Gloucester High School & the Single Motherhood by Choice Movement
June 24th, 2008 by Glenn Sacks, MA for Fathers & Families
I discussed the Gloucester High School pregnancy scandals on the Al Rantel Show on KABC AM 790 in Los Angeles last night. Many are drawing links between Gloucester and the way single mother actresses/stars are glamorized and extolled. I believe this is true, but one of the points I made on the show is that I also believe that there's a link between the Gloucester issue and the Single Motherhood by Choice movement.
There have been three highly-publicized books over the past couple years which advocate single motherhood as a choice: Stanford Gender Scholar Peggy Drexler's Raising Boys Without Men, Wellesley College Women's Studies Professor Rosanna Hertz's Single by Chance, Mothers by Choice; and Louise Sloan's Knocking Yourself Up.
I certainly sympathize with those single mothers whose husbands or lovers abandoned or mistreated them, and who soldiered on in the raising of their children without the father those children should have had. However, the Single Motherhood by Choice movement goes well beyond this, openly advocating single motherhood as a lifestyle choice.
Drexler portrays father-absent homes--particularly "single mother by choice" and lesbian homes--as being the best environments for raising boys. Hertz interviewed 65 single mothers and concluded that "intimacy between husbands and wives [is] obsolete as the critical familial bond."
Whereas a family was once defined as two parents and their children, Hertz asserts that today the "core of family life is the mother and her children." Fathers aren't necessary--"only the availability of both sets of gametes [egg and sperm] is essential." In fact, Hertz explains, "What men offer today is obsolete."
Each of these three writers has received a very friendly reception from the mainstream media. Those of us who point out the damage caused to children by Single Motherhood by Choice are portrayed as meanies, grumps, and stuffed shirts who won't get with the program. Some of you may remember I debated Sloan on Fox's nationally-syndicated Morning Show with Mike and Juliet last fall--to watch, click here.
Al & I also discussed the way the damage caused by divorce goes from generation to generation. The man or woman whose parents divorced when the kids were 12 and 9 is going to hesitate to marry because he or she will expect that the same thing will happen to their family. When children of divorce do get married, they are in turn more likely to divorce.
One other aspect of divorce which I noted was that children will inevitably blame themselves for what has happened. There was a poignant scene in the movie The Pursuit of Happyness where Will Smith's son asks, "Did mommy leave because of me?" and Smith tells him, "No, mommy left because of mommy." To use an excessively harsh example, I always remember this from the Andrea Yates killings: as she was drowning one of the little boys, the boy kept fighting his way to the surface of the bathtub and saying, "I'm sorry, mommy, I'm sorry." But that's how a child understands his or her parents' anger and often their divorce--they blame themselves.
Al also made the point that he believes that boys are particularly harmed by fatherlessness. In one way I think he's correct, but I also wonder if the damage to girls isn't just as bad, but more subtle. Do readers have any thoughts on the question?
"));
19 queries. 1.193 seconds.
June 24th, 2008 at 4:51 pm
Single mother by choice of a son = committer of emotional incest
Single mother by choice of a daughter = robber of capability for healthy relationships with men later in life
June 24th, 2008 at 5:06 pm
Single mother households have a rate of abuse three times that of dual parent or even single father households. I think that's highly important to note.
You need some background knowledge for me to make a very crucial point (I made a faint reference in a recent thread. Here is some of the meat).
First, you need to recognize that men are social creatures, just like women. While women socialize in small groups with strong 1 to 1 relationships, men socialize in large groups with less intense relationships. This is how each gender works. It's been demonstrated by research again and again. And keep that in mind as you read the following:
Let’s turn now to culture. Culture is relatively new in evolution. It continues the line of evolution that made animals social. I understand culture as a kind of system that enables the human group to work together effectively, using information. Culture is a new, improved way of being social.
Feminism has taught us to see culture as men against women. Instead, I think the evidence indicates that culture emerged mainly with men and women working together, but working against other groups of men and women. Often the most intense and productive competitions were groups of men against other groups of men, though both groups depended on support from women.
Culture enables the group to be more than the sum of its parts (its members). Culture can be seen as a biological strategy. Twenty people who work together, in a cultural system, sharing information and dividing up tasks and so forth, will all live better — survive and reproduce better — than if those same twenty people lived in the same forest but did everything individually.
Culture thus provides some benefit from having a system. Let’s call this “system gain,” which means how much better the group does because of the system. Think of two soccer teams. Both sets of players know the rules and have the same individual skills. One group has only that, and they go out to play as individuals trying to do their best. The other works as a team, complementing each other, playing with a system. The system will likely enable them to do better than the group playing as separate individuals. That’s system gain.
And one vital fact is that the scope of system gain increases with the size of the system. This is essentially what’s happening in the world right now, globalization in the world economy. Bigger systems provide more benefits, so as we expand and merge more units into bigger systems, overall there is more gain.
There is one crucial implication from all this. Culture depends on system gain, and bigger systems provide more of this. Therefore, you’ll get more of the benefit of culture from large groups than from small ones. A one-on-one close relationship can do a little in terms of division of labor and sharing information, but a 20-person group can do much more.
As a result, culture mainly arose in the types of social relationships favored by men. Women favor close, intimate relationships. These are if anything more important for the survival of the species. That’s why human women evolved first. We need those close relationships to survive. The large networks of shallower relationships aren’t as vital for survival — but they are good for something else, namely the development of larger social systems and ultimately for culture.
And now realize that the goal of any parent is to raise their child to be a productive part of the culture that they live in.
Which gender is going to have a distinct advantage in that role, considering the basis of culture?
June 24th, 2008 at 5:09 pm
GS: I know that there are studies that show that children of fatherless households have a much higher probability of taking poor actions, drugs, unprotected sex, crime, suicide, etc; can you post the names of the studies?
I think being able to cite and source the statistics will do a lot to quiet the Single By Choice dipwads.
Later,
B
June 24th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
...The single-mother-by-choice movement is supposed to be about upscale, successful professional women going it alone, just having and raising a baby by themselves, without the "need" for a man around as partner. But now, high school girls are getting in on the game, too. Oops...
June 24th, 2008 at 5:12 pm
Demon, good article. I can't do justice to a response with one or two quick sentences, which is all I've got time for right now.
However, I want to throw something out: there is an inherent contradiction in the single-mother-by-choice types in raising boys. I want to ask them: "By your own reasoning, you are raising a child who will become a detriment to society as soon as he becomes an adult. How do you justify doing this?"
June 24th, 2008 at 5:21 pm
I no longer expect facts or reason to affect the belief-based paradigm of the single-by-choice crowd. These women are merely grasping at straws of advocacy research to justify their horribly selfish decisions.
June 24th, 2008 at 5:34 pm
I somehow differ in this topic. I have no problem with Women (or for that matter Men) if they want to me single Moms/Dads. It is up to them..
The problem I have is that most of the people do not accurately estimate the kind of effort required to raise a child - probably underestimate by 50-80%. Having a kid is a huge effort. For close to 15-20 yrs in the modern day world.
Being honest, I don't want to raise any kids even if it is my own. You might say it is being dead beat... But millions of women walk away from the responsibility by abortion every year. Until Men have the same option we are comparing apples to oranges.
I understand children who are not taken care of suffer a lot and are a problem to society, but that is another matter...
I did an estimate on how much it would cost to raise a child (time+money+...). It came up to 500K to 1M. I was shocked at that no. I am quite sure most people don't estimate it all the way through.
I will be honest. I don't want to raise kids. And I have no problem if Men/Women want to raise it on alone.
June 24th, 2008 at 5:40 pm
To Cousin Dave: I doubt that single mothers by choice feel any contradiction when raising boys, and with Peggy Drexler's feel-good book they probably feel that their sons will grow up "different" and "better" than average men.
You see, they will be more sensitive to women's needs, less constrained by societal norms of maleness, less corrupted by patriarchal discipline, blah blah blah. ("Wait 'till your other mother gets home" doesn't sound like much of a threat, does it?).
If those moms want any grandchildren, though, their sons had better make a lot of money or be very good looking, since their idealized projection of how a man _should_ behave would probably a disaster in the dating world. Very few women want a metrosexual husband.
And if those moms ever want to be able to _see_ their future grandchildren, they'd better become strong advocates of shared parenting and father involvement ASAP. Somehow I doubt that will happen anytime soon...
June 24th, 2008 at 6:00 pm
...I was just reading some stuff on the Gloucester case. Seems these girls want someone to give them "unconditional love." Dr. Phil talks about how it is wrong for babies to be born with a job - like providing unconditional love to Mommy. This case fits that description perfectly...Wait till these girls are getting up at at 3 am taking care of an infant that's just vomited all over the crib and won't stop screaming. Or maybe they expect their own Mommies to deal with all that...
.
June 24th, 2008 at 6:21 pm
Is the damage more subtle for girls? I believe among your own articles, Glenn, you show higher teen pregnancy rates for girls raised without fathers. That seems more obvious than the damage to boys.
June 24th, 2008 at 6:29 pm
I find that very very funny.
Women (in general) are the leaches on civilization, the ones much more likely to take from the advancements of civilization without contributing to them and much less likely to pay the price for them (responsibilities, deaths, failures)... not men. As for their impact on society, women do fill the vital role of reproduction, without which society would not be possible.
Prof Baumeister made a great speech "What's Good About Men?" on the inherent differences between men and women, how there are trade-offs in each gender to make the better at different things. As you examine it from the aspect of an advancing civilization, the examination raises the question: "Are women anything other than a 'necessary evil'?"
They are, of course. They can do a great service to society by staying home, being traditional wives, raising the best candidates for the next generation, and allowing men to do what they do best (succeed) while having the resources at home (wife) to raise children with high potentials to succeed. But as women lose that role, they become a drain on the overall society and civilization (unless they are childless, in which case they would be contributing nothing traditionally). Another service women provide is to wisely choose mates to be the next generation.
As women start to "take over" more in culture, as they exert greater influence on where the culture is headed, they will attempt to mold the culture into one that supports their own methods of thinking (equality rather than equity, support for all rather than support by all) which, ultimately, leads towards the downfall of civilization by weakening the very fundamental virtues which made civilization possible in the first place. This is why, throughout history, giving women power in civilization has lead to that civilization's downfall (read "Sex and Culture" by J D Unwin, 1934). We can witness the decline inherent in feminized cultures today.
Remember, Feminism is the belief that men and women are equal. It's a nice belief, but it's not supported by the facts. Each gender has been built, by thousands of generations of evolution, to be the best at it's traditional role. The more we ignore that, the more we attempt to force round pegs into square holes (either gender) the more unhappy we make ourselves by denying our nature and the more we weaken our culture relative to the others around ours. Men were built to attempt to achieve greatness and succeed or fail. Women were built to be average. Why average? Because then no matter what needs to be done, there will be a mass of men able to do it better than the women which leaves them not only safe (protecting reproductive potential) but also free to care for children (Human children have an exceptionally long period of helplessness).
It's a very politically incorrect view, but that doesn't make it wrong just because it's inconvenient.
June 24th, 2008 at 6:38 pm
"Al also made the point that he believes that boys are particularly harmed by fatherlessness. In one way I think he's correct, but I also wonder if the damage to girls isn't just as bad, but more subtle. Do readers have any thoughts on the question?"
You ask a very good question here. Hopefully I can provide some insight.
While to first order, people might assume that boys have more to learn from fathers and girls have more to learn from mothers, it really isn't quite that simple. Just because boys will grow up to be men and girls will grow up to be women doesn't eliminate the effect that the opposite gender parent has upon the type of man or woman they end up becomming.
Since your question revolves around the effect of fatherlessness upon girls, I will limit my discussion to that point for the remainder of this post.
As children grow up they make many observations and measurements about the sort of environment they are living within. These observations are often unconscious and serve to generate our responses later in life.
A good example of how this works is the navigational mechanism that some birds use where as a newly hatched chick, they peer up at the night sky and essentially memorize what the star patters are like... allowing them to ascertain true north in much the same way we use the north star. If you take this newly hatched bird and show them a false sky however (such as exposing them to a planetarium with a picture of the night sky from 10,000 years ago) they will never be able to properly navigate... they have essentially been imprinted with information that leads to an undesirable result... and it gets locked in during the formative stages of their development.
Now how does this apply to girls one might be wondering?
Well as girls grow up, they make observations about how likely they are to find a man who is going to stick by them and invest in their future together. The conclusions they draw are based primarily by how involved their own father is in their lives and how involved their father is in their mothers life.
A girls father is essentially her first and most important indicator of what will constitute a successful mating strategy later on in life... and the strategy that is subconsciously imprinted essentially gets "locked in" during the first ten years or so of her life (it is actually a bit more complicated than this as there are other observations that are made... but for now this is a sufficient description).
This is the reason why girls who are raised in fatherless homes tend to end up being overly promiscuous by the time they reach puberty. It is because the observations they have made have lead directly to the conclusion that men are not reliable... hence there is no reason to wait for a good one to come along, the odds are just too low in their estimation of finding a good guy because they never experienced a good and reliable guy during the formative stages of their development.
Essentially there are two extreme strategies a young woman can make when it comes to the mating game... one is to assume that no guy is going to bother sticking around and hence just have sex with whoever because ultimately it doesn't matter... and the other is to assume that mr. perfect exists out there somewhere for her, and no boy she meets ever manages to measure up.
Neither of these extreme strategies is particularly effective... and technically both are caused by fatherlessness.
The first is caused by the type of fatherlessness which causes society to convince her that her father is a "deadbeat" and is "no good"... and the second is caused by setting a deceased father upon an inordinately high pedestal. This sort of thing sometimes happens to daughters of police officers whose fathers are killed in the line of duty when they are very young... to them their father is a hero to which no subsuquent man can ever hope to measure up, no matter how good they are.
So there you have it... girls can very much be damaged by fatherlessness... however the effects aren't subtle at all, they are just delayed because they occur many years later.
That being said... it is possible to short circuit these sorts of things by having very reliable male influences in a young girls life such as an uncle, or grandfather. However this sort of thing rarely happens.
June 24th, 2008 at 6:48 pm
As usual everything is geared toward the "moms," nothing about the devastating effects on children and society!
June 24th, 2008 at 7:00 pm
Well Gosh Demonspawn...please give us your recommendations of how women can be less leechlike on the civilizations to which we have contributed so little.
I mean...who knew?
June 24th, 2008 at 7:02 pm
Cousin Dave: They justify it because future single mothers by choice will need a source from which to harvest sperm. It's no different than a farmer growing a vegetable.
June 24th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
If any of those girls in Gloucester did say they just wanted unconditional love, they are in for the biggest shock of their life! That might last a year, two if they are lucky.
I couldn't imagine what it would have been like trying to raise my daughter all by myself for all those years. It was hard enough as it was! I live in a military town, these young people from Gloucester need to talk to the war widows and widowers about what their lives are like now, and they did not have a choice.
June 24th, 2008 at 7:48 pm
JeanB Says:
June 24th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
If any of those girls in Gloucester did say they just wanted unconditional love, they are in for the biggest shock of their life! That might last a year, two if they are lucky.
I couldn't imagine what it would have been like trying to raise my daughter all by myself for all those years. It was hard enough as it was! I live in a military town, these young people from Gloucester need to talk to the war widows and widowers about what their lives are like now, and they did not have a choice.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Most of them will probably dump the kids on the grandmothers or leave them with whoever, so they can hit the bars and nightlife, as these are the kind of girls that are not going to conform to society.
June 24th, 2008 at 7:51 pm
Women who say that fathers make bad parents are female chauvinists. They are no different than the old-fashioned men in the 1800's who told women to stay out of the workforce.
Where it is okay to say "a woman can do anything a man can do" it is not acceptable to say that "a man can do anything a woman can do".
