On 14/04/2011 06:17 PM, Darren New wrote:
> On 4/14/2011 5:21, Invisible wrote:
>> On 14/04/2011 13:16, Warp wrote:
>>
>>> Do that here, and you *will* get jailtime (up to several years). That's
>>> not even a hypothetical.
>>
>> OK, that's scary... I didn't realise there were any countries like that.
>
> You're joking, right? Or did you mean "western, secular countries" when
> you said "any"?

Well, yeah, obviously. I'm sure there are remote countries that nobody 
has ever heard of where people still regularly get stonned to death. But 
you don't expect that kind of thing in the civilised world.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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>> Or is it merely a very vocal minority?
>
> Yes, unfortunately, one that manages somehow to wield political power in
> order to advance their agenda.

I wonder how many people *actually* believe this insanity vs how many 
just go along with it because it benefits them.

>> (I don't know about crazy, but all the American people that I've
>> personally met have been notably stupid. Given the tiny sample size,
>> that's not terribly significant, however...)
>
> You've met several up here (though not in person which is what I suspect
> you mean), but you should know better by now than to make generalisations
> about a society where you have a very small sample size.  If you don't,
> it's time that you learned that lesson.

That would be why I tossed in "not terribly significant".

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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On 14/04/2011 06:11 PM, Darren New wrote:

> I mean, there were always stupid gullible people. But until you gave
> them something like the internet, where everyone in the country could
> hear them and find other stupid gullible people, the few rational people
> around them could keep them in check by saying "No, sorry, that's stupid
> and gullible, please keep that to yourself."
>
> But now you can get on the internet and get all the reinforcement of
> stupid ideas you need and ignore all the objections thereto by simply
> not looking at them.

That doesn't explain why this phenomenon seems to be largely unique to 
America.

> I personally think it was basically harmless until you gave the loonies
> a platform where they could reach other loonies without the rational
> people hearing them.

Yeah, probably...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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On 14/04/2011 06:16 PM, Darren New wrote:
>> [Repeat this exact conversation 6 or 7 times before the guy finally
>> gives up
>> trying to understand and asks me about something else.]
>
> That's not stupid. That's just not thinking like a computer scientist.

> It's only simple if you think his job should be to understand the
> scripts. I'd say his failure was asking you for the details in the first
> place.

Arguably yes.

Still, if "script X creates script Y and then runs it" is too complex 
for this guy to understand, how the hell is he going to cope when we 
have to decide between two competing products, both of which have a 
complex chain of dependencies and pose a different complex mix of 
certification requirements? Given that this is the exact thing we pay 
this guy to decide... slightly worrying.

Similarly, we have a guy who we employ for the sole purpose of writing 
our procedure documents. All day, every day, all this guy does is write 
documents. That's his only purpose. And yet, every document he's written 
has been a complex, twisted mess of poor grammer, ambiguous phrases and 
confusing sentence structure. WTF, people?

>> Perhaps
>> this is a reflection not of America, but of upper management. :-P
>
> Go read Dilbert. ;-)

First you laugh...

...and then you weep.

> Plus, you're interacting with them in a very restricted way about a very
> restricted topic. If you went out to the pub with them and asked them
> the meaning of life, they might be tremendously insightful. (Or not, mind.)

I don't know, whenever I've watched these guys at work, whether 
installing software or just casually chatting while they go through 
their email, they always seemed very dim to me. Not that I have any 
/highly/ objective way to measure that...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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On 4/14/2011 9:59, Warp wrote:
>    So it's a kind of concession in the face of insurmountable evidence?

That's my understanding. I never heard of anyone talking about "kinds" vs 
"species" until people started claiming "you've never seen species" and 
others started saying "here's a list, yes."

For the same reason the nut-cases here are getting a platform to nut-case at 
others, you're also seeing the more blatant and easily-refutable claims 
being modified in a move-the-goalposts sort of way to account for the fact 
that it's trivial to look up a list of known specieation events.

> Yet variation, speciation and natural selection is what the theory of
> evolution is all about.

Yep. The claim is now generally that God put all the information about every 
species into the prototype "kind" creature, and you're not seeing any 
change, just differences showing up, sort of like getting a tan.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Coding without comments is like
    driving without turn signals."

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On 4/14/2011 10:00, Warp wrote:
>    I think Canada proves that hypothesis wrong, as Canada isn't any less
> multicultural as the US (and guns are quite popular there too).

