Joe
You might notice that both parents tend to have weight problems. Might there be a genetic predisposition?
I don't think Al Gore has a genetic pre-disposition to be overweight, but if you do have a predisposition, as you suggest, wouldn't it make sense to pay more attention rather than less attention to the nutritional needs of your family?
How do you know that he doesn't pay more attention? I don't think that his children being overweight provides you with sufficient evidence to reach that conclusion.
And I find it extremely interesting that whenever technical expertise is needed, the first request usually is made to Scumbria. However, whenever Scumbria makes a statement that is left of the Ayatollah, even when it is an observation like his one about Gore being technically astute, suddenly he's not to be believed; he goes from being a technical authority to one who's reasoning is suspect.
I do turn to Scumbria about CPU design related question, because he is one of the few people on this thread to have a good overview of the field.
But outside of this field, his opinion is only as good as the supporting reasoning that he provides. If he provides none, his opinion is just that - an opinion.
Fair enough....
Which leads me to my next comment. Environmental fanaticism, as you call it, may be exactly what this world/civilization needs right now to insure its future. Logical, rational studies as you have suggested in another post may not be the way to determine the correct direction to take re the environment. There are some things that are instinctive or intuitive or both......and I have a feeling that these ways of "thinking" may be more appropriate.
I disagree - partially. Not about the use of an instinct or intuition, but about your discounting of rigorous science. You can only start to use instinct or intuition once you have an understanding of the subject. For example, if Scumbria manages a project, based on his experience he may instinctively suggest which approaches to try first to solve a problem, rather than blindly going down the list of possible approaches.
Without enough research, you are shooting in the dark, and however fanatic you are about your particular approach, your chance of success is limited.
My only point is that rigorous science has its limits and that are other ways to think that are at our disposal.
This brings me to what I see the difference between "liberals" and "conservatives" is. The primary objective of a liberal policy is to make the liberals feel good about themselves, not to solve problems.
I know you believe that but I don't. I happen to be fiscally conservative and socially liberal....not because it makes feel good....in fact I get a lot of sh*t for being liberal from my friends. Rather, my social liberalism makes sense to me from my perspective of how the world functions. It might help if you stopped thinking of liberals as do gooders. And it does solve problems but using your methodology.
fanatic approach", where a lot sacrifice in form of other peoples money is spent makes liberals feel good about themselves, regardless of the outcome. They can always congratulate themselves about how caring they are, and if nothing is achieved, the opposition will be blamed for restraining their fanaticism. They will say that some were not willing to sacrifice enough.
It is possible to have great concern without being a fanatic. You seem to think that concern about issues stems from being caring. It may be that those people who are passionate about issues outside of themselves are less egocentric. In other words it may have less to do with being caring and more to do with a world view or greater empathy.
Anyway, the alternative approach is to be use reason, to calculate. If you determine that:
$1 worth of action A will bring 7 units of Good and 5 units of Bad, but
$1 worth of action B will bring 8 units of Good and 9 units of Bad
You can start to weigh your choices. You need to also consider that doing neither and spending $1 on research may bring about technology C where
$1 worth of action C will bring 4 units of Good but only 1 unit of Bad.
But this kind of reasoning completely escapes people who call themselves environmentalists. That's why I would consider it to be an insult if someone called me environmentalist, even though I share many of the stated goals of the "environmentalists".
This is the kind of reasoning that has been used to deal with environmental issues in the past....and I thought it was working. However in the last couple of years, I have found that it is not working. Yes, the Willamette River, an incredible river, is cleaner than it was 30 years ago thanks to your reasoning and the amount of spending it permitted. Unfortunately it is not clean....there is toxic sludge containing contaminants and poisons on the river bottom because it was hard to justify spending the money to clean them up....and so all the fish that came back due to the cleaner waters are showing evidence of the contaminants, and now there is concern over the populations of the small communities that began using the river for drinking water, and the list goes on.
You see the problem with scientists and their deductive reasoning which tries to make rational, economic sense is that they fail to recognize their limits. There science is limited to only that knowledge that they have acquired thru rigorous scientific study. However what was acceptable to a scientist in 1970 based on a 1970 understanding of the world is not acceptable to most people now. Add to that that scientists have a hard time factoring in the human element and you can run into serious problems. After all if you reduce the human body to its base elements, its only worth a few dollars. At that price, is it worth trying to save any of us? Most scientists probably would have to conclude..probably not.
ted |