MXY
June 24th, 2008 at 7:57 pm
Ya think, Jean?
Along with "soul mate," I think the term "unconditional love" should be consigned to the pits of vocabulary hell, along with the concept. Good Lord...three sons later, I can testify to the power of parental expectations, and yes, parental anger, in raising kids to happy, well adjusted, productive adulthood. Do we stop loving our kids in the event of the unacceptable? Of course not. But we do make conditions upon our support and relationships with our kids. "Unconditional love" implies "unconditional acceptance" and no kid who has ever amounted to anything was raised with "unconditional acceptance."
June 24th, 2008 at 7:58 pm
"Al also made the point that he believes that boys are particularly harmed by fatherlessness. In one way I think he's correct, but I also wonder if the damage to girls isn't just as bad, but more subtle. Do readers have any thoughts on the question?"
I believe that boys and girls need a father and a mother equally. I believe that childhood attachments with parents are directly related to how we form relationships in adulthood. People who grow up without an opposite sex parent may look for a father figure or a mother figure in their adult relationships......even unconsciously.
I grew up without a mother, and I have felt a void ever since.
MXY
June 24th, 2008 at 8:35 pm
Masculist XY Says:
June 24th, 2008 at 7:58 pm
So true, good post :) I teach dating and I see this in many males and female clients.
June 24th, 2008 at 8:58 pm
MXY...there really are very few parenting tasks that each parent cannot step up to...but in our case, we discovered that despite overlapping abilities, our boys sought Dad when they preferred Dad's hard line to my disappointment, and sought me when they needed recogonition of their emotional turmoils. We didn't plan it that way...we just played to our strengths.
The boy magnet of our household has brought us many youngsters in need...me as employer, basic skills teacher and emotional support...the BH as advanced skills teacher, patient and tolerant mentor, and the demander of personal discipline.
We didn't plan it that way...while I was helping these boys fill out job applications, read and then write book reports and learn their way around the kitchen, and deal with their own sorry home conditions, and get the basics of what employers require...the BH and sons were all over doing what guys do...from basic mechanics to longbows to welding to carpentry to habitat development and maintenance...
We didn't look for it...didn't plan it...It just happened...and the efforts essentially fell along gender lines.
June 24th, 2008 at 9:36 pm
Easy, quit pretending women are as capable of filling the male role in society. Fill the female role and do it well. That's how you BUILD society instead of tearing it down (from the female end).
Evolution or God, depending on your beliefs.
Were men and women better off equal rather than as separate genders with separate tasks, then the hermaphrodite genetic trait would of out-breed, and conquered the two-gendered genetic trait.
If you belief in ID, then we would of been made as hermaphrodites.
P.S. do you want to challenge any of the contentions, or do you just want to snark?
P.P.S. You should read the following about midwives, since you used it in an example earlier:
Thus, the reason for the emergence of gender inequality may have little to do with men pushing women down in some dubious patriarchal conspiracy. Rather, it came from the fact that wealth, knowledge, and power were created in the men’s sphere. This is what pushed the men’s sphere ahead. Not oppression.
Giving birth is a revealing example. What could be more feminine than giving birth? Throughout most of history and prehistory, giving birth was at the center of the women’s sphere, and men were totally excluded. Men were rarely or never present at childbirth, nor was the knowledge about birthing even shared with them. But not very long ago, men were finally allowed to get involved, and the men were able to figure out ways to make childbirth safer for both mother and baby. Think of it: the most quintessentially female activity, and yet the men were able to improve on it in ways the women had not discovered for thousands and thousands of years.
Let’s not overstate. The women had after all managed childbirth pretty well for all those centuries. The species had survived, which is the bottom line. The women had managed to get the essential job done. What the men added was, from the perspective of the group or species at least, optional, a bonus: some mothers and babies survived who would otherwise have died. Still, the improvements show some value coming from the male way of being social. Large networks can collect and accumulate information better than small ones, and so in a relatively short time the men were able to discover improvements that the women hadn’t been able to find. Again, it’s not that the men were smarter or more capable. It’s just that the women shared their knowledge individually, from mother to daughter, or from one midwife to another, and in the long run this could not accumulate and progress as effectively as in the larger groups of shallower relationships favored by men.
Read that and try to pretend that men and women were equally influential in building civilization. It's just not a reasonable belief.
June 24th, 2008 at 9:41 pm
"What men offer today is obsolete."
MCA, says men are obsolete, when women are having boys to feed into the hamburger machine.
June 24th, 2008 at 9:50 pm
Fatherless statistics
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdPduF5cqIE
June 24th, 2008 at 10:01 pm
Demonspawn,
A great deal of what you are saying has no scientific basis whatsoever. Other parts are on more solid ground... the problem however is that based upon how you present it there is no way for a casual reader to tell the difference between what is supported by science and what is just your own personal conjecture.
For example:
"Were men and women better off equal rather than as separate genders with separate tasks, then the hermaphrodite genetic trait would of out-breed, and conquered the two-gendered genetic trait.
If you belief in ID, then we would of been made as hermaphrodites."
What you say here is utter rubbish.
Why is it rubbish?... because you are essentially declaring that gender based species are somehow universally superior to non-gender based species.
That somehow natural selection would manage to select against any such scenario in preference for the existance of men and women.
What is the problem with this scenario?... Why didn't it happen that way with worms or trees?
Worms and trees are hermaphroditic and somehow segregation of the genders didn't result in there being male worms/trees and female worms/trees.
Based upon your argument all species should have male and female components, but that isn't what we see.
The point is that asexual breeding, hermaphroditic breeding, and segregated sexuality are all adaptive under a different set of environmental conditions. Furthermore, to transit from one breeding mechanism to another isn't something that can just occur because it is beneficial.
Evolution functions by more than natural selection by the way... there are also evolutionary forces known as gene flow and genetic drift... both of which you have not accounted for, and both of which can easily dispute what you have declared in the quote above.
Furthermore, evolution requires the existance of phenotypes upon which natural selection can select... human beings do not have functional hermaphrodites upon which natural selection can select for. Those people who are born with two sets of secondary sexual characteristics only have one set that is fully functional, and generally those individuals have coupled genetic/developmental issues associated with the mutation that segregate them from the breeding population.
Argueing that evolution somehow guarantees that we get the best result just isn't correct.
For all we know human kind would actually be better off as hermaphroditic beings... but we're not going to find out simply because the evolutionary barrier to such a trait emerging is tremendous.
It would be great if we had two seperate hearts as well, or the ability to regenerate limbs like amphibians can... but I don't see that happening for the exact same reasons.
I think it is great that you want to apply scientific rationals to your arguments... I just wish you'd be a little more careful about how far you end up reaching.
June 24th, 2008 at 10:10 pm
"I also wonder if the damage to girls isn't just as bad, but more subtle"
Studies have shown that fatherlessness increases the chance of teen pregnancy. Also a girl requires a father for healthy psychosexual developement (don't tell the MSM I said that - they will same I'm "pro-child abuse"!)
June 24th, 2008 at 10:17 pm
Easy, quit pretending women are as capable of filling the male role in society. Fill the female role and do it well.
Snerk
I'll get right on it. So in your opinion, I should close down the shops, put the young 'uns out of employment, and cease to contribute financially to the household? Lemme just check with the BH, and get back with you, Demonspawn.
June 24th, 2008 at 10:17 pm
Here's a quicky reference...
The Fatherless Household
June 24th, 2008 at 10:20 pm
Okay, my Lord and Master has decreed that your plan blows, Demonspawn.
June 24th, 2008 at 10:25 pm
Demonspawn, you bring up some good points, but I think you are wrong in one aspect.
Feminism is NOT about "the belief that men and women are equal". Instead, feminism is the belief that women are "more equal" than men. What you referred to is "Egalitarianism", which is the belief that men and women are equally human, and I'd go further to say that all humans deserve equal rights and equal responsibilities.
Just wanted to clear that point. Otherwise, good post and I'm reading the link you provided for Denis Dutton's speech.
Thomas Lessman
Web: www.ThomasLessman.com
Blog: www.talessman.blogspot.com
==================
June 24th, 2008 at 10:26 pm
I disagree with Demonspawn to the extent he seems to be saying that men and women should necessarily fill predetermined roles; but most of what he is saying about the genetic makeup of men vs. women is correct. There is recent undeniable evidence from biology, evolutionary psychology, and scientific research in other fields showing this to be true.
That is why feminist ideologues tell us that gender is "socially constructed"..it allows them to completely disregard this abundance of scientific evidence.
P.S: Demonspawn, one reason that some women are suitable for "male" roles such as lifelong career is that they have what Steve Moxon and others call "male pattern brains". But that is the exception. (I think one example Moxon gives is Janet Reno)
June 24th, 2008 at 10:29 pm
Annie,
who is your Lord and Master?
June 24th, 2008 at 10:32 pm
While it may seem bizarre, but blame for these girls actions can be placed squarely at the feet of the corrupt "protection racket" which U.S. family courts have become.
And blame for the evolution of that racket into its current disgusting form can be placed at the feet of family court lawyers who are CLEARLY the ones scrambling to block reform, after having pushed this disgusting devolution for now decades.
Family court lawyers will not make much if any money on the support orders accessible to these girls. But it is necessary to the protection of family court lawyers gravy train that ALL women be showered with cash by the "male who got her pregnant". The existence of this pro-female, anti-family system enables these corrupt lawyers to loot the bigger targets which they are more interested in of course, but they can't have one without the other, so these young girls and the "fathers" got their lives wrecked so American lawyers could continue to enjoy feeding at this pig trough called American family court.
And interestingly, as I have noted elsewhere in this blog, while America is busy feeding its families to fat pig lawyers (not to mention feeding its businesses and lots of citizens' income via "insurance"), other countries are actually focusing on building their economies.
And here is the evidence from the WSJ today:
"The population of millionaires grew five times as fast in emerging markets as it did in the U.S. last year. The number of millionaires in Brazil, Russia, India and China jumped 19% in 2007, compared with growth of 3.7% in the U.S."
Here, a not insignificant our millionaires -- like 50%+ -- will ultimately be devoured by rapacious "family" court lawyers, and many ruined in the process. Others will never make it due to those same processes. Others still won't even try because they know they have no property rights in America if they marry -- or even date a sperm-trapping female.
America is spiralling slowly down into the toilet which has become its own wretched "family" courts. A country is comprised of families, and America is allowing a greedy horde of pig lawyers to kill the country through killing its families for profit.
Disgusting and lamentable.
The evidence keeps piling up that it is time for productive, capable men to leave America.
June 24th, 2008 at 10:32 pm
Why, the BH of course.
June 24th, 2008 at 10:33 pm
Norman,
"male pattern brains" aren't really all that rare amongst women though... they account for a significant minority of women.
Similarly there are "female patterened brains" amongst men.
These things occur based upon how much testosterone and other hormones we are exposed to during development in the fetus.
This is why I hasten to make sweeping generalizations about any of this when in truth it is much more complex than the simple black and white notions being presented here would suggest.
June 24th, 2008 at 10:34 pm
The main reason having vast numbers of females in positions of great power is detrimental to society, is best stated by Esther Vilar in "The Manipulated Man" as follows:
"We should never put men's welfare in the hands of women. Most women will flush men's welfare right down the toilet."
June 24th, 2008 at 10:34 pm
Sheesh...so much for humorless feminists.
June 24th, 2008 at 10:34 pm
Minor correction
I meant to say "as a fetus".
June 24th, 2008 at 10:34 pm
Annie,
Who is the "BH"?
June 24th, 2008 at 10:36 pm
"Sheesh...so much for humorless feminists"
What do you mean? You seem to be speaking in riddles tonight. Please be less obfuscatory.
June 24th, 2008 at 10:36 pm
Most women will flush men's welfare right down the toilet."
Which is why we could care less about the health and well being of the men in our lives. No really.
June 24th, 2008 at 10:37 pm
The BH is the Better Half...husband of thirty years...but you knew that, Norman.
June 24th, 2008 at 10:38 pm
Annie,
The issue is that generally men are conditioned to care for and protect ALL women. Women by contrast are conditioned to care for and protect only the men who are important to them.
Such a dichotomy leads to problems.
June 24th, 2008 at 10:38 pm
Jason, the "pattern" of one's brain is only partly if at all due to the influence of hormones. It is instead the way our brains have evolved over the millenia; these differences are present at birth.
June 24th, 2008 at 10:40 pm
Annie,
Actually I didn't know that. But I'm wondering, if he is your Lord and Master and is by implication oppressing you, then why would it be you who would "close up shop" and make all those other decisions you mention?
June 24th, 2008 at 10:41 pm
Only if I were as illogical to think that the best answer for humans would be the best answer for all species....
But if you'll notice, the more advanced a species is, the more likely it is to be two sexed. Chance or cause or correlation?
It gives us the BEST results for the environment. Were there a better set of results, those would be the one's existing. If the environment demanded a different genetic set, that would be the one best able to survive. In Africa, a genetic set that included resistance to malaria was the best answer (but had drawbacks) and THAT is why that set of genetics is much more prevalent in black people. Admittedly, today we are seeing what is the best SOCIAL set as that is becoming our breeding limiting factor.
Would it? Possibly not. Remember sickle cell anemia? Black people tend to have it. Why? Because the same genetic code also gives resistance to malaria. Very important to those living in Africa. Not so important to those in Europe. That's why there was the genetic separation in likely traits. What price would be payed (genetically) for humans to regenerate limbs?
I will admit that just because it is the best answer in the long term doesn't make it the best answer in the short term. But seeking short term answers is how we got to this state in the first place. Men in today's legal environment would be downright financially suicidal to desire and seek out a SAH wife.
I don't worry about it too much. The Muslims and Mexicans will out breed us and this "women's equality" thing will be a memory in 200 years.. likely only to raise it's head again in 800 or so.
Oh, and as for the snerk:
It's been estimated that an IQ of 120 or better is required for middle management. People with IQ's of 120 or above are 2:1 men. Any surprise that in business middle management is 66% men? And yet in government positions middle management... for reasons of diversity, is around 70% women.
Getting things done right takes people with certain abilities. Due to the genetic diversity of men, no matter what is desired (besides the ability to have babies), you are much more likely to find a sufficiently large group of men who are more capable of doing whatever needs done. That is designed into the species such that women are "safe" from work, which was often quite dangerous during our evolutionary history (in fact, it wasn't until jobs were made mostly safe that women even wanted them... that enough of a "leech" for you?)
June 24th, 2008 at 10:42 pm
I watched the TV program clip and thought Glenn did a commendable job in a challenging (being way outnumbered) situation.
At one point Glenn said "When I listen to these two (single mothers by choice), what I hear is "Me, Me. Me!" There's nothing much about what's good for the child."
I heard something else as well as the women explained their choices.
Both authors expressed naive, idealized hopes that Prince Charming was going to show up and be the perfect soulmate and daddy, but their problem was by the age of 38, the Prince had not arrived. (Or they turned out to be frogs with commitment phobias.)
Both women had experienced several "failed" relationships, but there was no discussion at all about why those relationships failed.
Both women were in 24 x 7 full panic mode over their ticking biological clocks, their declining fertility, and the idea that "it's now or never" to have a baby.
One woman approached her two best male friends and asked if they would provide their sperm. Both declined, saying they didn't want to be "distant" fathers. (Sounds to me like a face-saving way to say no without insulting the woman.)
So, when both woman decided to go the on-line sperm route, they talked about it like it was a shopping trip - for Prince Charming in a vial! And the qualities they sought in a donor were exactly what women seek in a live potential partner - handsome, well educated, professional, sense of humor, tall, nurturing, etc.
Another theme shared by the two single by choice mommies was that they "were not going to settle" for less than their perfect man.
