guess I'll just check out some of these shopping links instead.
All theories require future data to validate. There is nothing wrong with an empirical model if it works.
... I can't tell you if the current model will hold up to future scrutiny just as you can't tell me if the model will fail.
Agree and don't see where you formed the opinion I wouldn't. See sig.
Your apparent distain for 'curve-fitting'
I don't disdain it. I disdain it when it is not validated by later predictions, and when it is not recognized that this step is necessary.
Just because there isn't a theoretical explaination as to why a model is correct does not mean it isn't correct. Having said that, even theoretical and experimental hypotheses both require validation.
Agree and don't see where you formed the opinion I wouldn't. See sig.
If you can't prove the model/theory, it is not science.
Agree and reserve the right to squeal when I use the term "prove" in this same context and then get lectured by someone (possibly but not necessarily you) that "you never prove anything in science".
But, how do you know if future observations will prove or disprove your theory? You don't. You test it and work from there.
Agree and don't see where you formed the opinion I wouldn't. See sig.
What makes you so sure that the current model is wrong?
I was careful not to claim that at all. My point wasn't that it's wrong, but that it's *not science* because it hasn't undergone empirical (and statistically valid) validation. It can be defended on a number of grounds, but not that it is a scientific conclusion.
Even if it is not perfect, it might not have to be.
Agree and don't see where you formed the opinion I wouldn't. See sig.
However, you're also talking about scientists intentionally manipulating data to "fit" their proposed hypothesis.
No. It's more like this:
1) They make a model of the earth c. 1900 and generate the results over the century using scientific equations (e.g. Navier Stokes equations, etc).
2) Obviously, on this first try, it doesn't match the 20th century time history.
3) They say, "well, the model neglected this factor/region/whatever. Add that to the model." Repeat.
4) It still doesn't match. "Okay, the problem is that the model is too coarse. Let's make it finer." Repeat.
5) It's closer, but still far off. "Well, what if the sun's emissions were a tad stronger than we assumed? Let's try that." Repeat.
Then, finally, they have something that matches the 20th century. Now, nothing in the above is unethical. It's simply seeking out factors to rectify a problem of theory not matching practice. But is, fundamentally, curve-fitting that requires future data to validate. If the future data requires us to "reconsider" the factors in the model, well, we're just not there yet.
Now, what condescending remark are you going to make?
I should have known you'd use intimidation. Do you even know what "statistically significant" means, and what it takes to rule out chance?
So, that's a "no" then.
Actually, you can do a valid scientific test if the predictions aren't the material you derived the hypothesized relationship from, whether or not the measurements are of events from the past.
True, however:
a) Because the scientist already knows the time history, he doesn't have to put his neck on the line; he can always add and remove factors he chooses to deem "significant", thus making it an exercise in curve-fitting.
b) The predictions came from one material (weather observations) and are of that material (weather observations).
And the predictions that those would happen were on record as being the scientific consensus before they happened, and the predictions that have gone on record were right far more often than they were wrong (i.e., no John Edward), and this happened frequently enough to be statistically significant?
Honest question, I promise. Claiming the conclusion is "scientific" would seem to imply that scientists have been able to make accurate, statistically signfiicant predictions of climate change, given existing C02 etc. emission measurements. That's *future* predictions, not curve-fitting the past. To rule out chance, you'd probably need over 20 years of data.
What kind of models even fit on computers 20 years ago?
I don't doubt that GW predictions follow from current scientific knowledge, but for those predictions to be "science", don't they need to have experienced statistically significant validation already?
Are you talking about their S&P and total stock market index funds? Sure, but once Sony tanks, they're delisted from the index and Vanguard dumps them too.
Good question. When I picked it up, I actually completely forgot that he would have been willing to buy it. Oddly enough, I even considered calling a different co-worker, whom I knew better, to see if he'd know anybody at work who wanted one, but still didn't make the connection that someone at work had told me he was in the market for one.
Yeah, I suck.
He and I had a good laugh about that when we came back from the break.
eBay scalping of systems bought in the U.S. to U.S. customers isn't grey market. It's just plain scalping.
So what would you say is the appropriate metaphorical color of the ebay resale market? Would you be happy with calling ebay sales "off-white"? Beige? Light green for that tinge of capitalism?
I wouldn't believe all the internet rumors you hear.
Well, believe this one.
I work with someone with a lot of disposable income who had wanted a PS3 but wrote it off as being impossible to get until March. Two days ago I pointed out the oversupply of the them relative to demand and that he could probably find one easily on ebay if nothing else. The next day he said he found one on Amazon for retail (with no tax and shipping costs) and ordered it.
Plus, I'm a failed PS3 scalper.
The summary didn't like the recent thread about this, so there you go.
That said, profit margin statements can get misleading. With listing costs the same for both consoles, the Wii's profit margin is overstated. Guess what guys -- you're not going to take home the difference between ebay and the retail price, esp if you offer free shipping, as sometimes you have to do to get bidders.
By the way, if anyone knows the one-word adverb for "against the spirit of the moderation system", I'd like to hear it. Apparently, you shouldn't use the word "unjustly" for it.
So in other words, you failed to understand that in that remark I was responding to the someone's claim that "the lack of an apostrophe is better due to the lack of ambiguity", rather than to scholars' opinions (making your response irrelevant)?
That's fine, but there are more succinct ways to say that!