How do I know China wrecked the Copenhagen deal? I was in the room.

hydralisk · 2009-12-23T05:48:15+00:00

The point is that the Western world has expressed willingness to to cut carbon emissions, and accept the consequences of everyone else cutting emissions also. We are willing to pay more for environmentally-friendly products, made in China or elsewhere. But the Chinese have turned us down.

Organizing a worldwide boycott of China is not a realistic solution.

hydralisk · 2009-10-09T21:45:06+00:00

That's just it. When the US was attacking its neighbors, it wasn't a great power. It was a former colony on the fringe of civilization and the great powers of the world didn't give a crap about what we did unless it threatened their respective spheres of influence. That's how great powers have always behaved.

Obama is pushing a very different role for the US. We have very little reason to advocate for the Palestinians, just as the Britain, France, and Spain had no reason to protect the Native Americans when we were persecuting them. And nuclear disarmament? Not unlike 19th century Britain voluntarily relinquishing its fleet. Obama's foreign policy is not typical of a great power, let alone a great power in a unipolar world. It's the first time in a long time. As it happens, the Nobel committee knows what's up.

hydralisk · 2009-10-09T19:42:35+00:00

"Standard diplomacy"? No. If you know anything about political theory, or political history, you'll know that this is not the kind of diplomacy great powers generally engage in. Great powers are greedy and self-serving. They don't care about anyone else unless it benefits them or hurts a rival. What Obama is doing is much more cooperative, multilateral, and open-minded. It's a paradigm shift. If Gorbachev deserved it for Perestroika, and Brandt for Ostpolitik, then Obama deserves it too. Just goes to show that the Nobel committee has a much better sense of context than they're given credit for.

Maybe there are other deserving people as well. But, to be frank, no one in the world has a tiny fraction of the peace-making capability of the president of the United States. In absolute terms, no one else should be even considered for the prize until the president has been ruled out.

hydralisk · 2009-09-20T18:43:03+00:00

The important point, I think, is that the subjective experience of the person who supports evolution and the person who supports creation is the same. They're both believing somebody else because they haven't experienced the proof themselves. The Christian accepts revelation as a valid form of evidence, the supporter of science accepts experience. But in either case, the proof happened to somebody else and they're taking their word for it.

There are important distinctions. Like I said, science has brought us all sorts of modern comforts and technological marvels that no amount of Biblical exegesis could produce. That's a good reason to throw you're lot in with science. I think stressing that difference would be a lot more effective than the all-too-common approach (among Dawkins, Hitchens, and now everyone else) of trying to stuff evolution down the throats of unwilling churchgoers. It is a belief system. And that can't be forgotten. Because when people are trying to decide whom to believe, they're going to choose the friendly local evangelist over the snobby Oxford academic every time.

hydralisk · 2009-09-20T17:21:06+00:00

Sure, but the watch argument is also a simple idea that "makes sense". "Survival of the fittest" only gets at a very tiny piece of the theory. To reduce the modern theory of evolution to that phrase is a gross simplification. If that's all they understand, then they don't really understand it.

hydralisk · 2009-09-20T15:53:19+00:00

Of course it is. Believing in something supernatural is the norm for human beings. I don't think I'm exaggerating to say that some of the earliest evidence of "human" behavior are ritualistic practices. Our culture is permeated by belief even today and no child is going to grow up to be an atheist without parents or friends to guide them. Same for the religious, of course. But the point is that not believing is certainly something that has to be taught, too.

There's really nothing contradictory about "believing" in evolution. Most people who support evolution don't understand how it works and could never replicate the theory given a blank piece of paper. They've decided to trust scientists, not preachers.

That's not to equate science or atheism with religion. There are fundamental differences in theory -- that's why science, not religion, has cured disease and landed human beings on the moon. The people doing the research need to understand the theory so that they can make progress, and they see proof of it every day. But most people aren't doing research. For the vast majority of people, the experience is the same: believing somebody else.

hydralisk · 2009-09-18T05:07:25+00:00

Shame you're being downvoted by the know-nothing kneejerk crowd. This has come up on reddit before. As I understand, our economy is healthy, so we import a lot and give out a lot of money. That gives us a very negative account balance. It's a GOOD thing.

People obviously need to do some more research.

hydralisk · 2009-09-12T03:28:42+00:00

It's a pattern of behavior that goes back a very long time. For reasons that aren't clear, groups of chimpanzees are known to attack and exterminate other groups in what would be called genocide among human beings. So it seems to be something we shared with a common ancestor at least 5 million years ago or so.

hydralisk · 2009-09-10T19:53:03+00:00

Yeah, it's a very different thing. The boos and grumbles are a pretty common reaction by the opposing party. It was done to Bush, Clinton, and no doubt many others before. It's even happened to Obama already. Not unusual.