And they didn't. He exists as a virtual daddy, an imagined Prince Charming, everything the women chould not achieve in actual relationships.
I really don't get the portrayal of these women as feminists in any meaningful sense. They seem utterly traditional, naive, and unliberated from their own romantic girlish myths.
June 24th, 2008 at 10:43 pm
Annie,
I'm sure women care about their spouses. That is because a spouse is important for the woman to maintain a relationship, and an atmosphere for raising children. That has little to do with what Vilar means by "Men's welfare".
June 24th, 2008 at 10:45 pm
But not very long ago, men were finally allowed to get involved, and the men were able to figure out ways to make childbirth safer for both mother and baby.
Actually, the maternal mortality rates spiked horrifically after men got into the realm, and I can back this up , and every bit of legitimate research demonstrates this reality. You made the claim...back it up...I know that the dedicated doctor who begged his colleagues to wash their hands the way the midwife nuns did...was humiliated and discredited and dimissed, and the matenal mortality rates under male doctors skyrocketed.
June 24th, 2008 at 10:46 pm
Generalizations contain exceptions. I even mentioned a few above (such as women who do not want or cannot have children.. they best serve society by assuming a 'male' role).
However, the female exceptions that are as capable of filling the male role are just that, exceptions.. not the rule by any stretch of the imagination.
June 24th, 2008 at 10:47 pm
I'm going to back out of this discussion because I think Glenn is about to hit us for getting back on topic :--))
June 24th, 2008 at 10:49 pm
BigB June 24th, 2008 at 5:09 pm: "I think being able to cite and source the statistics will do a lot to quiet the Single By Choice dipwads."
_________________________________________________
(If my back-up file is good I'm saved and) I will post more- if not, this might help a bit. An extremely large body of evidence does exists.
_________________________________________________
“The emotional stability of children of divorced parents is directly related to the quality of their continuing relationships with both of their parents. We have repeatedly described the dissatisfaction of so many youngsters who felt they were not seeing their fathers often enough. If custody and visiting issues are to be within the realm of the 'best interest of the child’, then such widespread discontent must be taken very seriously,” said Dr. Kelly and Judith Wallerstein in In Surviving the Breakup.
Warren Farrell, Ph.D., author of Father and Child Reunion said, "Children need both their mom and their dad because children are both their mom and their dad. When they are missing either, they are missing that half of themselves. The children who need most the stability of both halves of themselves are the children of divorce, especially those children whose parents are the most in conflict."
"Mothers’ attitudes strongly determined the effectiveness of post-divorce father involvement, and quality of father contact was more important than quantity. Joint custody led to better child outcomes overall," wrote Kelly, J. B. in Children’s adjustment in conflicted marriage and divorce: A decade review of research. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 39, 963-973
"Children need both parents -- one is not more primary or important than the other," says Jerry Brodlie, Ph.D., a child psychologist specializing in custody issues. Original article in The Sydney Morning Herald
Published: December 3, 2004
24 million children (34 percent) live absent their biological father.
Nearly 20 million children (27 percent) live in single-parent homes.
1.35 million births (33 percent of all births) in 2000 occurred out of wedlock.
43 percent of first marriages dissolve within fifteen years; about 60 percent of divorcing couples have children; and approximately one million children each year experience the divorce of their parents.
Over 3.3 million children live with an unmarried parent and the parent's cohabiting partner. The number of cohabiting couples with children has nearly doubled since 1990, from 891,000 to 1.7 million today.
Fathers who live with their children are more likely to have a close, enduring relationship with their children than those who do not. The best predictor of father presence is marital status. Compared to children born within marriage, children born to cohabiting parents are three times as likely to experience father absence, and children born to unmarried, non-cohabiting parents are four times as likely to live in a father-absent home.
About 40 percent of children in father-absent homes have not seen their father at all during the past year; 26 percent of absent fathers live in a different state than their children; and 50 percent of children living absent their father have never set foot in their father's home.
Children who live absent their biological fathers are, on average, at least two to three times more likely to be poor, to use drugs, to experience educational, health, emotional and behavioral problems, to be victims of child abuse, and to engage in criminal behavior than their peers who live with their married, biological (or adoptive) parents.
From 1960 to 1995, the proportion of children living in single-parent homes tripled, from 9 percent to 27 percent, and the proportion of children living with married parents declined. However, from 1995 to 2000, the proportion of children living in single-parent homes slightly declined, while the proportion of children living with two married parents remained stable.
Children with involved, loving fathers are significantly more likely to do well in school, have healthy self-esteem, exhibit empathy and pro-social behavior, and avoid high-risk behaviors such as drug use, truancy, and criminal activity compared to children who have uninvolved fathers.
Source: www.fatherhood.org/fatherfacts/topten.htm
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
More Facts
Fact # 1
From 1960 to 1990, the percentage of children living apart from their biological fathers more than doubled from 17 percent to 36 percent. If this rate continues, by the turn of the century nearly 50 percent of American children will be going to sleep each night without being able to say good night to the dads. 1
Fact # 2
Children who grow up with only one of their biological parents (nearly always the mother) are disadvantaged across a broad array of outcomes… they are twice as likely to drop out of school, 2.5 times as likely to become teen mothers, and 1.4 times as likely to be idle – out of school and out of work – as children who grow up with both parents. 2
Fact # 3
Fifty-two percent of all adolescents aged twelve to sixteen who were living with separated, divorced, or remarried mothers had not seen their fathers at all in more than a year, and only 16 percent saw their fathers as often as once a week. 3
Fact # 4
For girls who’s fathers are not involved, many positive character and personality traits fail to be developed. Girls deprived of strong relationships with their fathers tend to grow up with the perception that men are irresponsible and untrustworthy. As adolescents they commonly become obsessed with heterosexual relationships. In a desperate search for substitute forms of male affection, some have inappropriate sexual contacts, become overly dependent on men, and allow men to take advantage of them. 4
1 David Popenoe. 1996. Life Without Father: Compelling new evidence that fatherhood and marriage are indispensable for the good of children and society. New York, NY: The Free Press, pp.2-3
2 Sara S. McLaanahan. 1994. “The Consequences of Single Motherhood.” The American Prospect, 18:48-58, esp. 49.
3 Frank Furstenberg, Jr. and Christine W. Nord. 1985. “Parenting Apart: Patterns of Childbearing After Marital Disruption.” Journal of Marriage and the Family 47(4):893-905.
4 David Popenoe. 1996. Life Without Father: Compelling new evidence that fatherhood and marriage are indispensable for the good of children and society. New York, NY: The Free Press, p.159
June 24th, 2008 at 10:51 pm
Back it up? Look at infant mortality rates 100 years ago and today.
And yes, omg men did actually make mistakes in their quest. You think men have to be perfect? That's an unreasonable expectation. The end result, in the historical blink of an eye, was that children survival and mother survival rates skyrocketed (after a short decline), vs the relatively steady rates which women maintained for thousands of years.
Your point is the cry of a girl "but the men made a mistake on the way to improve over us thousandfold!" Like that's a retort?
June 24th, 2008 at 10:56 pm
It's been estimated that an IQ of 120 or better is required for middle management.
Now, now, if I indulged in such declarations, I would be required to cite sources. Talk about male privilege.
People with IQ's of 120 or above are 2:1 men. Any surprise that in business middle management is 66% men? And yet in government positions middle management... for reasons of diversity, is around 70% women.
Well this is new. I guess being the stupidest kid (of five) in my family still gives me 18 IQ points on your average middle manager. Whatta relief.
June 24th, 2008 at 10:57 pm
So, getting back on topic..
I read in the today's paper one hour ago, that some lady named Kirk who is in some sort of official position, made a speech that there was "no evidence" for a pact. The article said Sullivan was "conspicuously absent from the meeting" at which she spoke; but then right after that it says "Kirk said she would be uncomfortable if Sullivan were present". Translation: Kirk (and probably others with an anti-"anti-female" agenda) didn't want Sullivan to have a chance to air his side of it.) The article also made a big deal about how Sullivan did not return phone calls.
Needless to say, the article was written by a woman.
My suspicion is that the notion of a pact is very credible in this case, but Sullivan was pressured and thus developed his faulty memory.
June 24th, 2008 at 10:59 pm
hmm. maybe that's not exactly on topic either..but hopefully Glenn will pick up on it and check the latest news.
June 24th, 2008 at 11:00 pm
omg men did actually make mistakes in their quest. You think men have to be perfect?
Well gosh, had men not actively /legally excluded women from the profession...just imagine how many lives would NOT have been lost. But I'm sure the women sacrificed to male arrogance were happy to give thier lives in the interests of preserving the masculine role in society.
June 24th, 2008 at 11:05 pm
And Norman...get yerself a sense of humor....
It is intrinsic to long term, basically happy marriages.
June 24th, 2008 at 11:07 pm
Actually, we just went thru all that here: http://glennsacks.com/blog/?p=2335
Interesting that you came to the same conclusion that I did. Kirk is pushing an agenda/covering that which she doesn't want spread.
Do you think that it is contentious that an above average person is required for an above average job? If you really want a source for that one I can dig wherever I read that.
What you need to realize is that your 138 IQ is MUCH more exceptional than a male with a 138 IQ (I don't have the bell curves handy, but it's around 2 standard deviations more if I remember correctly). IQ's of 120 are much more likely to be male, same with IQ's below 80 (men are more likely to be the best as well as the worst). When you get to 170, the ratio is 30:1 men (same for the underside of the scale).
It is due to genetics that men are at the top rungs of human competition (business, sports, etc). It's also due to genetics that men are at the bottom of society. But the difference is thus: before women's desires to be pandered and provided for entered politics and national identity, we usto dispose of said men. Now we carry them and that weight burdens the advancement of our society, slowing us down.
June 24th, 2008 at 11:10 pm
The advancement of society requires sacrifice. Your aversion to sacrifice (a female trait) slows down the advancement of society. Training children to think of people as potentially disposable (something a father would do) is much more advantageous to their placement in an advancing in a culture than the female training to protect all.
Is that back on topic enough?
June 24th, 2008 at 11:12 pm
Annie-
And I'm sure you'll retort that as a society we can slow down enough to save the masses.
But other societies won't. And then those societies will overtake and conquer us (or out breed us, as they are currently doing). It is a great example why, throughout history, females in power in a society lead to it's eventual downfall.
June 24th, 2008 at 11:13 pm
annie: "Well gosh, had men not actively /legally excluded women from the profession...just imagine how many lives would NOT have been lost."
Now that's a hypothetical if I've ever heard it. One could just as easily say that including women would have lead to fewer breakthroughs because women are less likely to be risk takers and therefore they would probably have been less likely to try approaches that "modern" medicine finally did try that lead to far lower infant/maternal mortality rates. Who cares? It is all old news. The only way to find common ground is to move beyond history and focus on the future. Besides, how does this relate to the discussion of Gloucester?
Norman, I too question the sincerity of the newest news on the subject. It seems like there is a lot of backpedaling and job saving!
June 24th, 2008 at 11:13 pm
Demonspawn Says:
"But if you'll notice, the more advanced a species is, the more likely it is to be two sexed. Chance or cause or correlation?"
What exactly leads you to believe that mammals are "more advanced" than every plant on the planet?
The difference actually has a great deal more to do with relative mobility than one being more "advanced" than the other.
If human beings were rooted to the ground, being sexed would be a huge detriment as the only way we could reproduce would be if we were lucky enough to have a member of the opposite sex directly adjacent to us.
Furthermore, suggesting that one species is more "advanced" or more "evolved" than another is a classic misconception about evolution.
Some organisms are more "complex" than others... but complexity and being advanced are not the same concept.
"It gives us the BEST results for the environment. Were there a better set of results, those would be the one's existing."
This is entirely incorrect.
The process of evolution in no way guarantees that the results will be what is best suited for the environment. In many instances species have actually developed traits that are detrimental so far as the environment is concerned (i.e. peacock feathers)
As I said before, you are only considering the process of natural selection (the evolutionary process most people are introduced to early on)... but have completely ignored the processes of sexual selection (appropriate to sexed species only... and what resulted in the bright plumage of peacocks), gene flow, and genetic drift.
Gene flow and genetic drift are more sophisticated evolutionary mechanisms that are usually only introduced in a concrete fashion on the college level... and generally only in 300+ level courses... both of these things account for suboptimal allel frequency. I urge you to look them up if you don't believe me.
You are functioning under very faulty assumptions as to how the process of evolution proceeds... however they are also very popular misconceptions.
"What price would be payed (genetically) for humans to regenerate limbs?"
What price do amphibians pay?... they pay no cost until a limb is lost... and then it is worth the metabolic cost to regrow it.
The better explaination for why we don't regenerate limbs is that to do so requires the emergence of complex genetic changes that don't just appear out of nowhere (i.e. the barrier is large).
I honestly would urge you to be more careful about the arguments you are making and trying to back with science when the truth is that you aren't really painting an accurate picture.
It is no different than when feminists grab a hold of one data point of research and suddenly make a host of sweeping claims that they content is backed by science... when they do it they are wrong... you are also wrong when you do it.
In any case, I do agree with Norman that we've strayed from the topic, so this is the last I will say on the subject of evolution here.
June 24th, 2008 at 11:15 pm
uhm...not in this life or the next will I accept the premise of a low IQ as reason to deny a place in our society to anyone. Our obligations as a civilized society demand recognition of the needs of mentally challenged people, and compassion and active care.
Don't go here with me, Demonspawn. This is not acceptable.
June 24th, 2008 at 11:22 pm
WOULD have?
How about DID.
That is exactly the point I AM making, the one that history provides.
Size and complexity of DNA code. Atho mobility is a good point, and provides that a species will evolve into a hermaphrodite or two gendered structure based on environment.
You totally ignore sickle cell anemia. That was the cost of resistance to malaria for blacks in Africa.
The genetic barrier (code shift) to reach a result is also another problem, and yes I'm ignoring it for now to keep this at a level that most can discuss.
June 24th, 2008 at 11:23 pm
The advancement of society requires sacrifice. Your aversion to sacrifice (a female trait) slows down the advancement of society.
And so apparently, does excluding women from medical science...specifically as pertains to historical maternal mortality.
June 24th, 2008 at 11:27 pm
Then don't complain when your society, burdened by caring for the unfit, is conquered by a society who advanced faster as they chose not to do so.
There is no Right, no Wrong, no Good, and no Evil. Only choices and consequences. You have now been enlightened to the consequences of said choice.. it will ultimately lead to this society's destruction.
June 24th, 2008 at 11:28 pm
demonspawn: "It is a great example why, throughout history, females in power in a society lead to it's eventual downfall."
So does that mean, in your opinion, that all women should be excluded from leadership positions or just people (regardless of gender) who can't measure up?
Where I have an issue is with giving a woman a free pass (or lower standards) just because she is a woman as I think that any woman worth her salt should rail against special treatment no matter what the gender feminists say about them being so-called victims. However I do not believe that all women should be excluded from management simply because their genitalia looks a bit different. I've known some great female leaders in my time...I've also known some questionable female (and male) leaders. And in terms of employees (ie: potential leaders), I know for damnsure that I don't care one way or the other about their gender...what I do care about is trainability and that the employee is an asset and not a sue-happy liability.
I also refuse to treat anyone differently or give anyone a free pass...so I'm not sure that I would be very welcome among the gender feminists!
This seems to be turning into a mine-is-bigger-then-yours debate. Feminine and masculine are different sides of the same coin. Individual women can be quite masculine and individual men can be quite feminine.
June 24th, 2008 at 11:30 pm
Annie Says:
"uhm...not in this life or the next will I accept the premise of a low IQ as reason to deny a place in our society to anyone. Our obligations as a civilized society demand recognition of the needs of mentally challenged people, and compassion and active care. "
You are absolutely correct.
