Weather Channel Founder says"Global Warming is Biggest Scam in History

[wacki]

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.... Displays that pretty well. The development of the IC was about weight and power which was required for NASA missions. Monetary profit of some corporation had nothing to do with the decision to go for ICs. Development of the IC was going to happen "at all costs". ....

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While I agree with your points here, I have some serious doubts that government agencies are up to tasks like this today. My pessimism stems from working many years for defense contractors and DOE funded national lab. Could be convinced otherwise though.

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This is something I definitely need to learn more about. Nobel Laureate Richard Smalley, who pushed the Apollo Energy program, was highly critical of the DOE and their ability to get tasks done. I found that criticism coming from him strange as not only was it at odds with his Apollo energy program but the vast majority of breakthroughs in solar technology came from DOE funded projects. So the DOE seemed to be good at something. Maybe it was due to the lack of competition. He said this country needs to be motivated the way Kennedy motivated the US when we decided to go to the moon. There may be a very real possibility that this country might need something equivalent of a technological and environmental pearl harbor or sputnik scare in order to get on their feat and solve the problems facing us. (heh now I'm sounding like a neocon) Humans are infamous for ignoring distant dangers. The political situation seems to be far more complex then my current knowledge allows me to understand and literature on this topic is simply hard to come by. I certainly sympathize with your sentiments but unfortunately I am unable to contribute much.

[natedogg]

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Greed is good. Until you learn that point you will continue to work for the man.

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Did you learn economics from Hollywood?

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My guess is you work for a wage and vote Democrat.

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There are 3 parties (Libs, Dems, and Republicans) you guessed which one I vote for the least.

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When Government directs resources it is ineffecient no matter what good comes of it. Government does not allocate resorces effeciently or to the highest and best use.

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Well if you can't get your historical facts right then making unsupported absolute ideological proclamations certainly seems to be the way to go. I'm not denying that there is waste in government. There certainly is. But your absolute decrees that government can never do something as well as or better than private industry is just silly. Your own examples in this thread should prove that.

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Government takes money by force and uses it a way that it would not be used in a competitive market.

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In the case of computers that was apparently a very good thing. According to a few topics I read on the subject private industry supported discrete circuits and not integrated circuits due to cheaper short term costs. Private industry rarely looks into the future beyond timelines that are profitable under current patent laws.

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I don't think you are blind or ignorant, your life experiences are simply differant than mine. When you call someone blind and ignorant and then say their is no black and white etc., I hope you realize you contradict yourself. Do you see why?

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I should rephrase. Life is not a binary black and white. Everything is situational. But arguments put forward in your posts do in fact put you pretty far in the dark side of ignorant when it comes to the history of computing, geology and basic physics. Your argument that:

I can't fathom anyone would think anything other than the profit motive led us to the great developments of the computer.

Displays that pretty well. The development of the IC was about weight and power which was required for NASA missions. Monetary profit of some corporation had nothing to do with the decision to go for ICs. Development of the IC was going to happen "at all costs".

Maybe you should read up on history a little more before you start preaching the binary "greed is good, guvment is evil" ideology.

you can have the last word. I doubt I will responding to this thread again.

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I'd like to point out that yet again you are falling into the fallacious trap of assuming that the incentive which drove a result we see today was the only path to that result that could have ever happened. ie. if X hadn't driven the research to do Y, Y would never have happened, just because X happened to have driven the work toward achieving the version of Y that we know today.

A very *common* example of this one is claiming that without the government we wouldn't have an internet just because ARPAnet was one of the first examples of distributed computer networks. It stretches credulity to believe that no one other than the ARPAnet folks would have ever devised the technology to link computers together. But this claim is thrown around regularly by big-government proponents who can't see beyond was "is" for what "is likely".

That is a big fallacy but a common one that people fall into.

natedogg

[anatta]

I played poker with John Coleman at Viejas, for real. Weatherman out here? He's really old, plays fishy. Heard something that he slipped and fell, almost died.

[wacki]

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I'd like to point out that yet again you are falling into the fallacious trap of assuming that the incentive which drove a result we see today was the only path to that result that could have ever happened.

