TheRobin

Maybe I'm confusing it with another term/concept, but from what I remember the idea is that if you have a large enough group you'll have some people in it who are well informed on whatever topic you're asking about. So while everyone else just generates random noise (statistically speaking) you'll have the few experts who will tip the result in the correct area, hence why it works (statistically).

I see, yeah, damn, I can't even send you a message either. Do you use facebook? If so, then write me there, if that works for you (https://www.facebook.com/robin.balsiger) and we can maybe plan to meet and chat sometime I usually don't have fixed plans for most days, except Wednesday and Sunday, so I'm relatively free in terms of time for meeting up and chatting a bit. When would it work best for you in general? Looking forward to hearing from you. Always cool to meet more like-minded people

Hey amos, yeah I'm from Dübendorf. I'd totally be up for meeting sometime. Maybe beginning of next week or so? (Best write me a pm, as I'm not as active on the boads, but I think I do get an email, if someone writes me a pm, so I should see that, even if I forget to check the boards)

I think it's rather simple in principle. If you use air pressure (sound) to influence and impact other people's organs(ears) that's fundamentally no different from using other ways of force on other people's bodies. And while most of the time you're voluntarily on shared ground, where this behaviour is mutually accepted, you can reasonably draw a limit in your private space if you want. Plus the fact, that if you don't get sleep it does harm your health, thus can be viewed as an NAP violation anyway, so self defense is justified in that instance (imo). Now, in any practical sense, I never rented a room or flat, where there were not clear rules for how loud one can be and at what times, so there's already an easy way to avoid such behaviour, by informing the landlord and them having the ability to cancel the contract as a result anyway.

Fro 1) The problem with any system of logic that has axioms like true and non-true being both valid is that there's no way then to proof or disproof any validity or truth value as a result (including the validity of the very system itself) 2) Well, yes and no, I think. Logic in and of itself only deals with concepts and ideas and allows you to create new concepts that are not necessarily tied to any empirical reality. However in order to have a foundation you need a definition of what those ideas and concepts mean and if you don't tie it to something empirical at some point then all definitions will either be left incomplete or end up being circular. (I think a mathematician proofed something similar a few decades ago, but I can't remember his name unfortunately) 3) Here, again, I think, logic only applies to ideas and our ideas about quantum level processes must be as logically valid as those ideas about macro level processes. Also, (just in case) don't confuse the fact that QM stuff is "weird" compared to macro stuff with it not being able to be expressed logically. Any model that describes these processes are as logically valid as any other scientific model that describes stuff like gravity or thermodynamics. Also yes, such a math system would be invalid, I think (unless there's a mathematical reason/proof you can show for why it won't work for different scales of number, in which case, you've used logic to proof how it's logically valid anyway)

I think you're confusing two different things. On the one hand there's little a parent can do in terms of personality traits to influence a child. On the other hand there's a lot one can to to negatively effect a child's development regardless of the potential. Both positions are very well supported by research and you'll find enough evidence for the spanking being harmful in his youtube section on peaceful parenting. (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMNj_r5bccUwZY7RCZnS2e5-vjaA7wSNw)

Thank you (Though your opinion might change after having read the book )

Btw does anyone know if someone ever tried to correlate the amount of spanking into racial IQ comparisons? mean, from what I know IQ is also affected by spanking and blacks (at least in the US) seem to spank the most from what I remember (and Asians who are on the high end of IQ spank the least), so I wonder how much the IQ differences would change if that factor would be taken into account (if it hasn't already been taken into account)?

I think the fundamental mistake you're making is that you're asking for a universal solution to individual problems. You ask how "we" can do x. Well, first, there's no "we" in the same sense as before, one town might decide one thing another town another, there might even be a multitude of different solutions even within different neighbourhoods of the same town. So you're really asking "What centralized solution would you put in place, once there's no more central power that can put in place central solutions?" And as people pointed out, there's a book called practical anarchy that you can read for free that has some opinions about how some of these things might be handled, but of course, the main thing we need to understand is that, the future is never anything like the past and solutions which haven't even been invented yet could be very much commonly available at the time we finally get to a free society.

If you're curious about government crimes, have you looked at how corrupt and criminal governments are in "black" nations (like African countries, where the whole government and police is mostly or completely inhabited by black people)? I think that would be a much better comparison than trying to squeeze out numbers on mixed nations with mixed racial groups. (Although of course, cross-country comparisons have other problems as well)

Not much to add here, short and to the point article about the ongoing (and increasingly ugly) debate http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/tired-of-the-climate-wars-me-too/

I might have an idea why you get some downvotes. It's these little jabs and exaggerations that are annoying putting right wing automatically in the "authoritarian" camp (despite the fact that left authoritarian governments have caused wayyyy more death and misery) or calling it "massive" downvotes when your score overall is only -5 (so 5 total downvotes). It's just a bit manipulative and dishonest. Might not be the whole reason of course, sometimes people also just downvote cause they disagree (though, if you make a good case that's very rarely what happens). But essentially, I don't even know what that would mean (left or right wing libertarian), you either accept the NAP or you don't and if your posts contain ideas that require the initiation of force then don't be surprised about downvotes

Btw I forgot to ask, but I'm curious: What are everyone's criteria for disproof? Like what would need to happen to change your stance on the topic? For me it's pretty simple: If the temperature stays constant over the next 5-10 years then the models are shown to be wrong (outside there being strong volcanic activity ofc) and that would lead me to accept that the claim is most likely (like, 99.9%) false. So what is anyone else's criteria?