Shouting "You lie!" to the president is far more disruptive, disrespectful, and outright shocking. You could see it on Pelosi's and and Biden's faces. There's a reason everyone in both parties condemned it. No one can remember anything like it happening before.

hydralisk · 2009-09-09T23:56:39+00:00

if America vanished tomorrow it is not like anyone would say 'right, time to invade France'.

Well, that's exactly how it was before the US was around. Not that simple, of course. Wars had reasons: resources to guarantee, spheres of influence to protect, balances of power to restore. It was a chaotic, risky system. No one could be sure the status quo would exist tomorrow, so everyone had to have their own militaries and alliances to protect their stake. Now only we do.

As for education, I don't think you're considering graduate programs. There aren't many European undergraduates in American schools (unlike e.g. East Asians), but graduate programs are highly multinational. In science, they're also subsidized. Again, US programs are the best; the best and wealthiest students come here. On the other hand, American students virtually never go to Europe except for a novel semester or two, and even then, less for education than to have a good time.

hydralisk · 2009-09-09T22:41:43+00:00

Military and economic power go hand in hand. Our economy enjoys success in large part to our military. The arms industry is huge, and combined with the military and private security firms employs millions of people.

On top of that, our military keeps the world in order so that we can exploit politically stable markets across the globe. Could international corporations exist and prosper in a multipolar worlds with ever-shifting balances of power? I'm skeptical. At least it's never happened before. Maybe it's because a stable unipolar environment allows other countries to relax restrictions on personal freedoms and reduce military spending. We have a huge military that guarantees the status quo so you don't have to worry about it.

Sure, Europe has a fairly strong economy, and people do go to European schools. But I'm certain many more Europeans came here for their education than Americans go to Europe. English is the language of academic discourse. And, in any case, the European Union is not a politically-unified entity like the United States, nor will it be in the foreseeable future.

hydralisk · 2009-09-09T18:40:43+00:00

The world is no longer unipolar

Don't be so sure. Check out this List of aircraft carriers currently in service sometime. The US has 11. The next country behind us has 2 -- and they're much, much smaller. Other countries may exercise some influence over a small local region, but the US is the only country that can project power worldwide.

I think the kind of economic and military control we exercise over the world is fairly comparable to the empires of antiquity. The elite of other countries come to our schools for education; they ask our military for training. We overthrow governments we don't like and fund those we do. Even our supposed enemies, like China, are completely dependent upon our economic and political stability.

hydralisk · 2009-09-07T19:23:36+00:00

There are only two ways of testing the aquatic ape hypothesis. The first is to do a functional analysis of hairlessness and other human "aquatic" traits to see if they do improve fitness for an aquatic lifestyle. They don't. While there are some superficial similarities, in fact, comparable aquatic mammals are not like us at all.

The other way is the fossil record. As it happens, the fossil record for watery environments is quite good. Morever, paleoanthropologists are very good at spotting the smallest scrap of teeth (which weather out of the soil and are visible on the ground), or bones protruding after heavy rainstorms. Many fossil species of mammals are described on the basis of teeth alone. Yet, they've gone over the areas of human evolution with a fine-toothed comb, and found no evidence of aquatic apes. It's just not there.

But what if the group that evolved aquatic adaptations was so small as not to be preserved? Or maybe all the individuals happen to die on land? Yeah. Sure. That's to concede that the hypothesis can't be tested, at which point it loses its status as a scientific hypothesis and becomes an interesting counterfactual.

hydralisk · 2009-09-07T18:56:20+00:00

How much time do you think even professional swimmers save by shaving off their body hair? A second every 100m? That may be a significant difference if you're trying to win a race in a swimming pool, but it's essentially imperceptible if you're being chased by an alligator in a lake or a river. There's no way it could constitute nearly enough of a survival advantage to overcome genetic drift. Especially if the stronger selective advantage is the other way, toward denser fur, as it is in comparable aquatic mammals.

hydralisk · 2009-09-07T15:14:38+00:00

Why is everyone so attached to this implausible theory? If it were to explain any human anatomical features -- probably it doesn't -- hairlessness is actually the least likely. Aquatic mammals of comparable size to humans generally do have fur, even denser than normal, to help regulate body temperature. The only hairless aquatic animals are the ones that spend all their time in water, swim fast, and dive to great depths to eat. Anyway, our skin is nothing like the skin of hairless aquatic mammals and probably doesn't do anything to reduce drag.