Perhaps evidence against, yes. I think there's much more inter-culture 
hatred in America (intolerance?) than in Canada, even if there are the same 
number of different cultures. That's more what I was talking about.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Coding without comments is like
    driving without turn signals."

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On Thu, 14 Apr 2011 13:16:42 -0400, Warp wrote:

> Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
>> On Thu, 14 Apr 2011 02:34:46 -0400, Warp wrote:
> 
>> > I don't even understand what rational reason there is to oppose that
>> > idea. Is reducing pollution somehow a bad thing?
> 
>> Yes, because it costs money to come up with alternatives, and people
>> are generally lazy and don't want to spend.  Especially here in the US
>> with the 'consumer society' we live in, it's all about getting *stuff*.
>>  We'd have to actually control our impulses in order to reduce
>> consumption.
> 
>   One problem with that lazy ideology is that most people assume fossil
> fuels will last forever. If we don't come up with alternative ways of
> producing energy, we are going back to the 19th century whether we want
> it or not, and that's going to happen relatively soon.

I don't think those who are lazy about it think they'll last forever, 
just that they'll last long enough to be someone else's problem.  Why 
solve a problem today when a future generation can deal with the 
consequences and adapt to it tomorrow?

>   Well, at least pollution will be reduced when we run out of fossil
>   fuels.
> Something positive at least.

I'm sure we'll come up with new ways to pollute the planet and then deny 
that we're impacting the environment.

Jim

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On 4/14/2011 10:04, Warp wrote:
> Darren New<dne### [at] sanrrcom>  wrote:
>> Saying "shut down 80% of the power plants in your
>> country and go back to 19th century technology" is something else.
>
>    How about "shut down 80% of the power plants in your country and move
> to the 21st century already"? Producing energy by eg. burning coal is just
> utterly stupid.

And what would you suggest for (say) a country that wants to industrialize 
that doesn't have the infrastructure to build nuclear reactors? A big city 
in Kenya, say, where 50 miles away people still spin wool by hand? How are 
you going to build a safe nuclear reactor? Or do you want to Chernobyl all 
over again?

Or China, where there was great outrage that they flooded out hundreds of 
square miles of villages to make a dam? Or in South America, where huge 
swaths of rainforest are drowned by dams?

Other renewable sources just don't cut it, really. Not yet, at least. But 
shutting down civilization before we've built a replacement is probably a 
bad idea. :-)

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Coding without comments is like
    driving without turn signals."

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On 4/14/2011 10:16, Warp wrote:
> fuels will last forever.

No, but there's a whole lot more natural gas and coal left than there ever 
was oil. :-)  It's just inconvenient to power vehicles with it.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Coding without comments is like
    driving without turn signals."

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On Thu, 14 Apr 2011 18:31:06 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:

>>> Or is it merely a very vocal minority?
>>
>> Yes, unfortunately, one that manages somehow to wield political power
>> in order to advance their agenda.
> 
> I wonder how many people *actually* believe this insanity vs how many
> just go along with it because it benefits them.

Now *that* is a good question.  There are many followers of the 
Republican party that I know of who think the religious fundamentalist 
whackjobs are out of their minds, but they want fiscal conservatism and 
the only way to get that (that they can see) is to vote for the religious 
fundamentalist whackjobs because the alternative are those "pinko-commie-
socialist liberals" in the Democratic party.

That's how the whackjobs get into power - they have their loony ideas 
about science, but they at least *look good* on paper when it comes to 
fiscal responsibility (though in reality, they're really no better than 
the Democrats in most cases) or they appeal to the social conservatives 
for their stands on things like abortion and gay marriage.

Many people who vote Republican tend to vote on a single (or small number 
of issues), whereas liberals tend to vote more on 'big picture' (which 
has the unfortunate side effect of being very difficult to articulate, so 
often they get votes because they're *not* Republicans more than 
anything, I think).

>>> (I don't know about crazy, but all the American people that I've
>>> personally met have been notably stupid. Given the tiny sample size,
>>> that's not terribly significant, however...)
>>
>> You've met several up here (though not in person which is what I
>> suspect you mean), but you should know better by now than to make
>> generalisations about a society where you have a very small sample
>> size.  If you don't, it's time that you learned that lesson.
> 
> That would be why I tossed in "not terribly significant".

Fair point. :)

Jim

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