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Natedogg, I was wondering when you would jump into this thread. As I said earlier in this thread:

I have no intention of proving what would of happened if none of the government research programs occurred. Getting into an argument like that would be futile. I simply showed that your understanding of computer history is on the level of gross ignorance. And if you don't understand history how could you possibly predict the future?

Arguing "what could have been" or "what could be in the future" with those that don't understand history is futile. I strongly disagree with your previously expressed position that government made no significant impact on the timeline of computer development but I do not wish to debate that. You and I have been over that before and those conversations generally degrade into little more than an exercise of political masturbation with nothing really informative coming to fruition. They are a waste of time.

[Mark1808]

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I'd like to point out that yet again you are falling into the fallacious trap of assuming that the incentive which drove a result we see today was the only path to that result that could have ever happened.

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Natedogg, I was wondering when you would jump into this thread. As I said earlier in this thread:

I have no intention of proving what would of happened if none of the government research programs occurred. Getting into an argument like that would be futile. I simply showed that your understanding of computer history is on the level of gross ignorance. And if you don't understand history how could you possibly predict the future?

Arguing "what could have been" or "what could be in the future" with those that don't understand history is futile. I strongly disagree with your previously expressed position that government made no significant impact on the timeline of computer development but I do not wish to debate that. You and I have been over that before and those conversations generally degrade into little more than an exercise of political masturbation with nothing really informative coming to fruition. They are a waste of time.

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Government at many levels spend money on lots of stuff, roads, parks, defense, schools, health care, mail delivery, etc. To say that that spending was effecient or created a market is a stretch. That spending is just part of the demand for goods and services and it was sucked from a productive part of our economy which would probably have spent the money in a more effecient manner. I just don't get how liberals who hate W can ever think giving the government to spend money as it sees fit is ever a good idea!

[PLOlover]

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I just don't get how liberals who hate W can ever think giving the government to spend money as it sees fit is ever a good idea!

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theyre alreay after a carbon tax and they're not even gonna apply the money to solving the problem, which is almost certainly a made up nonproblem to begin with.

at least if they spent all taht money on solar RD there would be somting to show for it.

[wacki]

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That spending is just part of the demand for goods and services and it was sucked from a productive part of our economy which would probably have spent the money in a more effecient manner.

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There are lots of areas where government spending is more efficient than private enterprise. The pharmaceutical industry, which I work in, is filled with examples of this. The easiest to understand is vaccines which private industry generally doesn't touch due to the lack of profits despite enormous benefits to society as a whole. Many people forget that the polio is still the leading cause of disabilities in the the US. The first effective vaccine wasn't invented by big pharma but in the University of Pittsburgh. To say the polio vaccine was a waste of government money is to express gross ignorance on the extreme amounts of damage it did to the world population and even the effect it has on our current GDP many decades after the virus has been eradicated from our country. It doesn't stop there. An in some industries private companies actually fight hard to destroy efficient technology. The great American streetcar scandal is one such instance. History has frequently shown private industry's primary motivator isn't efficiency or even high quality products. Way too many scandals, shelving and neglect of superior products/services have shown that private industry is about profit maximization and many companies will do whatever it takes to get there.

Another example, a frequent tactic among pharma is to alter a naturally occurring drug so that it can be patented. It does not matter if we are reducing the potency of the drug or creating something that causes serious side effects. What matters is that we get that patent and we don't care if people die because the drug is less effective than it's natural byproduct.

You can keep preaching your blind ideology and spouting incorrect historical facts. Or you can read history and realize that both big government and pure capitalism have big problems.

[natedogg]

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I'd like to point out that yet again you are falling into the fallacious trap of assuming that the incentive which drove a result we see today was the only path to that result that could have ever happened.

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Natedogg, I was wondering when you would jump into this thread. As I said earlier in this thread:

I have no intention of proving what would of happened if none of the government research programs occurred. Getting into an argument like that would be futile. I simply showed that your understanding of computer history is on the level of gross ignorance. And if you don't understand history how could you possibly predict the future?

Arguing "what could have been" or "what could be in the future" with those that don't understand history is futile. I strongly disagree with your previously expressed position that government made no significant impact on the timeline of computer development but I do not wish to debate that. You and I have been over that before and those conversations generally degrade into little more than an exercise of political masturbation with nothing really informative coming to fruition. They are a waste of time.

