No. Absolutely not. I consider it (nuclear weapons) an ideologically driven misapplication of technology. — karl stone
Think nothing of it - you wouldn't have stopped Jake banging his drum of doom if you'd ignored it. I tried that. — karl stone
To be fair, the doom part isn’t nonsensical. The alleged cause and hint of a solution (“some governing mechanism”) is. — praxis
Because if it is - let me assure you, Jake isn't nearly as pissed off at what I said to him — karl stone
What you're unwilling to admit is that you can't force a cultural reformation by restricting a valuable resource like knowledge. — praxis
Where are you going with this? — praxis
Perhaps Trump will try to politicize the threat of meteor impacts in an effort to fund his Space Force :nerd: and the issue will become championed by conservatives. — praxis
The truth is that there do exist threats, but the media and the public discourse focuses on some of them. And of course, some push an ideological agenda with it, some can have another agendas. One's own knowledge about the subject is the best way to separate the underlying facts from the various agendas.You wanted to discuss public perception of existential threats. My point is that it can be largely shaped by the media and influential figures who may use these perceived threats to pursue unrelated goals. Is a lot of this irrational? Yes, welcome to the human race. — praxis
↪praxis So you're saying that global warming didn't climb to the top. It was chosen for its emotional appeal on both sides. It feeds the liberal's need to... — frank
I guess I'm only saying that people tend to pursue shortsighted goals, despite how irrational that may be. Do we need to look any farther than ourselves for evidence of this? — praxis
Do we agree that nuclear weapons exist, and that so far, we've found no way to get rid of them? — Jake
Could we maybe agree that you actually have no credible plan for how we might arrive at a utopian fantasy world where we don't get sucked in to "ideologically driven misapplication of technology", and that nobody else has such a credible plan either? — Jake
Yes, of course, there are many wonderful theories about human transformation. We should all meditate, we should all become good Christians, we should join the Marxist revolution, we should accept science as truth, etc etc. We've been working on these projects for literally thousands of years, and guess what, we still aimed a bunch of huge bombs down our throats. — Jake
Your intentions are excellent, and you pursue them with determination and durability, which merits our respect. But as an engineer, you've fallen victim to sloppiness. You've failed to think holistically, and thus you've failed to account realistically for a very important component of the situation you are attempting to address. Us. Humans. — Jake
The group consensus you are speaking on behalf of wants to strap a rocket to a bicycle so the bike can go 300mph. The group consensus is very proud of the rocket and the speeds it can reach. And it's forgotten all about the 10 year old kid who will have to steer the bike. — Jake
Could we maybe agree that if we recognized the fact that science is a true description of reality, we'd have no good reason to build nuclear weapons? That indeed, the fundamental motive for building nuclear weapons is ideological disagreement? — karl stone
What is your plan to remove such ideological irrationality from the equation? Ok, we need to accept "science as truth". But how? Unless you have some kind of specific credible plan for human transformation to share with us, then your "science as truth" religion is really little different than "the world will be saved when we all become good Christians". — Jake
You keep saying that we need to align ourselves with reality, which is a valid concept in theory, but then you decline to align your theories with the reality of the human condition. — Jake
Reality: Nuclear weapons exist, and nobody's utopian dream prevented that from happening, nor seems capable of fixing the problem. Real world fact Karl. — Jake
If you are proposing that your utopian dream can accomplish what none other in history has succeeded in doing, ok, make that argument in some detail. — Jake
I have no plan. Do you imagine I need one? I rather think I don't. — karl stone
Reality: Nuclear weapons exist, and nobody's utopian dream prevented that from happening, nor seems capable of fixing the problem. — Jake
You're not obligated to have a plan for human transformation of course. But the "more is better" philosophy your technological suggestions are built upon depend upon such a transformation, for the simple reason that in our current state of maturity we can't handle more power. — Jake
If you, or anyone, had a credible plan for how a critical mass of the human population might come to accept "science as truth", that enhanced human maturity might make it safe for us to continue to acquire new powers, including your technological suggestions. Your "science as truth" idea has value in that is shows that you realize that human transformation is necessary, but so far it's just another utopian theory. — Jake
You're intent on aligning yourself with reality, which is good, and so I'm attempting to show you that at the current time the reality is that human beings show every sign of being significantly insane (nukes etc) and thus proposals which aim to give us even more power are irrational. If you, or anyone, had a credible plan for how to cure the insanity at the scale necessary, then that would obviously create a new situation where more things are possible. — Jake
My opinion is that science tries to uncover the truth, aims for an objective truth, yet what we do and what we want is a subjective question and objective facts simply cannot give us answers to the subjective decisions we have to make.Ok, we need to accept "science as truth". But how? — Jake
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