When people have enough to care for and feed themselves and their family, they have an obligation to help lift up those who are still in need.
The fact that historically we didn't do that to the same extent we do now is more an indication of the fact that in the past people struggled just to take care of their own families... now most people have a surplus.
As soon as we enter into a time when we no longer have a surplus, then those at the bottom will be stuck fending for themselves again.
Kindness and compassion are truly great things... but they are also a luxury of those who are well fed and in no danger of living out on the street.
June 24th, 2008 at 11:33 pm
Lance says:
" Individual women can be quite masculine and individual men can be quite feminine."
Bingo!!!
People have to be taken as individuals... making generalizations and trying to pigeon hole people based upon their gender is a bad move.
June 24th, 2008 at 11:39 pm
jason: "People have to be taken as individuals... making generalizations and trying to pigeon hole people based upon their gender is a bad move."
Agreed. That's why I have a problem with feminism and its propensity to dump on men (or more importantly masculine). There is nothing wrong with being quite masculine or quite feminine or both. Feminists however seem hellbent on typing all masculine-men as wife beaters and all feminine-women as gold standards to which we should all aspire.
I just got into this with a writer (who has since disappeared from the debate) on the following link where she seems to think that the Gloucestor issue is one borne from masculine failings instead of feminine failings.
http://www.miller-mccune.com/article/457
June 24th, 2008 at 11:41 pm
Annie Hunter,
You need to fill that mind of yours with some more accurate facts about the impact of modern (yes male dominated) medicine on mother and infant mortality. In fact, the greatest positive impact on human life expectancy achieved to date by the cumulative impacts of modern medicine has been through its dramatic reductions in infant and maternal mortality.
Having a good brain (120+18=138) does not mean you can fill it with junk and it's going to churn out gold. Fill it with facts and you will find yourself agreeing with the guy you were disagreeing with, go figure.
Regarding the relative rarity of 138 IQs among women, the fact is that is a fact too. And at the very highest levels of IQ, men outnumber women at a 30 to 1 ratio. Men are not doing this to women, nature has done it to women -- and to men. Don't you think life would be better for men if there was lots more upper-extrema intelligence among women? I can assure you, it is a loss to the human race -- male and female -- that there are not more women in the uppermost percentiles.
(By the way Annie, there is more than a small amount of evidence that FEMALE mate selection behaviour towards males is what may have caused the rapid jumps ahead in male intelligence -- and perhaps human intelligence in general -- as males competed over millions of years for female mate acceptance. Basically, the bright, funny, witty, quick, and successful males got the girl/s. So in fact, when it comes to there being so many more males at high and super-high-IQ levels, there is some evidence that blame might be rightly placed at the feet of WOMEN. Similarly the evolution of the male peacock's enormous plumage is attributed to peahen's evolving a mate-selection criterion which considered large tail plumage among males to be an excellent fitness indicator. So now modern male peacocks have to drag that nonsense around behind them for their whole lives. How have male brains been a liability for men? Well, they are stuck working the vast majority of the most mentally demanding and grueling jobs. What fun!)
But nature has also (thanks to help by male doctors) given women a greater average life expectancy than men via the estrogen-heart-disease prevention pathway (female life expectancy was shorter on average when so many died in childbirth). Estrogen also appears to be responsible for giving females an extra 10 years of protection from the onset of schizophrenia -- males are afflicted in late teens/early 20s while females are afflicted in late 20s/early 30s.
Do you think men should demand that women die sooner because it is unfair that they live longer than men?
Wouldn't that be more "fair"?
Men don't think so. Men are happy they have helped women to live longer and more babies and mothers to survive birth.
But you are angry because you think some bunch of men got together to keep women down.
If you delve into labor and macroeconomics, you would likely come to agree that a real-life doubling of an economic workforce such as would be caused by an equal workforce called "women" making themselves available to an economy would actually make the pre-existing (male) workforce much better off. There are a number of ways that this happens, some of which are obvious, some less so.
June 24th, 2008 at 11:43 pm
Lance,
Some people just want to blame men for everything... even when men have nothing to do with it.
No man made these girls decide to get pregnant when they lack the ability to care for any children they might have.
The sad thing to me is that I strongly suspect that any children these girls have will get funding from external sources given how this has been promoted.
That sort of a result would send a terrible message.
June 24th, 2008 at 11:44 pm
The best answer would be the latter.
Hell, I think we had better laws and a better legal system when voting was restricted to property owners.
EXACTLY! And female voting track records point to institutionalizing and requiring that luxury by force of government. When it is no longer a luxury, and instead an entitlement, society declines.
But at what cost do we allow/push all women into the masculine role such that the minority of them which are capable can flourish? Women in the workforce has been a detriment for BOTH genders.
Would you rather have a system that gets 90% of value (societal advancement) out of 95% of people, or this current craziness which gets 50% of value out of 99% of people? Which is more advantageous in the long run?
Men and women are not equal, are not interchangeable, are not the same. Each is best suited (minus the genetic flukes) for specific roles.
June 24th, 2008 at 11:50 pm
AnonymousPamphleteer,
One thing I've always considered to be quite humerous and ironic is that in general men are the way they are because of mate selection by women. Then however women in general complain about how men ended up.
So far as I am concerned they can blame their great great great, etc... grandmothers and so on down through the ages.
Ultimately men are what women made them... if they want us to change they know what they can do... but they still select all the same traits that they tend to complain about afterward.
June 24th, 2008 at 11:51 pm
http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/72/1/2415
June 24th, 2008 at 11:54 pm
I disagree, and here's why:
With the potential to be smart, there is also the potential to be dumb. Were women just as likely to be smart as men, they would be chosen in equal numbers for those jobs... jobs which up until recent history were often life-threatening, and chosen for the nasty jobs reserved for those who aren't all that bright... even more life threatening. That means more women dying before fulfilling their reproductive potential, and overall less humans on the face of the planet... making it more likely that another species would supplant them at the top of the food chain.
That's why it's better for the human race that women are so average. That's why it's better for the human race that those most likely and most capable of taking risk were men.
Men are the genetic experiments, women are the selectors of successful experiments. That is how our species works best: men accomplishing, and women selecting the best accomplishers.
Oh, and to tie it back to "single motherhood by choice" those seeking sperm donations are not making a selection of the best accomplishers, and therefore are failing the human race. Likely the same for those seeking direct-donation sperm doners who are also, again, not choosing the best they are capable of selecting (were he the best, he'd be someone worth staying with).
June 24th, 2008 at 11:55 pm
page not found, Annie.
June 24th, 2008 at 11:55 pm
Demonspawn Says:
"Men and women are not equal, are not interchangeable, are not the same."
When people say equal I think they mean they should be treated equally, be provided with the same opportunities, and have the law/government be gender blind.
People who claim that men and women are the same are kidding themselves because there are clear differences... any time I hear anyone suggest that men and women are the same I merely suggest that we should do away with seperating them in the olympics and just let them compete against one another. Almost instantly they back off with the whole "same" argument because there are clear differences in many areas.
That being said, just because men and women aren't interchangable and aren't identicle... we can still we equal.
June 25th, 2008 at 12:10 am
HISTORICAL TREND IN MATERNAL...
NUTRITION AND MATERNAL MORTALITY
CONCLUSIONS
DISCUSSION
REFERENCES
High maternal mortality was a feature of the Western world from the mid-19th century, when reliable record keeping commenced, to the mid-1930s. During this time, maternal mortality rates tended to remain on a high plateau, although there was wide disparity between countries in the height of the plateau. From 1937, maternal mortality rates began to decline everywhere, and within 20 y, the intercountry differences had almost disappeared. The decline in maternal mortality rates was so dramatic that current rates for developed countries are between one-fortieth and one-fiftieth of the rates that prevailed 60 y ago. In this paper, the reasons for the high mortality before 1937 and its decline since that date are discussed. It is suggested that the main determinant of maternal mortality was the overall standard of maternal care provided by birth attendants. Poverty and associated malnutrition played little part in determining the rate of maternal mortality. This view is supported by much evidence, including the fact that, unlike for infant mortality rates, maternal mortality rates tended to be higher in the upper than in the lower social classes. The potential relevance of these findings to developing countries is discussed.
The extent to which lessons can be learned from history (or the study of history) justified on practical or utilitarian grounds is questionable. Whether it is the history of medicine, politics, war, or anything else, it is dangerous to assume that the determinants of events in the past will operate in the same way in the present. If the butterfly of chaos theory flaps its wings in different places at different times, the results are never the same twice. Nevertheless, a review of the history of maternal mortality rates may elicit some questions and even suggest a few answers to the question of whether anemia control does, or can, reduce maternal mortality.
The trend in maternal mortality rates in England and Wales between 1880 and 1980 was such that the rate of maternal mortality remained on a high plateau through the mid-1930s, after which there was an abrupt and steep decline (Figure 1). This pattern seemed so extraordinary that there were, initially, suspicions that the data were wrong or that an artifact had been mapped as a result of changes in the method of recording maternal deaths. After it was established that this was not the case (4–6), 3 major questions arose. First, was this pattern of maternal mortality peculiar to Britain or was it similar to that seen in other countries? Second, why did maternal mortality rates remain on a high plateau, albeit with spikes and troughs, from the 1850s to the mid-1930s although overall mortality, infant mortality, and mortality due to infectious diseases had started to decline by 1890–1900 (7)? These well-known demographic transitions are confidently attributed to a general rise in the standard of living emerging from better hygiene, better housing, better nutrition, and better general health, and are not accredited to medical care. If the above is true, why had these very factors failed to reduce maternal mortality rates between 1900 and 1935? Third, what caused the abrupt change in the maternal mortality rate in the mid-1930s with the subsequent steep decline that continued at almost exactly the same rate for the next 50 y? This question is important because, unlike disease-specific mortality rates, no other mortality rates showed such a profound decline in the second half of the 20th century. The risk of women dying in childbirth in the 1920s and 1930s was still as high as it had been just after Queen Victoria came to the throne in the 1850s. Today, however, the risk of women in England and Wales dying is between 40 and 50 times lower than it was 60 y ago.
The first question can be answered by comparing maternal mortality rates in the United States, England and Wales, and Sweden (Figure 2). In all 3 settings, maternal mortality rates tended to remain on a high plateau and at very much the same level until the end of the 19th century. In Britain as well as in France, Belgium, Australia, and New Zealand, the plateau continued with only a slight decline to a lower mortality level through the first 3 decades of the 20th century. There were, however, some striking differences between the pattern seen in the United States and in the northwestern European countries, ie, Sweden (Figure 2), the Netherlands, and Denmark (6).
There are few reliable data on maternal mortality rates in the United States before 1915, but thereafter, the United States had the highest rates of maternal mortality of any developed country (6). The data, however, need to be interpreted with caution for 2 reasons. First, the data were based on the expanding death registration area, ie, a limited number of states only, until 1933. Second, the criteria used to define a maternal death in the United States differed from those used in Britain. In Britain, deaths that would have been excluded as indirect maternal deaths (eg, influenza in pregnancy), were included in the US published data. In 1935, a well-designed survey by Elizabeth Tandy (10) of the Children's Bureau showed that of the number of deaths in the United States exceeding the number in Britain, one-half were due to differences in the classification of deaths or to the methods of data collection, whereas about one-half were real.
Puerperal fever and antisepsis
To understand the trends in the rates of maternal mortality in the countries of northwestern Europe, which were consistently much lower than elsewhere, a comment is needed on puerperal fever. This fever was the most common cause of maternal mortality before the mid-1930s, accounting for 40% of all maternal deaths (6, 11).
Contrary to perceived wisdom, Semmelweis's work between 1847 and 1860 on the use of antisepsis to prevent puerperal fever had virtually no effect on deaths from puerperal fever in any country. Around 1880, Listerian antisepsis was gradually introduced into obstetrics, which greatly reduced the maternal mortality rate in maternity hospitals (6). Hospital deliveries, however, were so few that national maternal mortality rates were only reduced if antisepsis was used both extensively and properly in home deliveries.
From 1890 to 1900, there was a marked decline in maternal mortality rates in the countries of northwestern Europe. This decline in maternal mortality rates leveled out by 1910, but at a much lower level than that for Britain or the United States. Although only data for Sweden are shown in Figure 2, the same low levels occurred in Norway, Denmark, and the Netherlands, where there was a long tradition of home deliveries by well-trained and well-supervised midwives who conscientiously used antiseptic techniques from the time they were introduced. There was also a tradition of minimum surgical interference in home and hospital deliveries in northwestern Europe (6, 12).
Maternal mortality, home deliveries, and midwives
Historical data show that maternal mortality rates were lowest for home deliveries undertaken by trained and supervised midwives with no exceptions. Two examples from a wide range of evidence are presented below (6).
The rural nurse midwives of the Queen's Institute of Nursing, which was an organization of highly trained and supervised midwives in England and Wales, kept meticulous records on all maternal deaths occurring at home or after transfer to a hospital. This organization was particularly active between the 1920s and 1940s and achieved very low rates of maternal mortality similar to, if not better than, the rates achieved in the northwestern European countries.
Similar low levels of maternal mortality were achieved during the 1920s and 1930s in the United States by a remarkable service in the history of maternal care that was founded by Mary Breckinridge. Midwives in the Kentucky Frontier Nursing Service traveled on horseback to assist with deliveries, which were all at home in a poor rural farming community with low living standards. Despite the poverty, maternal mortality rates were 10 times lower than those in the nearby city of Lexington and the United States as a whole (6).
High maternal mortality due to unnecessary interference
In contrast with the above findings, maternal mortality rates were very high in countries, states, regions, or areas where most deliveries were performed by physicians, especially in the hospital. Maternal mortality rates were also high when maximum surgical interference in normal or potentially normal labors was encouraged or advocated. A leading American obstetrician in the 1920s, Joseph Bolivar DeLee (13, 14), wrote a paper entitled "The prophylactic forceps operation" in which he advocated that procedures for ordinary deliveries be changed to include anesthetizing every patient in the second stage of labor, delivering the baby with forceps, and manually removing the placenta using the "shoehorn maneuver." His advice was heeded by many obstetricians and horrendous examples of iatrogenic mortality resulted. Another example, from Britain, was the widespread use of chloroform and forceps by general practitioners in uncomplicated deliveries between 1870 and the 1940s. This was described by one observer as a tendency a "little short of murder" (15) and accounted for many unnecessary deaths.
Maternal mortality and social class
Another unexpected finding related to maternal mortality, which was the basis for the second question raised at the beginning of this paper, was the inverse relation between maternal mortality rates and social class. Here the evidence comes almost entirely from Britain. Infant mortality is known to be strongly related to social class; the highest rates are found among the working classes, whereas the lowest rates are among the professionals. From at least the 1830s, however, the risk of dying in childbirth was higher in social classes I and II (the upper and professional classes, respectively) than it was in social classes IV and V (the skilled and unskilled laborers, respectively). An example of this is shown in Table 2, which gives data for 1930–1932 (16). The only plausible explanation for this social class difference is that the upper classes were more often delivered by physicians and, therefore, more likely to suffer unnecessary interference, whereas the lower classes were delivered by midwives, almost all of whom were trained by 1930–1932.
June 25th, 2008 at 12:23 am
Well I found the research Demonspawn cites from the UK, and this little blurb:
The paper will argue that there is evidence that at the same level of IQ, women are able to achieve more than men "possibly because they are more conscientious and better adapted to sustained periods of hard work".
Also, the research cites a gender differential of five IQ points...which is statistically insignificant, given that that IQ scores will vary five points either way for the same person on any given day.
June 25th, 2008 at 12:27 am
Again, do you want a system that gets 90% production out of 95% of the people (treating them differently), or 50% production out of 99% of the people (treating them the same). Which is better for the advancement of society and humanity?