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I am merely pointing out the logical fallacy in your thinking. Correct me if I'm wrong but you flat out claimed that certain technologies could only have occurred as a result of the the government research the went behind them. I am pointing out that your assertion rests on an actual logical fallacy and one that you commonly fall into at that.

natedogg

[Mark1808]

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That spending is just part of the demand for goods and services and it was sucked from a productive part of our economy which would probably have spent the money in a more effecient manner.

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There are lots of areas where government spending is more efficient than private enterprise. The pharmaceutical industry, which I work in, is filled with examples of this. The easiest to understand is vaccines which private industry generally doesn't touch due to the lack of profits despite enormous benefits to society as a whole. Many people forget that the polio is still the leading cause of disabilities in the the US. The first effective vaccine wasn't invented by big pharma but in the University of Pittsburgh. To say the polio vaccine was a waste of government money is to express gross ignorance on the extreme amounts of damage it did to the world population and even the effect it has on our current GDP many decades after the virus has been eradicated from our country. It doesn't stop there. An in some industries private companies actually fight hard to destroy efficient technology. The great American streetcar scandal is one such instance. History has frequently shown private industry's primary motivator isn't efficiency or even high quality products. Way too many scandals, shelving and neglect of superior products/services have shown that private industry is about profit maximization and many companies will do whatever it takes to get there.

Another example, a frequent tactic among pharma is to alter a naturally occurring drug so that it can be patented. It does not matter if we are reducing the potency of the drug or creating something that causes serious side effects. What matters is that we get that patent and we don't care if people die because the drug is less effective than it's natural byproduct.

You can keep preaching your blind ideology and spouting incorrect historical facts. Or you can read history and realize that both big government and pure capitalism have big problems.

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Did these comnpanies who produced shoddy products prosper? I think not and that is the beauty of free market capitalism.

You should open your eyes a little on the polio vaccine which is suspected of causing cancer and evidence suggests he may not have even been much help in stopping polio:

Polio is virtually nonexistent in the United States today. However, according to Dr. Robert Mendelsohn, medical investigator and pediatrician, there is no credible scientific evidence that the vaccine caused polio to disappear [50]. From 1923 to 1953, before the Salk killed-virus vaccine was introduced, the polio death rate in the United States and England had already declined on its own by 47 percent and 55 percent, respectively (Figure 4) [51]. Statis-tics show a similar decline in other European countries as well [51]. And when the vaccine did become available, many European countries questioned its effectiveness and refused to systematically inoculate their citizens. Yet, polio epidemics also ended in these countries [50].

Full paper and footnotes here: http://www.thinktwice.com/Polio.pdf

Your critique of capitalism fails to look at the higher living standards and quality of life it brought to the US and more recently India and China.

[wacki]

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I'd like to point out that yet again you are falling into the fallacious trap of assuming that the incentive which drove a result we see today was the only path to that result that could have ever happened.

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Natedogg, I was wondering when you would jump into this thread. As I said earlier in this thread:

I have no intention of proving what would of happened if none of the government research programs occurred. Getting into an argument like that would be futile. I simply showed that your understanding of computer history is on the level of gross ignorance. And if you don't understand history how could you possibly predict the future?

Arguing "what could have been" or "what could be in the future" with those that don't understand history is futile. I strongly disagree with your previously expressed position that government made no significant impact on the timeline of computer development but I do not wish to debate that. You and I have been over that before and those conversations generally degrade into little more than an exercise of political masturbation with nothing really informative coming to fruition. They are a waste of time.

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I am merely pointing out the logical fallacy in your thinking. Correct me if I'm wrong but you flat out claimed that certain technologies could only have occurred as a result of the the government research the went behind them. I am pointing out that your assertion rests on an actual logical fallacy and one that you commonly fall into at that.

natedogg

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In the history of my posting on 2p2 I doubt I would have used such a statement that covers all of eternity. I tend to speak in rates and likelihood of development. Extend the time line long enough and even the worst system will create something grand. But experience has taught me that those discussions on this board are generally fruitless and it saves much heartache to discuss historical time lines because the facts are less subjective. You can insult my reasoning as much as you like but my historical facts are plentiful and accurate.