It's unfortunately getting to the point where it's hard to respond cause of the length, so I'm just gonna shorten it and you can tell me if I left out important things you want me to respond to. First, i think it's rather unwarranted to discard ALL of a persons research because they use the term pollutant for CO2. Yes it's a stretch, but I think so is Stef calling fiat currency a pollutant. But if I said used that as an excuse to not watch any of his videos on climate science, I think it'd be obvious I'm just desperately trying to find an excuse to not look at the claims. And bias in general, everyone's got them. That's why we have double blind studies and all that even in fields that are supposedly purely physical (like medicine). As for private vs government funded. Yeah I think if the question is, how financial incentives can bias researchers then it doesn't matter where the money comes from. If you've heard the talk Stef had with a doctor about how corrupt that field of research is then it should be obvious that private science is by no means any better off than public one at this point. Safe for creating actual tools and gadgets that work (like smartphones and such, where the science directly influences the product) And as you pointed out, big corporations can hardly be called a private sector these days, when a lot of their profit comes from lobbying and regulatory capture. And I agree with that it's good to push back against the narrative and the insanity of alarmists, as well as point out the problems of state regulation in that field. Which is why I think that all the videos spent on trying to debunk a field of science completely miss the point (and are generally based on a lack of understanding more than anything else) and are just a waste of time for the most part. Edit: unfortunately I had to run off while typing the post, so I wanted to add something real quick: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/about/ this site is really a good one for anyone interested in the scientific claims and papers without there being any political discussion. I'm sure you'll find that most of the points raised are answered there with citations of actual papers (as opposed to news articles and interviews) Also had time to google McKibben, I couldn't find an interview where he said the oceans turn acidic (only "more acidic", which is what I said as well and what the claim is). But I think that might just illustrate my reasoning for having someone on who knows more than the general layperson, cause it's these kinds of misinterpretations about details that then can lead people to assume lies where it's really just a misunderstanding.

Matthew, so I finally found some time. Sorry it took me so long. I was also trying to give a more thorough response to shirgall (with links and all), but I think I'll pass on that for the moment, else I'm never able to get an reply in time it seems. So, why have a climate scientists (and maybe a corrupt one even) on the show? The main reason for that would be so that Stef and the viewers actually get the claims as they are made for once. There seems to be a lot of misunderstanding or sometimes misrepresentation (though not by Stef) of what the AGW claims actually are. (No doubt, because the media sure isn't doing a good job in being very neutral and objective on the topic either). Like, the "warming trend", whereas trend is defined as at least a 30 year period in the climate sciences, so when they say there hasn't been a change in trend, and call it a "pause" then that's true if we use that definition, but as a layman one would quickly point out that there has been basically no warming in the last 17 years and usually say the claim that there's still a warming trend is wrong. But that just results from a misunderstanding of what the claim actually is because it's not obvious that this is how it's defined (and why would it be?) Or the claim of Dr. Patrick Moore in the video shirgall linked about oceans "becoming acid". It only took me one google search to a site explaining the claims and they are very clear that this is NOT what is happening (or even could happen), but merely that the oceans becoming more acidic (lowering of the pH value). Also they explain why salt doesn't help in that particular case (which is the argument Dr. Moore uses). My general point is: Just like any other advanced science, there's lots of details that can lead to special cases for very specific situations, so it's easy for people who are experts in other fields to not know about those details and then as a result misrepresent the claim or not know about the details of why the claim is made (or what about) in the first place. And I see that happening quite often in climate debates that very general arguments are used to rebut the AGW claims that totally miss the claims made. As for corruption, well, I think at this point it would also be fair to point out that there's just as much corruption on the skeptics side. I know it's become cliché the factually speaking there IS a lot of money being poured by oil and similar into think tanks, who then come up with arguments about why AGW isn't real or not that big of a deal. That of course doesn't mean that the claims are false, but the same is true for the statist science. At this point there's bad incentives on both sides, and I think if one points out the corruption in one he also has to point out the corruption on the other, else it's kinda biased. And just to be clear, I very much appreciate people like Dr. Moore and Alex Epstein coming on the show and pointing out the insanity of the narrative of the alarmists. I'm by no means supporting CO2 being called a pollutant (unless one want to stretch the term in almost unimaginable ways) or the demonizing of anything that creates visible smoke when burned or the state interfering by forcing people to produce less CO2 (which even aside from all moral considerations is imo just a pipe dream if one really thins that would work globally) Hope that helps. I'm sure I didn't address all points you made, so if I missed something important, let me know and I'm happy to get to that as well. Also thanks for keeping the thread alive and interesting. I genuinly almost gave up bothering after Accu's and Torero's responses. Like, I've been doing 15 minutes of research just for the first 5 minutes of the interview with Dr. Moore trying to understand the claims, getting a better understanding and then all it seemingly takes is some large all encompassing claims of corruption, lies and comparing it to religion the shout those down, that really discouraged me from posting at first, so thanks for staying curious and on topic