We, as a society, can treat women 'equally' all we want. It's our choice. That society that treats women unequally (Islam) will out breed us and replace us eventually. Treating women "equally" is, like compassion and kindness, a luxury for societies on the top. The longer we hold onto it, the more we weaken ourselves relative to other cultures, and the harder it is to go back to the inequality that allows for greater and faster socitial advancement.
Annie-
You evidence supports the premise of what I posted back at 9:36. Male methods of sharing information, of combining knowledge, achieve results much faster than the female methods and is ultimately what drives society. Once men were allowed into the female world of childbirth, things changed quickly.
June 25th, 2008 at 12:30 am
Yes, men and women AVERAGE the same.
Men: 190, 180, 170, 160, 40, 30, 20, 10
Women: 104, 103, 102, 101, 99, 98, 97, 96
Both average 100.
Are you starting to grasp what I mean about genetic variability and how that leads to men on the top, and on the bottom, and protects women as average?
June 25th, 2008 at 12:33 am
Annie Says:
"Also, the research cites a gender differential of five IQ points...which is statistically insignificant, given that that IQ scores will vary five points either way for the same person on any given day."
5 IQ points isn't technically insignificant when 15 points equates to 1 standard deviation from the mean.
Furthermore, the fact that individuals will fluctuate merely offers error bars which extend out in either direction.
Essentially it means that the smallest difference is that they overlap and that the largest difference is if we shift women down 5 points and men up 5 points.
The fact that things aren't constant does not invalidate anything in this case.
That being said, I'm always skepticle of IQ scores anyway simply because people can still be lazy and achieve nothing even if their IQ is 180.
Furthermore, high IQ isn't always an advantage anyway... brilliant people actually tend to have fewer offspring than the average. The most successful actually tend to land in the 120-130 range, which might seem counterintuitive.
June 25th, 2008 at 12:36 am
Demonspawn Says:
"Again, do you want a system that gets 90% production out of 95% of the people (treating them differently), or 50% production out of 99% of the people (treating them the same). Which is better for the advancement of society and humanity?"
You've set up a false dichotomy. Why are these my only two choices?
Why can't I go for a system that improves upon the baseline you suggest and get 95% production out of 95% of people?
You have offered no explaination for why these are the only options available... therefore I see no reason to be constrained by them.
June 25th, 2008 at 12:40 am
You've hit exactly on my point: standard deviation. The standard deviation for men is much larger than for women. Men tend much more towards the extremes in all human traits (height, weight, strength, IQ.. you name it)
I'm not using IQ as the end-all-be-all. It's simply an example of men's greater genetic variability, one that happens to be well studied and documented.
June 25th, 2008 at 12:52 am
They're not your only two, I mean them as representative of a scale. The more people you make society work for, the less well it works for the majority of people. The more cases you stretch the rules to fit, the worse it handles the average case. It's economics of scale.
If you make the rules to benefit the few, you can get a lot out of them. The more you include in the "few" the less you can get out of each of them (altho often you will get more out of the total group) This scale works until you try to include too many, where the system starts to get top-heavy with various things and the sum total work is less due to the power of getting less from a greater number.
more examples:
I can get 100% from 50% of the population: total advancement 50%
I can get 90% from 60% of the population: total advancement 54%
I can get 75% from 90% of the population: total advancement: 68%
I can get 50% from 95% of the population: total advancement 48%
What percentage we can get out of what percentage of the population is up to question. But as we can already see our society declining in advancement, especially in birth rates, comparative to other cultures which do not include attempting to push women into men's roles. There is less gain from the small number of women that work well than the detriment from the large number of women who don't work well.
And yes, it is demonstrateable that women in the workforce has, overall, been detrimental to both genders and society as a whole.
June 25th, 2008 at 12:58 am
Demonspawn Says:
"If you make the rules to benefit the few, you can get a lot out of them."
We've done this social experiment before... it resulted in the french revolution with the few who benefited losing their heads.
June 25th, 2008 at 1:04 am
One further note, when you say the following:
"But as we can already see our society declining in advancement, especially in birth rates, comparative to other cultures which do not include attempting to push women into men's roles. There is less gain from the small number of women that work well than the detriment from the large number of women who don't work well."
Why exactly is declining birth rates a problem?... so far as our future challenges are concerned, over population is a HUGE issue we are going to have to contend with. The sooner we get the world wide population under control the better for all of us... otherwise we won't have a future to be concerned about anyway.
If putting women into the work force has decreased the birth rates, then that is a benefit in my book, not a detriment.
June 25th, 2008 at 1:33 am
This turned out to be a mosh pit.
After reading all the comments, I forgot what the topic was about.
Anyway...
The way to fight this is if we get our time through the media channels to promote Fathers as being good. We can even do this on Youtube and the various video networks if we do not have the means for TV or radio.
I have a camera. ;)
June 25th, 2008 at 1:45 am
Which is why you set the scale and inclusion for maximum gain. The problem is we are including far to many and using up far too much of the luxury we have from being a superpower.
Depends on your ultimate goal. Do you like being American? Do you like being non-Islamic?
In 200 years or so, the vast majority of the world will be under Islamic rule.. simply by birth rates. Americans might be saved from Islam, but we'll be Mexican instead. We're getting the far better deal in my opinion. I feel sorry for Europeans.
Want something more touchable? Social security and medicade are failing due to birthrates. The worker crop will not be able to take care of the demand from the aging. Society is going to get longer and longer in the tooth, and given the "mandatory compassion" voted in by women, will suck up more and more national resources pulling the nation further towards/into economic collapse.
Actually, not at all given current trends. Within the next 100-200 years world population is going to crash dramatically.
it decreased wages, decreased production, increased cost of labor (the family-friendly workplace policies that pandered to women.. which leads to the outsourcing problem), increased legal problems/lawsuits, decreased worker morale, and increased inflation... that's just a start.
June 25th, 2008 at 1:59 am
islam
polygamy
marginalised childless men
drones
star wars XXII the war of the drones
love and romance rather than utility.
Does "nothing LESS than equality for women, nothing MORE than equlity for men" resonate.
Think about it. This does seem to be the way all the systems in our communities operate.
Whether deliberate or not this is the outcome we see.
To what extent does this extend to men outside that demographic? Is it equivalent to the concern you show for women similarly placed.
At a generalised level the answers are...
Little and
No
Diversity. It promotes adaptability. Interestingly the male genome is the major source of that diversity in humans.
Is this the female equivalent of men stuffing up the dishes to get out of it in future?
This is partly the Summers problem being revisited.
If you can handle the dryness check out...
SEX DIFFERENCES IN MATHEMATICAL APTITUDE
The key word here is "aptitude". The principles spread broadly. Indeed women are perceived to have an "aptitude" with regard to children. One that is constantly reinforced, and often in ways derogatory to men.
This piece is a startling demonstration of the predictablilty of certain outcomes.
June 25th, 2008 at 2:05 am
Apologies.
The first six lines of my previous got caught up in my copy and paste. It's unrelated.
June 25th, 2008 at 2:16 am
It's funny how advocates for single mothers tend to lurch between victimism and triumphalism in these matters.
On the one hand single mothers are seen as victims of feckless men doing their best to manage on their own. But then they promote single motherhood as some sort of model of female independence.
June 25th, 2008 at 2:17 am
I read the statistics above that supposedly show that kids in single mother households do horribly (do they thrive in single father households?), I know that a two-parent family is desirable, and yet if I were 38 or 39 and single, I would seriously consider having a baby on my own. I can get married anytime, but there is a limited amount of time for females to safely reproduce. Why should I never have a baby just because my eggs are old and dusty? My son is the best thing about my life. If I didn’t have him, I would have nothing. And I really don’t think that I should have to wait for Mr. Right to come along in a timely fashion in order for me to fulfill my dream of motherhood.
Fortunately I didn’t have to be a single mother (and I never would except if I were older). I don’t think it’s selfish to want a baby.
Is it also selfish to be a single foster or adoptive parent? Why can’t one person adequately care for and love a child? It may not be ideal, but sometimes it’s your only choice.
June 25th, 2008 at 2:20 am
Also: for those of you on a “marriage strike” and/or who want kids but not a woman and even talk of surrogates—how, pray tell, is this any different from a woman wanting a baby and not having a man to do it with and so going it alone?
June 25th, 2008 at 2:20 am
I can get married anytime, but there is a limited amount of time for females to safely reproduce.
followed by
It may not be ideal, but sometimes it’s your only choice.
Do you or Don't you have a choice?
June 25th, 2008 at 2:22 am
When it comes to social policy debates, the most shameless falsehood of all is the claim that the vast majority of single mothers are not single by choice.
The evidence shows overwhelmingly that the majority of single mothers are either women who have chosen to end the relationship with their children's father themselves or have chosen to have children on their own. Women who are abandoned by a man are actually in the minority of single mothers.
If deadbeats didn't exist, we would need to invent them so we have a scapegoat.
June 25th, 2008 at 2:30 am
"how, pray tell, is this any different from a woman wanting a baby and not having a man to do it with and so going it alone?"
Its different because women chose to not enter a relationship, where they stand a small chance of actually loosing anything. Men are avoiding a relationship, where they stand a good chance of loosing everything.
No single men should have kids through surrogates or otherwise - starting from the day we prohibit single women from having kids too. Its ideal for the kids to have a decent life with both parents.
June 25th, 2008 at 2:35 am
Pankaj,
I have a choice to become a mother. I cannot force a guy to marry me. And I am not talking about me being homeless, begging on a street corner, and wanting a baby. I am talking about me having a decent job and support system. And I’d make sure my brothers and other males would have an influence in my baby’s life. I always wanted a baby, and I think I could give a baby a very good life if single. It would be hard, but I would do it. But I am actually very, very lucky that my husband is such a good father. It is his best quality.
June 25th, 2008 at 2:55 am
"# jeana Says:
June 25th, 2008 at 2:20 am
Also: for those of you on a “marriage strike” and/or who want kids but not a woman and even talk of surrogates—how, pray tell, is this any different from a woman wanting a baby and not having a man to do it with and so going it alone?"
Most guys on the marriage strike do not want kids.The marriage strike
did not start out as a bunch of guys sitting around at a uni plotting against women, most guys participating in this came to this choice independently.So it started out not as traditional union based type strike, I find this very interesting.
June 25th, 2008 at 3:15 am
So if men have enough money and men have a string of women folk around, you should have no problem with men raising kids either. So whats the problem?
Actually no other man can substitute for a good father. Same as no other woman can be a substitute for a good mother. How is it fair that you choose whether the child has a father or not - to the child I mean. Again you are making a decision for the child - another one of those places where I don't think decent parents usurp rights of the child.
June 25th, 2008 at 6:24 am
Jeana is being dishonest. Oh the horror...
The difference between a man going it alone and a woman going it alone is that the former is far better for the child than the latter, what with avoiding crime, the smaller likelihood of abuse, getting through high school et al. But then, i think we all know that the troll already knows that, after all, the second post in this string pointed out the bit about abuse.
June 25th, 2008 at 7:09 am
jeana says:
"I’d make sure my brothers and other males would have an influence in my baby’s life."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This way of thinking is pure ignorance and downright insulting to Fathers. Do you realize you just said that you can substitute a good Father with one of your brothers and "other" males. Let me guess, you will enroll him in the "big brother" program for all these poor Fatherless children when the Father is only minutes away.
People like you would rather have a make stranger hang out with "your" child then the child's actual Father.
Do you even know what website you are on? Do you also go to an African American website and burn a digital cross too?
June 25th, 2008 at 7:28 am
I think Jeana should have kids, I will require someone to wash my windshield,
smoke the crack I sell, change my oil and serve me at hooters.Also I own shares in a jail so I need those to increase in value - you go girl.
Someone has to do this stuff, so good on her for being so self-sacrificing and
unselfish.
June 25th, 2008 at 8:29 am
Jeana:
And I’d make sure my brothers and other males would have an influence in my baby’s life.
I'm not even a father and I'm insulted by that. The problem people have with this motherhood by choice thing is that they are openly advocating things that go in line with what you just said: fathers bring nothing to the table therefore they are not necessary and are easily replaceable by uncles and other males.
Just in case you don't see how you've insulted dads with that remark let me ask you this: How would you feel if men all of a sudden decided that women were good for nothing but child birth so instead of finding and forming a relationship with a woman they just pay a woman to have a child and raise him/her/them/ as a single dad because, "Women aren't good for anything but making babies."?
June 25th, 2008 at 8:56 am
What utter nonsense! "Rich white women" with their ticking biological clocks have nothing on politicians and government making it profitable to be a single mother, with all the support of NOW and all these single motherhood advocates. If you truly want to see the casualties of government sponsored single-mother parenthood, go into the projects and barios of your inner cities. Or, better yet, go to the penitentaries and psych wards, which is where a lot of these cases end up.
What qualifies me to make such a statement? My own children, who are "products of the system." The only role I was permitted to serve was that of financial supporter. Never got to visit, speak, or interact with them but if that child support check was ever late, there was the threats of incarceration, garnishments, revocation of drivers license and passport. The result? They are a mess. One is even trying desperately to get pregnant and draw a "check", just like "Mommy".
Is this what we want?
June 25th, 2008 at 9:36 am
...I fear Demonspawn is right about the birth rate problem. If westerners are having 0-1 child per family and third world countries 8-9 children each, the numbers don't work out well for the survival of western culture. And yes, there will be big problems in countries that have sub-replacement level birth rates and massive government entitlement programs that are supposed to be funded by shrinking younger generations.
June 25th, 2008 at 10:41 am
Annie,
You might wish to read the CDC's writings on infant and maternal mortality in childbirth.
If you would like to take any isolated period in medical history and say "see, there were mistakes in the methods used by doctors because later methods were better", I guess that would be correct, but the later methods were also put in place by (male) doctors.
The CDC is explicit in stating higher midwife involvement to be correlated with higher mortality. Nothing against the great work performed by midwifes over the centuries, but fewer deaths in complicated pregnancies is fewer deaths, I'm sure you would agree.
And as much as one might wish to deify the midwife, one should not forget the lives of the real human beings who were lost and might not have been during each era.
(As for doctors, during the 1800s, this "profession" was using all manner of questionable methods -- like "bleeding patients" to get rid of "bad humors". Kind of like what family court lawyers do to "clients" today?)
June 25th, 2008 at 10:50 am
Pankaj, KARMA, MichaelClaymore, Edd,
None of what any of you said convinces me that I should not have the right to have a baby or adopt one if I was single, childless, and older. I also think that it is offensive that you automatically assume that any single male is better than any single female. Simply being male does not make you a better parent.
“How is it fair that you choose whether the child has a father or not - to the child I mean. Again you are making a decision for the child - another one of those places where I don't think decent parents usurp rights of the child.”
If I go to a sperm bank, there essentially is no father, is there? The father would be the man I marry afterwards. Doesn’t have to be a biological father.
And I didn’t mean to insult fathers by saying that brothers could substitute. But when there is no father, isn’t it more important that there be some male influence? A wonderful uncle is better than a rotten father any day (and, yes, a wonderful aunt is better than a rotten mother).
June 25th, 2008 at 10:56 am
Danny:
“How would you feel if men all of a sudden decided that women were good for nothing but child birth so instead of finding and forming a relationship with a woman they just pay a woman to have a child and raise him/her/them/ as a single dad because, "Women aren't good for anything but making babies."?”
Actually, Danny, I do hear this over and over! Plus, we’re good for sex. That’s it. And we lose our market value rapidly after age 30.
I still think that I can get married till I die, but I can’t have a baby after about 40. I don’t really think I’d go to a sperm bank because that’s weird. But I would have adopted if I was single. How is that wrong? Why should I be held hostage by the mistaken belief that if I am not married, I can never have a baby?
