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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (122738)	8/22/2000 4:06:58 AM
From: Joe NYC	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1570975

Ted, 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? 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. 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. 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. A "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. 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". Joe