Posts by BenWilson
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What exactly does he think he is?
A cat? And he thinks you are too. It's only humans that __anthro__pomorphize. You have been felipomorphized.
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well, that's because millipedes don't have opposable thumbs.
You don't need thumbs to fire any kind of gun I can think of.
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For most people it is not feasible to form a rational opinion on the global warming debate. Unless you actually are a climatologist, you have only the word of climatologists on the matter. Their opinions conflict. You can try to understand them, but to an outsider they all appear to have plausible stories. You could opt to go with the majority opinion, but even working out what this is, is no easy matter - you really have to be a climatologist to know if someone else really is one. Even then you could just be being sympathetic only to your preexisting beliefs.
This particular debate is particularly fraught, since the solutions are mostly political. That has made the science itself political. I'm not saying the facts are political - they remain simply facts independent of human thought - but our ability to know the facts is definitely influenced heavily by politics.
It reminds me of the Copernican revolution. With the benefit of hindsight we can see that Copernicus was on the right track. But at the time he could easily have seemed like someone using a cloak of science to hide an attack on the existing monopoly on truth the Church claimed to hold. I think global warming groups are seen this way, using their science to hide their agenda of opposition to modern trends of resource consumption. Of course existing power structures, in particular those controlling access to fossil fuels, are analogous to the Church, clinging to their beliefs as much from protecting their position as from actually thinking Copernicus was wrong.
History is kind to Copernicus because he was on the right track. He could have been totally wrong, though, and it is easy to lose sight of that. It's one of those underdog stories we all love, the science that triumphed over power (not that it actually happened during Copernicus' life). But just because it's a story we love doesn't mean the underdog is alway right. The existing scientific orthodoxy was heavily against him.
Which side of the global warming debate will history be kind to? I like to think it will be the side that is actually right. I don't know which side this actually is, I merely have an opinion. Not being a climatologist, that opinion doesn't count for much, except in so far as it might further political ends a teeny tiny bit. Which makes most of us global warming politicians.
I not saying debate by non-specialists is pointless. That would be much like saying that political debate is pointless just because it is political. What is at stake is quite huge, it's surely one of the more important debates of our generation. But I don't want to kid myself that my ability to know the truth on this one is much greater than my ability to know truth on any other political debate. Maybe I'm just taking a side. The only real difference with this one is that time will certainly tell.
Disclaimer: The side I currently take is that global warming definitely is happening. It seems like the majority of scientists credit human factors. As for what we can do about it, or how far it will go if we do nothing, I'm reserving judgement. Certainly the costs of trying will be huge, but it is also possible the cost of not trying would be much huger.
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Jackie, all true. There are quite a few people who get honors who are honorable. There's also a few who are just rich, which could seem to cheapen the system. But I don't think so, any more than I think a degree from Auckland University is cheapened by the fact the Queen has one, despite Her Majesty never having gone there.
It's more of a thing about rich people than about honors themselves. And frankly if they want to part with a decent chunk of their wealth for some worthy cause (I'm not including campaign donations to the Labour party in this btw) then they can have the title. It's always been that way, aristocratic titles traditionally adhered to wealth and violence far more than 'honor'. That part is a modern thing, and an improvement on an ancient and flawed system.
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Would a national newspaper actually have anything more in it than the Herald?
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I want to cancel my subscription but it is such a bugger that we have a monopoly in Auckland.
Read it online?
It was actually quite readable on my PDA whilst I was in Ozzie over Christmas. Lamentably, Public Address was not. The WAP option only gave me links, but any clicking did not take me to the articles. The non-WAP pages are either too wide for the PDA screen and involve annoying scrolling from left to right every line, or if I 'fit to screen' they squeeze to one word per line, which was horrible on the eyes, but did involve using only one button for scrolling.
I read it anyway, though. Nice to read that some people had an enjoyable Christmas. Google News kept me sane in the face of Ozzie network news, until Vodafone's network crapped out for 3 days. Aaaaarg!
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IO, you've changed my mind occasionally. Which is a strange way of refuting your point, I know.
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Total thread-jack. Am I the only one alarmed that the US is now letting Turkey do bombing runs inside Iraq?
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Have peoples minds been changed by a well reasoned argument on the intarwebby?
I know mine has.
Mine too. Many times. I don't see that as having a weak position, it's about being rational. Often the other person can't see what you're not getting until you tell them your reasoning. Then you get the killer comeback which shows you where your facts or reasoning are wrong, and hey presto, you've learned something, and so has everyone else who thinks like you and can use Google. More often than not the capitulation is simply that you did define your initial position poorly. That can even be an amicable capitulation, the 'we're not really disagreeing at all, except about the meaning of a few words'.
That's because I argue to understand and be understood, rather than to win. On PAS at least.
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Deborah, thanks for your bite. I was hoping someone would because it partially goes to hardening up ;-)
I feel you misunderstood me a little. I didn't mean that the lurkers need to 'post tough'. I meant they need to 'get tough, and post'. They shouldn't change their style towards the blog median, unless they want to.
I think Woman's Suffrage is an absolutely perfect example of what I'm talking about. The Suffragettes didn't sit around silently waiting for men to politely let them vote. They loudly demanded the right and when they got it they used it.
I agree that some can be scared off by fighting, as happens to almost every woman on Kiwiblog. I can't hold myself blameless, having given at least one woman a good, hard serve on there once. In my defense, she started it, and I'm not the kind to patronize a woman by going soft on her in fight that she wishes to stake her claim as my equal/better in.
I further agree that the generally polite tone of PAS does mean the idea of a serve is simply recalibrated, and a blow as soft as "I disagree with you" carries about the same weight as 5 personal attacks from a Kiwiblog troll. But recalibration is always going to happen, and so is disagreement. It's in the nature of expressing your opinion. This is not an aggressive white middle class male fact, it's just a fact. When you post anything of substance, some people are going to disagree with you.
If anything, this is the strength of blog/comments. They're feedback. Sure, it can be intimidating to be cut down by witty intelligent people. But if there's any truth in what you say, you'll also get witty intelligent people supporting you, cutting down the cutdowns, and you'll have grown just that little bit as a writer. You learned something by doing it.
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