I’m not the one who believes in a marriage strike. I would still get married. Only there wouldn’t be pressure on me to find someone quick, just to get pregnant.
June 25th, 2008 at 11:09 am
jeana Says:
"also think that it is offensive that you automatically assume that any single male is better than any single female."
EB Says:
You are the one assuming. I find that trait (assuming) more in women then I do men.
Even though we show you statistics and stories, not one of us said (or even believes) that a single male is better then a single female. This website (in case you missed it) is mainly for equal rights for Fathers.
jeana Says:
"If I go to a sperm bank, there essentially is no father, is there? The father would be the man I marry afterwards. Doesn’t have to be a biological father. "
EB Says:
In response to your scenario. Why would you go to a sperm bank when you, yourself cannot even find a healthy relationship with a man? Don't you think it would be better if a couple that is currently in a healthy relationship go to a sperm bank? Who will take care of the child when you are "hunting" for a husband?
jeana Says:
" I didn’t mean to insult fathers by saying that brothers could substitute."
EB Says:
You did.
Keep a closed mind jeana, it motivates us to educate ourselves more to use in our struggle against the pure hate that befalls on men.
June 25th, 2008 at 11:14 am
Wow - what a thread.
I personally feel that these women-children and others like them, i.e., single mothers by choice, should be banned from receiving a single penny of public assistance for things like daycare, food stamps, housing, etc.; basically anything related to helping them raise these kids. Furthermore, they should be banned from getting a single penny from the sperm donors, and in fact should be liable to them for 1) entrapment if they didn't tell the men exactly what they were up to, or 2) fraud if they misrepresented themselves in any way, e.g., telling the guys they were on birth control when in fact they were not.
The reason women/girls do this stuff is because as a society we not only let them get away with it, we enable them like pushers for two-bit junkies by providing them with a massive support system so that they don't have to take responsibility for their personal decisions. We need to take a very hard stance re. making these women-children responsible for their own messes - don't foist any of the responsibility on the rest of us. Do that and this kind of behavior will become rare very quickly.
June 25th, 2008 at 11:16 am
Mr. Bad,
You males are always free to abstain from sex or to wear condoms.
June 25th, 2008 at 11:22 am
Your statistics don’t mean as much to me because I don’t know what went into them. I don’t know if poor single mothers and upper middle class single fathers are being compared. I know that there are more single mothers and they tend to be poorer. If a guy is to get custody, most likely it won’t happen if he’s poor. I think there is an inherent bias in the statistics that are quoted.
That being said, those statistics don’t mean that I can’t be a good mother and raise a well-adjusted child. And I still maintain that, if I wasn’t married and it didn’t look like I’d get married anytime soon, I should not forgo the opportunity to be a mother. You males don’t have to. Why should I?
“Who will take care of the child when you are "hunting" for a husband?”
Hunting? I would not intend to use a spear. What do you single fathers do when you go out?
June 25th, 2008 at 11:24 am
jeana: "None of what any of you said convinces me that I should not have the right to have a baby or adopt one if I was single, childless, and older."
I didn't go back and read all of the comments from the people you mention (Pankaj, KARMA, MichaelClaymore, Edd), but IMO I don't have a problem with women having the right to have a baby if she wants to. My problem is in the notion that a father is superfluous to the raising of a healthy child and therefore it should be fully acceptable for a woman to do so without a father (and then you wonder why there is a movement to limit child support). The "Single Motherhood by Choice" movement effectively says there are no gotchas and no problems with doing it, and if you have the urge you should just do it without worries. As all of the evidence suggests, that is disingenuous and there are gotchas and problems that can arise. Further, the suggestion that a female parent acting alone is as good (or better) then then two parents with two different POVs is preposterous.
I'm sure that if there were a "Single Fatherhood by Choice" movement that the feminists would be up in arms about it saying that by supporting such a movement you are undermining the importance of mothers. What is wrong with us saying the same thing about the Single Motherhood by Choice movement?
June 25th, 2008 at 11:37 am
I finally read "Sex and Culture" and started looking at this in a different light.
Feminists aren't the problem. The nature of women and the cycle of civilization is.
We've allowed women too much influence into our culture. We are in the decline. We will be overtaken by a culture that has not yet allowed women to rule them.
I think I'm wrong with my 800 year prediction, however. Islam is a fundamentalist religion culture. That is the most reliable method of keeping women and men in their traditional gender roles (as God is not up questioning). Perhaps double that, but I'm sure I won't be around to collect on any bets.
Japan is about to implode within the next 10 years. Watch to witness our future.
June 25th, 2008 at 11:38 am
jeana: "You males are always free to abstain from sex or to wear condoms."
Yeah, like that's a choice. One more example of how jeana just doesn't get it and has very little empathy or respect for men.
- So tell me, did you circumcise your son? (no you don't have to answer that) If you did and you expect him to wear a condom for the rest of his life you just ended his enjoyment of sex for the rest of his life. Nice. Why is it that you expect that women should have the right to fully enjoy sex, but you refuse to allow men to do the same? Sounds pretty sexist to me. The idea that a woman can demand that a man wear a condom is beyond me (ie: my body, my choice). If you don't like it, sleep with someone else.
- We've already discussed that the condom is about the worst form of BC available. Until there is any BC options that are anywhere close as effective as the pill is for women, it is nuts to make policy based upon it. A woman who gets pregnant when she doesn't want to (and perhaps while she was on BC) has a choice....a man has none. Again, sounds pretty sexist to me. Perhaps if men could abort their responsibilities for an unwanted child as easily as women can, fewer women would get pregnant without the consent or support of the father. Sounds like this would be good for everyone.
- And on that note, women may lie because today their are absolutely no repercussions. They are manipulative and they may say they are on BC when they are not. They shouldn't be awarded with a check by lying their way into it. Again, if it were the other way around and men lied to get women pregnant (and if women couldn't abort their responsibilities by choice) then the feminists would be up in arms. Why do you persecute men for doing exactly what feminists would do if roles were reversed?
June 25th, 2008 at 11:43 am
It's all about what you want rather than what is best for your own children, isn't it?
Need I say more?
June 25th, 2008 at 11:44 am
jeana Says:
"What do you single fathers do when you go out?"
EB Says:
When I "go out" it's to work.
On the weekends, I stay home and take care of my wife and my son. If I were single, I would never adopt a child knowing I would have to be at work and have strangers raise my child when I am not at home.
jeana Says:
"You males don’t have to. Why should I?"
EB Says:
I don't have to what? Go to a sperm bank? You are right, my banks are fully functional.
To answer your question, though very strange point you are trying to make, you HAVE to go to a sperm bank if you do not have a man to have a baby with. That is because you are a woman.
jeana Says:
"Your statistics don’t mean as much to me because I don’t know what went into them."
EB Says:
You are either insane, looking for attention or simply trolling. I never gave YOU any statistics.
/coo coo
To sum it up for you jeana so you do not have to ASSUME from where I stand, as a single parent, I do not think you should have a child because YOU simply want to experience it. It is a very selfish attitude that disregards the well being of the child.
When people say, "I want to have a child", or "I should be able to have one if I want to" all I hear is a bunch of "I's".
June 25th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
jeana, are you being deliberately obtuse are you truly as completely clueless as you appear to be?
The issue isn't about me, or you, it's about us as a society. It's about me and you, third parties, having to pick up the slack for these irresponsible narcissists. I'm saying screw 'em - they made their bed so don't pick my pocket to pay their bills.
Geez, sometimes I just can't believe that some people can act so utterly dense.
June 25th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
Mr. Bad Says:
"Geez, sometimes I just can't believe that some people can act so utterly dense."
EB Says:
I am afraid she may not be acting Mr.Bad.
June 25th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
Jeana:
If I go to a sperm bank, there essentially is no father, is there? The father would be the man I marry afterwards. Doesn’t have to be a biological father.
And in cases like that I wouldn't see anything wrong with it but your idea there defies one of the backbone principles of Single Motherhood by Choice, the idea that fathers are useless therefore they should just raise children without them. To them I ask if fathers are so useless then why bother trying to have other positive male role models in their life? And to you I echo EB's question: Who will take care of the child when you are "hunting" for a husband?
Those Single Motherhood people are essentially trying to have their cake and eat it too by way of getting what they want from men (sperm and financial support) without giving anything in return (sharing the joy the parenthood when the father tries to and the effor required to adequately supply the double mother/father role).
Actually, Danny, I do hear this over and over! Plus, we’re good for sex. That’s it. And we lose our market value rapidly after age 30.
So given that you know how it feels to just be instantly devalued because of your gender I'm sure you see why men would be a little upset over being told that they don't matter in a child's life and they are good for making baby's and supplying money. Oh and they good for sex to the women that just can't get enough out of their ummm...toys.
I still think that I can get married till I die, but I can’t have a baby after about 40. I don’t really think I’d go to a sperm bank because that’s weird. But I would have adopted if I was single. How is that wrong? Why should I be held hostage by the mistaken belief that if I am not married, I can never have a baby?
Let me borrow some of that for a moment:
I still think that I can be a good father till I die. Why should I be held hostage by the mistaken belief that because of my gender I can never be a good and useful parent?
Do you mind telling me how your regarded as concerns are valid but mine are regarded as "whining", an attempt to oppress women, etc... I'm not saying you are regarding my concerns like but that seems to be is on the large scale.
And I have another question when it comes to pregnancy. Why is it when a woman unintentionally get pregnant she is reassured that its not her fault and it'll be okay while the guy is told, "You should have used better protection or just not had sex."?
June 25th, 2008 at 12:20 pm
Choices
Jeana says: "I read the statistics above that supposedly show that kids in single mother households do horribly (do they thrive in single father households?), I know that a two-parent family is desirable, and yet if I were 38 or 39 and single, I would seriously consider having a baby on my own. I can get married anytime, but there is a limited amount of time for females to safely reproduce. Why should I never have a baby just because my eggs are old and dusty? My son is the best thing about my life. If I didn’t have him, I would have nothing. And I really don’t think that I should have to wait for Mr. Right to come along in a timely fashion in order for me to fulfill my dream of motherhood.
Fortunately I didn’t have to be a single mother (and I never would except if I were older). I don’t think it’s selfish to want a baby.
Is it also selfish to be a single foster or adoptive parent? Why can’t one person adequately care for and love a child? It may not be ideal, but sometimes it’s your only choice.
PK responds: It's worth citing that whole response from Jeana just to show how illogical it is. Jeana, there are plenty of choices. You sound like criminals who justify robbing or killing people because that was their "only choice" to support their lifestyle.
A couple of obvious ones present itself:
1) Don't wait around for "Mr. Right" to ask you out. Granted, such women might have to risk rejection or, gasp, pay their own way! but it's simply amazing to me at how women who advertised on Internet dating sites got 300 responses while even attractive men might get 20. And you wonder why I don't think women's equality cannot last without artificial support...
2) Radical notion 2: Look early. Here you are saying it's not selfish for a woman to have a child at the last minute and you hope she can teach a child planning skills such as doing homework? Will she tell him to start studying for a test the night before?
3) Radical notion 3: Don't have children or adopt. Instead of raising one's own child half assed or risking birth defects, either put it off until you can do it right or don't do it at all. For example, if a man is a deadbeat dad and has a bastard child starving in the single mother's care, he's lectured to be more responsible. I think that's a bit unbalanced and harsh, but they have a point even if it's misleading.
Jeana, you claim to love your son so much you would be nothing without him yet here you are believing in a man-bashing female-centric ideology that seeks to deprive him of income to marry women such as yourself and sexual harassment polices that will punish him for doing so.
June 25th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
"If you don't want a kid, use a condom"
"If you want a baby, find a husband and stay married to him."
June 25th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
...fwiw, the verdict is coming in on how these kids feel about having no fathers. More and more of them, once they get the chance, embark on search missions to find their "dads," even if he was only some anonymous sperm donor. The idea that kids won't care about not having a father and will never miss him is going by the wayside as evidence to the contrary pours in....
June 25th, 2008 at 1:00 pm
"Son/daughter - I made the decision as your mother to deny you half your identity. Hope you don't mind being a guinea pig in this grand social experiment. It was my right as a woman..."
June 25th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
I think the headline of this article says it all "Give the Gloucester Girls a break" Well, will they give the Gloucester Boys and Men a break? No. They will be treated as inhumanely as possible while their natural rights to their children and the children' s rights to a father will be summarily dismissed. What a disgusting society/culture this has turned out to be:
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1817701,00.html?cnn=yes
June 25th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
Demonspawn said:
“And yes, it is demonstrateable that women in the workforce has, overall, been detrimental to both genders and society as a whole.”
That is entirely dependent upon your metric. Western societies have the highest standard of living they have ever experienced (and arguably the world has ever seen) – how do you explain that? If your argument is based on the rate of change differential between the west and others – ie that others are catching up – my answer is so what, that’s not the point – any number of factors can account for that including improved communication, emulation (industrial sabotage) etc. The Chinese are certainly catching us but guess what? Almost all Chinese women participate in the work force. Your argument only has merit if those to whom you refer genuinely catch up to or surpass us – and the only ones I can see doing that are the Chinese. Hmmm what does that tell you?
“Social security and medicade are failing due to birthrates.”
That is completely wrong – they are failing due to too great a demand being placed upon a poorly designed system. If you design a system that is wholly incapable of adapting to a changing environment (due to factors such as exponentially higher cost of medical technology (itself partly due to a flawed civil justice system), unanticipated increases in participation rates, greater expectations (and therefore demands), coupled with a shrinking contributor base) then of course it will fail. It is not due to a single factor here – not by a long shot.
Pjk said:
“...I fear Demonspawn is right about the birth rate problem. If westerners are having 0-1 child per family and third world countries 8-9 children each, the numbers don't work out well for the survival of western culture.”
The Chinese are, in effect, enforcing a one child per family policy – and they are the fastest growing large economy (gross and per capita) in the world – by a long shot. How’s it working out for them? A lot better is the answer – everybody works and there are fewer mouths to feed.
Edd Black said:
“When I "go out" it's to work.”
Loved it – I do the same!
June 25th, 2008 at 1:52 pm
re: The Chinese are, in effect, enforcing a one child per family policy – and they are the fastest growing large economy (gross and per capita) in the world – by a long shot. How’s it working out for them? A lot better is the answer – everybody works and there are fewer mouths to feed.
...the Chinese are another one of these societies that will get old before they get too prosperous. Their one child policy also has led to a preference for boy babies and the creation of "bachelor villages," where men cannot find wives because of the gender imbalance. Do you really want to hold up China's system as a positive example?
June 25th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
Pjk said:
“Do you really want to hold up China's system as a positive example?”
Of course not – I was merely pointing out the flaws in the argument that Demonspawn put forward (and which you echoed). The single view that having more and more offspring being the best paradigm for a healthy economy, let alone the best way of life, is highly questionable. In fact, if one can “add up” they must come to the inescapable conclusion that, that paradigm will ultimately fail - miserably. More to the point and the reason for my noting it, the Chinese example shows that the economist’s ever expanding population dream, one of false promise, isn’t even necessary to have real growth and real improvement in standard of living.
June 25th, 2008 at 3:09 pm
Celia, I get your point, but I think China is a bad example primarily because the majority of the population still live in what we would call 3rd world conditions, ergo there's lots of room for "economic expansion" within that closed system.
While I can see how increases in efficiency might mitigate the effects of a dramatically falling population, the fact remains that you can't have fewer people supporting more people in their "expensive" (health care wise) years. This is from a Canadian perspective though, where both health care and retirement income are government funded. Shrinking tax base+increased population dependency=disaster.
