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Saturday, Nov 7, 2009
Mike Sulzer
Published Letters: 1802 Editor's Choice: 4
"...fallen by the wayside as clever experimenters have indeed devised ways of measuring the state of a particle without bouncing some other particle off of it, only to find that the fundamental uncertainty remains. Today, there no longer seems to be any way of evading the conclusion that a particle really does not simultaneously have a well-defined position and momentum." --trrll
Exactly right. One concludes from this that it is the concept of "things in space-time" that is too limited: a result of the development of the unconscious mental appartus to model the world approximately, well enough for what we would call normal sizes, velocites, etc. With this realization, the multiuniverse theory appears as a very conceited way of applying a very limited viewpoint to the the whole universe.
In a similar way the statement "the laws are too finely tuned" appears also to come from a lack of understanding. The big and the small are not united in our current understanding, and so we have too many laws and so see apparent, but not necessarily actual, fine tuning.
Part of the job of modeling is determining the validity of the model. And part of that is figuring out what can be predicted from a given cell size. The process is not totally blind as you are implying.
And they work fine. If anybody ever manages to hack into them, you do not hear about it. It is very likely that the losses from these machines are very small, because the banks insist on it, as they should. So why the problems with voting machines? Think about it.
I don't think so. As a word processor pages is a better user experience than word, but not so powerful. I think it is intended for a different market. On the other hand, keynote is on the whole superior to powerpoint as a presentation tool, at least in the view of a scientist.
He is a non-scientist who has distorted scientific results in his earlier writings. (You can find all the references to scientist's response easily enough.) He is now trying to act "reasonable". Pay no attention.
"Remember, the exact same assessment should be leveled against Al Gore. He ain't no genius either. In fact wasn't his college GPA lower than Bush? That can't be good."
The difference is that Al Gore, as a non-scientist, is using the results of research to argue for certain global policy changes. Lomborg, as a non-scientist, has distorted the results of research to argue for inaction.
But the earth is getting warmer. And it is almost certain that it is because of what we burn.
"Why should we still listen to James Hansen after he was caught fudging his data for the hottest years on record? How come none of the thousands of top climate scientists bothered to check Hansen's numbers the errors were discovered by some so called crackpot denier in his basement? So much for peer reviewed science."
James Hansen did not fudge his data. There were some errors; maybe the guy who found them was in his basement, but he is not really a denier. The errors are small, small enough so that the change in the results is not statistically significant. That is, the statement "year x was the hottest on record, but now year y is the hottest", does not mean much because year x and year y are so close in temperature that we do not really know which was hottest because of errors inherent in the measurements themselves. So anyone claiming "wow, this is the hottest year on record" was not really making a meaningful statement to begin with.
"Its great that you use Hansen's own words that it is statistically insignificant except it pretty much obliterates the whole hockey stick conclusion for the 20th century."
I am not sure your statement has any meaning at all, but that small correction in temperatures does not obliterate anything. Also, a trend over a number of years does have significance where one year does not. Or am I missing your point?
We have here a fairly simple case of reading comprehension and logical analysis. Would you please explain step by step how you arrived at your conclusion as to what Glenn predicted.
But consistent belief in nonsense leads to - the Iraq war.
"But why stop at complaining - lay out a strategy that would be better, and defend it.
--Anonymous"
You don't think get out now is a strategy? If the country could not be put back together in four years, it is not going back together. It should be clear by now that the only people in Iraq who want the United States occupation are those who benefit from the current situation in one way or another. It is a disaster for Iraq. The longer we stay, the worse the disaster.
The press needs to report what was said, and put it in context (what was said before that is relevant). Assigning credibility is opinion. It is up to the reader to form an opinion; the press should do this only in labeled opinion pieces. We have too much opinion mixed with fact; let's not make it any worse.
For more about the oil see Paul Krugman today in the NYT.
Come on folks, I see two mentions of Krugman's NYT piece, but missing the point: Hunt/oil/FIAB. Glenn, I hope you can expand on this later.
I think abbbb1 had a point, but I would put it differently. The Kagan's are the spin-monsters. They do not have any real power or make the real money from that power. Those that do get relief when the attention is on the spin-monster. Those with a following need to follow the real money.
cause the support to drop, or prevent it from dropping even more by holding onto most of the base? I suspect the latter.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The Maine fight was supposed to be the dress rehearsal for repealing California's Prop. 8 -- but gay marriage lost
Once one obtains Seriousness credentials in the Washington media, they are irrevocable no matter one's conduct.
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