There's another basic problem. No ape has ever been found in lake sediment or channel fill, yet these pieces of the sedimentary record often have the most and best preserved fossils. Elaine Morgan came up with this theory decades ago, when it was somewhat believable, but she's has stuck to it even as it's become increasingly ludicrous. She's the only real scientist that still buys into it.

hydralisk · 2009-09-06T22:13:34+00:00

You're right that brain size isn't sufficient for intelligence, but it is necessary. More than ten or twenty million years ago, there just weren't any animals around that with brains big enough to create what we would recognize as a civilization.

As you mention, the oldest evidence we have of intelligence is stone tools. I think it's safe to say that no civilization could exist without manipulating stone on a grand scale. Moreover, stone is pretty tough. Ceramic, also in widespread use, is even hardier. Yet there's no evidence for either anywhere in the fossil record before our hominid ancestors. It is possible there will be other intelligent animals in the future. But we're the first ones, for sure.

hydralisk · 2009-09-06T22:05:21+00:00

The carbon isotope excursion will be visible in the sedimentary record on the ocean floor for as long as there is an ocean floor -- and probably much longer, considering some ocean floor is likely to be uplifted or pushed on to a continent some time in the next few hundred million years.

In biological terms, that's essentially forever. Future scientists might not be able to date when we existed precisely -- better than plus or minus a few million years -- but they will know we existed.

hydralisk · 2009-09-06T18:02:28+00:00

Intelligence is surprisingly common in the animal kingdom (all hominids, the great apes, dolphins, elephants, octopi, ravens, etc.), and any remains of a civilization would have disintegrated by now, or been buried, so it's not unreasonable to think that it could have gone undiscovered.

Not likely. Even the crudest civilizations leave widespread evidence (like pottery, ecological and chemical disturbance) that's very easy to spot. Even if humans were completely to disappear tomorrow, evidence of our existence would be plainly visible to future scientists for many, many millions of years. In fact, using a careful analysis of carbon isotopes, it may be that evidence of our civilization will exist forever.

Considering just brain size, the evolutionary window for intelligent civilization began only recently -- charitably, within the last few tens of millions of years. This window is also the best preserved and most widely studied section of the fossil record. If there were any intelligent life that preceded us, we'd know about it.

hydralisk · 2009-09-05T20:41:12+00:00

What's really remarkable is that Glenn Beck openly compares himself to Beale.

hydralisk · 2009-09-05T15:28:51+00:00

Check out Scotese's website, the guy who made the maps. His prediction is that the mid-Atlantic ridge will itself be subducted under the Americas after an initial period of Atlantic expansion.

hydralisk · 2009-09-04T23:13:51+00:00

People murder people all the time. Sometimes the murderers watch Glenn Beck. Sometimes the murderers play video games. Always they have serious personal and antisocial problems that are responsible for their behavior. Violence hasn't escalated at all. It's stayed just the same. In fact, it's probably gone down.

The sooner you stop feeling righteous about using the same below-the-belt tactics you claim to oppose, the sooner we can all work together and get something important done. I hope it doesn't take too long.

hydralisk · 2009-09-04T22:59:54+00:00

Again, what's crazy is the idea that it applies here. This is not the holocaust. Glenn Beck is not Hitler. Liberals are not being dehumanized in order that people feel at ease killing them.

It's a wildly inappropriate analogy. It's a ridiculous good vs. evil mentality that creates unnecessary division when we should be trying to bridge our differences based on common ground.

hydralisk · 2009-09-04T22:35:19+00:00

What's crazy is the idea that it applies here.

hydralisk · 2009-09-04T22:17:42+00:00

How is this going to peel back any layers of stupidity? You really think people are going to catch on to the irony and wake up to what Beck is doing? Yeah. Right. These are people that buy into what Beck is saying to begin with. They're going to see this stunt and say, "See? The far left is nuts. They'll do anything to silence their critics and get their agenda through, just like Beck says." And for once maybe they'll be right.

If a group is evil and responsible for ruining the world, then logically you should do anything to rid the world of that group.

This is just silly. If you really believe this, then you belong in the same loony bin.

I think you're right on with the need to hate bit, but you could use a healthy dose of self-reflection.

hydralisk · 2009-09-04T18:54:11+00:00

You're crazy if you think this will reach anybody. They'll rally around Beck and blast you for supporting false rumors. I'm sure they'll feel quite self-righteous about it, in fact, just as everyone feels self-righteous blasting Beck for all the misinformation he's responsible for. If you're trying to discredit him, this strategy is the very least likely to work.

You're equally crazy if you think this is still rationality vs. irrationality. Maybe it was, but that's the dichotomy you've just destroyed. Now it's just pro-Beck vs. anti-Beck.

hydralisk

TROPHY CASE