PowerSwitch

emordnilap wrote:Try this for size:

http://evanrobinson.typepad.com/ramblin ... ce_nature/

Like it.

The point I was trying to make is that with a system as complex as nuclear power is that the number of potential failure modes is so large as to be impossible to design out entirely. And this is not even taking into account the loss of ability to manufacture spares that will go with decline. Nuclea...

He always looks to me like a man trying to play the part of a leader.

As far as I'm concerned Randi and his prize are totally non-scientific and the man himself is a dishonorable liar; he's been caught a million times. I would never go near JREF forums as such conversations don't interest me. I've had them in the past in order to hear what people thought the issues we...

Please no Randi conversations! I was talking about intuition not ESP. Intuition -- something no scientist could be without IMO. I could talk about ESP but this isn't the place! @Andysir Prokopton appears not to have read the debate about mathematics, but jumped in with his own opinion anyway. Can't ...

But I don't have any interest in discussing it with behaviourists. Very wise! BTW on this: If huge corporations peddled alternative medicine, they would obtain the evidence to support it, you can count on it. I'm afraid I'd have to agree, and from insider stuff too. Companies can get the 'proofs' t...

What abstracts are there? Bizarre question... there is pure mathematics and number theory, then there is applied. The very concept of something to apply means that it need not be applied, and although mathematics may take inspiration from real-world problems sometimes (not always) its arabesques ca...

I'll be honest, during my life the fourth third I choose to inhabit has, deliberately or otherwise, overlapped all three of Ludwig's thirds at one stage or other. Well you have that in common with Mandela then. More to the point, where are those who choose to use their strength to defend the weak o...

Giving his propensity for blowing up packed churches, I'd go with bully.... Meh, fair enough, the ANC committed some atrocious stuff, but a cheap shot IMO. One could just as well say victim from his prison stretch which prob. included torture, or bystander considering his current role in African po...

Either way, it's important to me never to let the other person feel they've won. Winning can be very important in certain situations... so can the ability to run away, and martial arts teaches that too. However the above position still puts a lot of power in the hands of someone else. That's why I ...

I actually think that is probably true too. The problem is that to arrive at that state involves the total sacrifice of agency as an individual, and that goes against all vital human drives. Only one thing can lead you there, and that is despair - the final realisation that you cannot save yourself...

Not just post-Christian societies. All societies have ethical codes, even the most primitive. "Virtue is social": how could it be otherwise? You may be missing my point there. Spengler points out that whereas Nietzsche, to break down the morality of his society, had to scream and hurl and...

No it's not, it's a practical matter. Yes, but ethics can be a practical matter. The word simply denotes the question of 'how we should live', generally or specifically. For example, the way in which we farm unrestrainedly for profit can be shown to be ethically untenable, even if we take into acco...

I'm pointing out that's Kant's ethical maxim is based entirely on a philosophical argument and requires no religion. You don't have to be religious to have this as the foundation of what you think is the right way to behave. Exactly, or loads of other ethical approaches. You simply have to be convi...

Just want to say, if people simply don't want to talk at all about ethics that's fine with me! Ethics are a red herring. Unless you're religious, how can there be ethics? Love and compassion are real emotions, but that's all they are: emotions, that have have helped to hold human beings together and...