We can either pay more taxes, or provide fewer benefits to retirees. It really IS a zero sum game. I'm betting they try the taxes AND shift the responsibility to those currently funding their parents' generation for their own retirement.
My thinking is replacement rate is ideal, with minor fluctuations as reflection of the economy.
June 25th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
Momentum. We were advancing hard and fast before we screwed up and gave women the vote. Allowing women into goverment and into power in a society doesn't change it overnight, it barely even changes the rate of change.. it influences the rate of change in the rate of change, and possibly even an order of magnitude higher.
Research the concept of sub-replacement fertility. They won't have to catch up or surpass us, they will REPLACE us. They're breeding, we aren't.
The birth rates are not the only factor, but they are the largest.
China is going to burn out soon. 50 - 100 years. They are going to have a population crash. Unlike other nations, it's very hard to predict what will happen to China after the crash (there is no replacement waiting in the wings).
I'm not necessarily talking economy (altho there are economic effects), I'm talking survival.
Numbers are power, by just about any measure of power you want to use.
In 100-150 years we will have Shira law in the EU. It will be voted into place.
June 25th, 2008 at 3:42 pm
re: I'm betting they try the taxes AND shift the responsibility to those currently funding their parents' generation for their own retirement.
,...I wouldn't be surprised if in future decades, anyone with a self-funded retirement account like a 401K will have to spend it down to 0 at a poverty-level rate per year before they would be allowed to collect Social Security. If you have $100,000 in a retirement account, you don't collect Social Security until you are 72, maybe, instead of 67...
June 25th, 2008 at 5:42 pm
I understand why you males are against the Single Motherhood by Choice thing. I do get it. I understand the importance of a father in a child’s life. I also don’t think any teen should ever give birth. I really don’t think single females should in their 20s either. Mostly because it really decreases their future opportunities and because I think their kid(s) won’t have as good outcomes as they could otherwise.
HOWEVER, it is more important for me personally to be a mother than to be a wife. If I can’t have both, then I’ll choose the kid. I would aim to have both, and I was successful, but I won’t judge any other female who has a baby while single because she is advancing in years.
And I would really like to see the statistics that you quote broken into age and income cohorts. Because I have a sneaking suspicion that older females who have a baby for the first time do not experience all those bad things that is attributed to teen mothers, who, along with those in their 20s, must make up the bulk of the single mothers by choice (I’m assuming these females were never married).
The ones who don’t get it are you. We are not all the same. You cannot compare a 15 year old with a 35 year old. Can you compare a 15 year old father with a 35 year old father? Of course not.
None of this means that men are not important or are disposable. I never said that. But your arguments against sperm banks or adopting sound a lot to me like the ones social workers use to keep white people from adopting black kids—it’s better for the kids to remain in group homes because they will experience a lack of black culture. Or that gay people shouldn't adopt because somehow they will negatively influence kids. I disagree. A home is a home; a parent is a parent; families are changing. If you can't have the ideal, you shouldn't be forced to be childless.
I do agree with a lot of the ideas, but I am not going to take a black & white position—all single mothers by choice are harming kids, committing “emotional incest”, etc. Come on.
June 25th, 2008 at 5:52 pm
...sounds like you're saying you know a father is important to a child but your personal desire to be a mother trumps that. Please correct me if I'm wrong...I've seen these TV programs with sperm-donor kids searching for their dads. Some find them, some don't....
.,..BTW, I also disagree with the few men who hire surrogates to have babies for them that they can raise without a mother anywhere in sight. That sort of thing happens, too...
June 25th, 2008 at 6:02 pm
...FWIW, I lost my mother at an early age and was left with a father who was the far inferior parent. But at least I have all the pieces to the puzzle, unlike these "Wonder what my dad is like" kids. Genetics is very powerful - habits, illnesses, mannerisms, temperament, etc,(nevermind looks) all can be inherited. We owe it to children to give them all the puzzle pieces so they know themselves better...
June 25th, 2008 at 6:02 pm
So to try to get back to the subject: SMBC? Horribly selfish, I say. The stats showing the detrimental effects on children raised without fathers are pretty much beyond dispute now. If I were kind of the world, I'd make it illegal for any single woman to be impregnated at a sperm bank. (I'd also make it illegal for single fathers to try to have children via surrogate motherhood, but that's legally murky now anyway.)
Adoption by single parents? Different deal. Those children are already born. There are way more parentless children in the system then there are parents who are willing and able to adopt. (I posted the stats on a previous thread, a few weeks ago.) The system's only goal, frankly, is to warehouse them until they turn majority age, when they can be cut loose. Almost anything is way better than that. One parent is a heck of a lot better than no parents. If singles, men or women, want to adopt, and they have the means to support a child, let 'em.
Single-father households? I don't know that very much study has been done, because it's probably pretty hard to assemble a statistically meaningful sample without built-in biases. I looked up some stats from the Census Bureau. It reports that there were 2.5 million single (custodial) fathers in the U.S. in 2003. Of those:
40% were divorced
40% were never married (!)
16% were separated
4% were widowed (less than I thought)
That "never married" one puzzles me. I can't figure out how that many men became fathers without ever marrying. Most states are reluctant to allow single men to adopt non-related children, so the only thing I can figure is that they had children by girlfriends they never married, and the girlfriend agreed to give up custody. (There's also the possibility of "father in name only", where adult relatives of the father are doing the actual child raising. But the stats report that only 14% of the single fathers are living in someone else's household.)
Detrimental effects to being raised in a single-father household? Probably. I haven't yet come across a study, but it looks to me like children need parents of both sexes to be well-adjusted, in general. I noted that the number of single father housholds in poverty is 18%, which is higher than for married couples with children, although still far lower than for single mother households.
June 25th, 2008 at 6:05 pm
Oh, and pjk: I am basing my retirement planning on the assumption that I will never collect a dime of Social Security, no matter how long I live. Social Security was a Ponzi scheme from the start, and like all Ponzi schemes, it is destined to collapse no matter what.
June 25th, 2008 at 6:09 pm
re: Oh, and pjk: I am basing my retirement planning on the assumption that I will never collect a dime of Social Security, no matter how long I live. Social Security was a Ponzi scheme from the start, and like all Ponzi schemes, it is destined to collapse no matter what.
...tell me something I don't know, Dave. I also presume nothing from Social Security. When I first started paying, the deal was, "You must pay into this and in return you will collect when you are 65." Then, the government changed the deal to, "You must pay into this and in return you will collect when you are 67." What assurances do I have that the government won't break the promise again?
BTW, my previous two posts address single mothers and single fathers by choice, not adoption, which is a wonderful remedy for a child born into a difficult situation.
June 25th, 2008 at 6:13 pm
*yawns*
I'm surprised you (still) have a husband.
You want to give birth to a child, but obviously don't think much about raising one.
You want to become a mother more than you want to BE a mother.
It's the same attitude we see in women who want to GET married but have no clue about being married.
Again, it's all about what you want, not what's best for your kid. Hey, I guess it's your right to screw up your child's future however you see fit.
You are demonstrating that, in your world view, you are more important than your child. As long as you are ok with that...
June 25th, 2008 at 6:24 pm
Demonspawn,
You have no idea what you are talking about. I am not going to justify myself and explain what kind of mother I am (FYI, a very good one). If you want to believe that I would put my wants before my son’s needs, go ahead. I think I know what’s important to my son. How exactly am I screwing up his future? If it were up to you, I wouldn’t even have a son if I were single. So there would be no future. If you want to paint all of us as being selfish for wanting to have a baby, go ahead. I think it is actually more selfless, because we are willing to give up a great deal for our kids. I love being a mother. I don’t know why that kills you so much. It’s the way it’s supposed to be. Similar to the Japanese saying, I can always replace my husband, but never my child.
June 25th, 2008 at 6:29 pm
You plainly stated that you would, madam. You demonstrated your willingness to put your want for a child before your son's need for a mother AND father.
And you further demonstrate your callousness. I couldn't replace my wife either. I can find another wife, but I can have another child too. Both are irreplaceable.
June 25th, 2008 at 6:39 pm
Oh, I've always understood the greater variability of IQ ranges, and I think I understand the basic theory...essentially, the genes for intelligence reside on the X chromosome, and with a single X, the boys have a better chance of getting of getting the extremes on both ends.
Once men were allowed into the female world of childbirth, things changed quickly
And NOT for the better. For one hundred and fifty years AFTER men got into obstetrics...the safest place for women to give birth was STILL at home under the care of midwives. Moreover, a great many of the BAD ideas instituted by men have now been discarded...among them...shaving, routine vaginal slicing, "once a C-section, always a C-section, supine positioning and so on...due large to the headlong rush of women into the field.
June 25th, 2008 at 6:40 pm
...Olde days: I do not have a wife/husband, therefore I will not have a child.
...Today: I do not have a wife/husband, but I'm going to make an end run around the social system that's been accepted for thousands of years as well as the natural reproductive processes and get myself a child anyway.
Is this supposed to be progress?
June 25th, 2008 at 6:47 pm
The logic I see here leaves me with no choice but to be childless forever if I am only to have a baby when I'm married.
In a way, it is the fault of you men. Because if a female gets an education, establishes herself in her career, is self-sufficient, but OVER THIRTY, she has lost her "market value" (youth and beauty, apparently), and no man will want someone who wants a baby--they're too busy looking for 20-somethings to just have fun with. So it is harder for us to find a husband (or at least, a mature man). So you have limited our options and we have to take another course--single motherhood.
And yes, pjk, in a way, that is progress. At least to me. Because people aren't confined by society's strict expections and can fulfill their life dreams if they so choose. And without being stoned to death.
June 25th, 2008 at 6:53 pm
re: And yes, pjk, in a way, that is progress. At least to me. Because people aren't confined by society's strict expections and can fulfill their life dreams if they so choose. And without being stoned to death
...It's progress that the child's needs are trumped by the parent's "llfe dreams?" OK. If you say so...
June 25th, 2008 at 7:03 pm
What child, pjk? Because there wouldn't be one if we could only have a baby if we were married. Are you talking about teen girls? Or adult women? And why are you assuming their needs would not be met? Do you mean "need for a father"? Well, if there isn't a husband and doesn't look like there will be anytime soon, do you think that women should just consign themselves to being childless? You can't make me believe that this is a selfish wish.
June 25th, 2008 at 7:03 pm
...my "life's dream" is to win a Stanley Cup championship. Unfortunately I never had the skill and am too old to try now. That's the way it is. We don't all have a natural right to fulfill our "life's dream."
June 25th, 2008 at 7:08 pm
re: Well, if there isn't a husband and doesn't look like there will be anytime soon, do you think that women should just consign themselves to being childless?
...um, yes. Same goes for men without a wife. There are lots of ways to serve children without actually giving birth to or fathering one. There are plenty of people without biological children of their own who nonetheless are lifelong, positive influences on children. You can teach, be a Big Brother or Big Sister, and on and on...I'd say the most fabulous man I've ever met was an uncle I had who died years ago - childless.
Children's need for both parents > Man or woman's want for a child
June 25th, 2008 at 7:09 pm
The Stanley Cup is not a baby. I think for most of history, women who weren't married were not allowed to have children, or if they did, the kids would be taken from them and sometimes the women would be killed. Men are important; I'm not saying they aren't. The goal for most of us is to get a husband. But sometimes the baby comes first because of biological necessity. This does not apply to teens, however. But to older females with eggs near the expiration date.
June 25th, 2008 at 7:10 pm
Well, pjk,
I think we will have to agree to disagree.
June 25th, 2008 at 7:28 pm
Jeana,
You misunderstand.
I am not trying to convince you of anything. See rational people can be convinced. Irrational people keep doing what you do. God can raise people from the dead, if he chooses, but he cannot raise a person pretending to be dead no matter what. Debating with you is futile.
As far as self-centered people like you exist, families will crumble and children will suffer.
Your attitude is - I want a kid. Therefore I shall have it.
Notice the "it" - a kid is a non-entity, "it" is a possession for single mothers by choice. No concern for the wellbeing for the child. Its like a kid trying to cage a free bird, in order to make it a pet. I want a pet, and I shall have it. I will feed it and let it fly around in the confined space, that should be enough, no need for real freedom. The cage is good enough.
By the way, according to current laws, you have complete rights to have kids. You have complete rights to ruin their lives, put them through hell or mutilate them or hurt them (just bring a sob story blaming a man for all your actions). So please go ahead and fire away, I have nothing to say to you till you grow a set of decent ethics.
Annie - maybe you ought to consider the mortality rate of babies and mothers before modern medicine came in to their rescue along with surgery. Yes, I definitely support doing minimal harm, yet there are women who voluntarily opt for options like C-section. Its beyond me, but I have seen mothers of young pregnant women insist on C-sections, despite doctor's advice to the contrary, protestation from the pregnant daughter and the in-laws. If anything, males being involved in childbirth as doctors and fathers has created a more clearer understanding of the process by men, resulting in balanced appreciation of the act of giving birth. By balanced I mean those men that considered it an (men couldn't handle it sorts) miracle, now see it as a natural process. Those men that consider it trivial now appreciate the effort better knowing the care, labor and risks that go into it.
June 25th, 2008 at 7:49 pm
Wow, I have a great deal to catch up on here... where to begin...
Demonspawn,
In response to my question "Why exactly is declining birth rates a problem?"... you offered the following response:
"Depends on your ultimate goal. Do you like being American? Do you like being non-Islamic?
In 200 years or so, the vast majority of the world will be under Islamic rule.. simply by birth rates. Americans might be saved from Islam, but we'll be Mexican instead. We're getting the far better deal in my opinion. I feel sorry for Europeans.
Want something more touchable? Social security and medicade are failing due to birthrates. The worker crop will not be able to take care of the demand from the aging. Society is going to get longer and longer in the tooth, and given the "mandatory compassion" voted in by women, will suck up more and more national resources pulling the nation further towards/into economic collapse."
There are numerous problems with this perspective, but let me start by talking about my "ultimate goal" when it comes to the population issue.
My ultimate goal is to see the world stabilize at a sustainable population level before we grow to a size that leads to global environmental collapse.
Being american, and being non-islamic pale in comparison to ensuring that I have air to breath, water to drink, and food to eat.
Air, water, and food are what is at stake for everyone if we do not get our global population growth under control... if you think 4 dollar per gallon gas is a problem, just wait until it is 50 dollars for a gallon of drinking water.
That is ultimately what we will deal with (and worse) if population dynamics to not settle into steady state relatively quickly... we don't have the 200 years you are proposing... environmental collapse would have occured already.
So I really have nothing to worry about when it comes to losing my nation or my religion if I've already starved to death.
Furthermore, social security is failing because it was constructed upon a faulty social model. It is and always has been a pyramid scheme... if populations could grow forever it would have worked fine... but the people who instituted it were short sighted and selfish. The only way it works is if the next generation is continually larger than the previous... well guess what?... the earth has limited capacity and limited resources. The system was doomed from it's inception because the assumptions upon which it is built are tragically flawed.
Economic collapse can only be avoided when we begin to explore sustainable economic strategies which are not predicated upon the continual emergence of new and larger markets.
This isn't about compassion so much as it is about maturity... we as a society need to grow up and we need to do it quickly.
June 25th, 2008 at 7:54 pm
The logic I see here leaves me with no choice but to be childless forever if I am only to have a baby when I'm married.
The logic here is that to conclude that single moms raising children alone by necessity proves that fathers are useless is a load of bullsh!t.
Women who end up raising children on their own through circumstances beyond their control are not what the folks are talking about. The problem is the fact that there are people out there advocating that fathers are useless and children are better off without them.
When I try to see why someone else is upset over an issue like this one thing I do is think about a situation that upsets me. You say that you know how it feels to be written off just because you're a woman (and I dare you to find one person on this forum that would say that up deserve to written off because of your gender). Think about how that makes you feel and it will give you insight into why this Single Motherhood by Choice nonsense is just that, nonsense.
June 25th, 2008 at 8:02 pm
Jeans Says:
"Why should I never have a baby just because my eggs are old and dusty? My son is the best thing about my life. If I didn’t have him, I would have nothing. And I really don’t think that I should have to wait for Mr. Right to come along in a timely fashion in order for me to fulfill my dream of motherhood."
Why should you have to wait for "Mr. Right"?
Sometimes we have to make sacrifices to achieve our dreams... sometimes we have to compromise on other issues in order to make our dreams come true.
If my dream is to become a doctor, I might just have to give up partying and drinking if I want to see that come to pass... I might have to sacrifice fun and enjoyment of certain things in order to gain the joy and sense of accomplishment of achieving my dream.
Why don't you seem to understand that?
Being a responsible parent is about doing what is best for your children... and having two parents is generally what is best (eliminating bad parent scenarios).
Why wasn't this a sacrifice you were willing to make to achieve your dream?... Why weren't you willing to settle down with "Mr. decent" to raise a family with?
Instead what you have done is decided to hedge your bets at the expense of your child... you want to have your cake and eat it too... to have your child but still be free to play the field in the hopes that one day "Mr. Right" swoops in.
Sorry, but that is like the guy who goes to medical school and continues to party like he was a freshman in college because they don't want to give up anything in order to get their dream.
The issue of course is that in that situation the only one who gets punished for that immature behavior is the med student... you on the other hand are potentially punishing your son because you aren't willing to make the sacrifices necessary to ensure what is best for him.
You could have easily found someone who was good enough but not necessarily "perfect"... but noooo... you've got to remain a free agent while you raise your son "just in case".
June 25th, 2008 at 8:12 pm
Because she's female.
Women are much less capable of understanding that because nature and nurture. They are biologically prone to systems of equity (value for being instead of value for accomplishing) and they are raised to believe that they should be able to get/do whatever they want!
As a little green guy would put it:
Choices? Responsibility? A women thinks not of these things.
Biological drive to obtain and claim the highest status male possible.
But imagine said med student had government assistance to help him become a doctor even tho they partied all weekend. Then the doctor's patients, much like Jeana's child, pays the price for it. And likely that Doctor, just like Jeana, will rationalize away responsibility and not care.
There will ALWAYS be air to breathe, water to drink, and food to eat.
Just not enough for everyone.
Kinda how it's always been, even back when the world population was a hundredth of what it is today.
And what happened back then? Oh, ya, larger, more powerful groups of people took it from smaller less powerful groups of people. Just like what will happen in the future.
June 25th, 2008 at 8:36 pm
Jeana Says:
"The logic I see here leaves me with no choice but to be childless forever if I am only to have a baby when I'm married.
In a way, it is the fault of you men. Because if a female gets an education, establishes herself in her career, is self-sufficient, but OVER THIRTY, she has lost her "market value" (youth and beauty, apparently), and no man will want someone who wants a baby--they're too busy looking for 20-somethings to just have fun with. So it is harder for us to find a husband (or at least, a mature man). "
What is so difficult about finding someone worth having children with and getting married?
The problem is your apparent requirment of "perfection" before even considering marriage.
You've got two choices you can responsibly make in my opinion:
Choice #1 - Choose to wait for Mr Perfect and have a child when/if he shows up... potentially sacrificing your ability to have a child.
Choice #2 - Choose to find Mr Decent and have a child... potentially sacrificing your ability to be with Mr Perfect if he appears later on.
Your unwillingness to make any sacrifice or compromise to get what you want is a sign of immaturity.
In life we must prioritize things and go for what is most important to us... each individual has to decide if finding Mr or Miss Perfect is more important and go with option #1... or that having a child is more important and going with option #2.
Also, about women going for a career and not getting involved in serious relationships... somehow men have managed to generations to meet up with women while pursueing careers and getting married well before they hit the age of 30.
If men can do it, so can women... so your argument is a cop out.
The real issue is that most career women aren't ready to make choice 2... they are busy waiting for choice 1 to pan out when they suddenly realize that time is running out on the whole having a child thing... then since they have invested so much time waiting for Mr Perfect to show up, they commit the sunk cost fallacy and stick with it, refusing to "settle" because it would have meant they wasted over a decade of their life waiting for something they ended up giving up on... so instead they cling to the hope that Mr Perfect will eventually show up... but go for the baby anyway since they don't want to miss out on both.
It is human psychology at its most deranged.
June 25th, 2008 at 8:44 pm
Demonspawn Says:
"There will ALWAYS be air to breathe, water to drink, and food to eat.
Just not enough for everyone."
Have you ever done the bacterial culture experiment where you just let it grow unhindered?
If not I'll tell you what happens... all the resources are consumed and they all die.
Think of humans as the culture and the earth as the dish we are growing in... if we do not control our own growth, the environment will do it for us... and it won't be pretty.
Just to make things clear... no, there won't necessarily "always" be air to breath, water to drink, and food to eat.
Many species have gone extinct before... acting as if that is an impossibility for human kind is incorrect. Your projections for the next 200 years won't have even a remote chance of comming to pass if current birth rates continue simply because we would have exceeded the ability of the planet to support us... we won't even have oil within the next 50 years... and you think that population growth is going to be the big issue for growing economies?
June 25th, 2008 at 8:54 pm
Not applicable:
1. Earth has renewing resources
2. Bacteria won't kill each other to secure exclusive access to limited resources like humans will.
Therefore:
Yes, we WILL control our growth, one way or another. Do you want to be on the controlling or the controlled (dead) side?
Are you even reading the current birth rates?
Worldwide population is headed to crash, overall. Few populations are sustaining and a select number are gaining.
P.S. I'm not sure I believe the 'peak oil' theory yet. We have massive untapped resources within the US that we don't drill for some reason.
June 25th, 2008 at 9:52 pm
Demonspawn Says:
"1. Earth has renewing resources"
Not on the time scale that is important for us... yes fresh water will eventually renew itself, but on the order of thousands if not millions of years.
Technically oil will eventually "renew" itself... the reason it is not considered renewable is because the renewal process is too slow to be practical.
"2. Bacteria won't kill each other to secure exclusive access to limited resources like humans will."
This is NOT a desirable outcome... war to obtain food isn't a goal worth promoting just because you feel like some other culture is out producing us in terms of babies.
"Therefore:
Yes, we WILL control our growth, one way or another. Do you want to be on the controlling or the controlled (dead) side?"
If it really comes down to it, there will be no difference between the sides... both sides will be dead or in a state that isn't worth living in.
"Are you even reading the current birth rates?
Worldwide population is headed to crash, overall. Few populations are sustaining and a select number are gaining."
Technically we are already beyond the sustainable human population of the earth... but I didn't want to make the picture seem too dismall lol
In terms of consumption, if every human being on the earth consumed resources at the same rate that americans do, we would need 3 earths to sustain the current human population... the problem is that we americans aren't consuming less... and other nations are rapidly consuming more to meet our standard of living. With the population we already have, that doesn't work.
"I'm not sure I believe the 'peak oil' theory yet. We have massive untapped resources within the US that we don't drill for some reason."
We either hit peak oil already, or are going to hit it within less than five years... all the untapped resources you refer to are not enough to change that fact.
Every expert I have spoken to on this issue has told me the same thing, all the models I have seen point in the same direction... the general concensus amongst the experts and scientific community is that peak oil is a fact.
The general public isn't really aware of this as it would probably cause a certain sense of panic... but whether or not you personally believe it, the facts are available and have been analyzed. To refute the current studies would require a massive discovery of oil that has not been made and is not predicted to occur.
I know you think that upping our population and continueing with this as usual is going to work... but to sort of tie things together... that is just as irresponsible as a person being a single parent by choice and thinking everything will turn out alright.
You may not buy into "peak oil theory"... but these women who are single mothers by choice don't by into the contention that fathers are important and that two parents are critical for enhancing the odds of proper child development... both you and those women are wrong though.
You want to believe something because it fits your motivation... they want to believe something because it fits their motivation.
In both cases however you are gambling with peoples lives that are not your own... and that is irresponsible.
June 25th, 2008 at 10:13 pm
Jeana,
You wrote:
"The logic I see here leaves me with no choice but to be childless forever if I am only to have a baby when I'm married.
In a way, it is the fault of you men. Because if a female gets an education, establishes herself in her career, is self-sufficient, but OVER THIRTY, she has lost her "market value" (youth and beauty, apparently), and no man will want someone who wants a baby--they're too busy looking for 20-somethings to just have fun with. So it is harder for us to find a husband (or at least, a mature man). So you have limited our options and we have to take another course--single motherhood.
And yes, pjk, in a way, that is progress. At least to me. Because people aren't confined by society's strict expections and can fulfill their life dreams if they so choose. And without being stoned to death."
Here are a few items you might wish to ponder:
1. There was a time -- a long time -- not so long ago when both men and women were at effective equal or near-equal risk of winding up childless in life due to simple failure to find a mate. It was very, very important to men and women to find a spouse, because if they did not, they would never have a family. Ergo, finding the right spouse was a very big deal, and it was essential to having children. No spouse, no children.
2. Today, women have all the choices in the world for having children, including the extremely disgusting "choice" of sperm-trapping a man and getting some scum lawyer to make the man pay for "getting the woman pregnant" while of course, she exercised her "choice".
3. Today, women have all the choices in the world for any career they want consistent with their skills and abilities, and vast numbers of women have entered medicine, law and numerous other fields requiring graduate degrees, and countless fields requiring undergraduate degrees.
4. Today, women are leaving their careers in droves. They bail out of law firms like paratroopers in WWII. Female MDs cut back to "barely working" -- if working at all -- all over the country (after they succeeded in winning that med school slot which some less studious male would have gotten -- which male is now teaching highschool biology and hoping his wife doesn't divorce him for making insufficient money). Female MBAs from Stanford, Harvard, Northwestern and Penn try to find jobs where they can "job share" which means for executives trying to deal with them, you get one of them one day, another on another day, and progress on any matter seems somewhere between slow and "in reverse".
5. And finally, today, women are whining and complaining like never before, because they were told they should have it all, while they found it is actually very hard work to have it all, most have realized they don't even want it all, and they have, by dragging an entire civilization along in this insane voyage of self-non-discovery, made themselves extremely unhappy with their own selves, made men equally unhappy with them, and enabled government to grow various family-destroying enterprises to give the usual incompetents of government (most of them) yet another field in which they can incompetently "protect" some new deserving constituents.
Life is desperately short Jeana. It goes by in a flash.
It boggles my mind that any human could possibly find "a career" to be such a big darned deal. Who the heck cares? So you get lots of money. (If you don't get creamed along the way which in fact the majority of people actually do.) And with lots of money, you find, you can also get lots of the wrong people in your life. And eventually you figure out what most Roman Rulers found out -- the more successful you are, the more you are a target and the more of your resources and time you need to spend protecting yourself. I.e., you begin to envy the peasants more and more.
If you are working on important frontiers, and think you can achieve such a dream as a cure for cancer, world-changing antiviral drugs, cold-fusion, or world peace, then yes, I can understand how such visions of contribution to humanity could cause you to delay pursuing a family life. In that context, one would rightly adopt humanity as one's emotional family and do one's very best for that special family you have chosen.
But for every other woman in the world who is not working towards such goals with their "career" I think you have all been duped into losing the most important opportunity of your life -- the opportunity to bring healthy and good new life into the world -- and duped by a handful of completely non-representative extremists who simply threw down some classic arguments of the type which are impossible-to-prove-incorrect (e.g., can't a woman do anything that a man can do? Answer: sure, but who cares?)
With these simple argument tricks, that small handful of women drew tons of attention to themselves, stirred up a hornets nest of discontent -- much of which was not discontent before the stirring -- AND PRE-EMPTED UNTOLD MILLIONS OF WOMEN AND MEN FROM PURSUING THEIR DEEPEST AND MOST REAL LIFE DREAMS OF ACHIEVING A FAMILY.
And in the process, that tiny handful of women helped to make some folks a lot more wealthy? Do you know who they made more wealthy?
Holders of land, liquid assets, and all types of businesses. Also universities.
And they did this at the expense of the emotional and familial poverty of vast numbers of women, equal numbers of men, and even greater numbers of children who were never even born.
June 25th, 2008 at 10:33 pm
P.S.
In case it is not clear from the above, repairing this mess means surmounting one horrific challenge: Slaying the multi-headed government dragon and associated industries which are populated by greed-crazed professionals (lawyers and others) who are feeding on the rotting flesh of freshly destroyed families.
Until this beast is slayed, the supply of men willing to marry will go down and down and down until it is just plain zilch.
While women were whining like crazy about when and how and how hard it was for them to deal with "having it all", govenment agencies and their private, for-profit partners in crime (lawyers) stepped into the logic-void, and now they demand to be fed.
And the get fed the best when families get ripped to shreds or a woman sperm-traps a productive, hard-working man.
June 25th, 2008 at 10:47 pm
AnonymousPamphleteer,
Your post was absolutely great, but I would like to add one thing further that I've touched on but would like to expand a bit. You say:
"Ergo, finding the right spouse was a very big deal, and it was essential to having children. No spouse, no children."
This is very true, however it is important to realize that they were focused upon finding the "right" spouse... not the "perfect" spouse... not "prince charming"... not some fantasy based dream of what the ultimate guy is supposed to be like.
In our grandparents generation men and women dated and got together in an effort to find someone who was of decent moral fiber and seemed to fit a much less stringent list of standards than modern men and women (women in particular) have.
In general, if a guy worked hard, made a decent living, and came from a good family background... sharing ethnic and religious qualities... they were in good shape.
That is all out the window when it comes to the modern day career woman... now it is about how ambitious you are, are you too ambitious?... not ambitious enough?... How much time you spend at the gym, does he work out too much?... does he not exercise at all?.... Do you read the right books, listen to the right music, watch the right TV shows/movies etc...
The list is so extensive and exhaustive that I will save people the pain of having to read just the small portions I can think of off the top of my head.
The point I am making is two fold... the first is that our grand parents generation was generally happy with one another... were things perfect?... nope... but life isn't perfect and they recognized that and stuck it out together.
Modern people have a totally misaligned sense of what a good spouse is, and career women in particular have this crazy belief that somehow the right spouse has to ride in on a white horse ready to slay dragons and then recite poetry all the while standing back just far enough to let her be the strong independant woman he has the utmost respect for... except when she needs a shoulder to cry on, and then he'd better be there immediately.
Relationships are hard work, ask any elderly person if their 60 year marriage was perfect all the way through... I'd be shocked if any of them said yes... but they stuck it out in order to raise a family together and made the necessary sacrifices to do it. Ask them if they were glad they got married and if they were happy with their spouse and I am sure most would say yes.
Now husbands and wives get pissed over the most petty things imaginable and then throw in the towel... it is really sad if you ask me.
June 25th, 2008 at 10:52 pm
Jason,
I agree completely with your addition and couldn't have said it better.
June 25th, 2008 at 11:48 pm
Did I say it was desirable? It's inevitable. When resources get short, people are going to start killing each other to obtain them. You can stick your head in the sand and pretend that it won't happen or you can prepare for the eventuality of it. Your call.
Now, do you want to be the one killing and living, or the one being killed? Or are you going to bitch and moan about choice C where we'll all magically stop doing what's in our short term best interests (having children and 'overpopulating' the earth) because of some long term problem?
I mean, if that reasoning hasn't stopped feminism, what makes you think it's going to stop overpopulation?
Ya, and so is global warming.... You do realize that, and I will put $100 down on, that the next 5 years will be a cooling cycle. Why? No sunspots. Our sun is decreasing output (it has been increasing for several years before now) Global warming is panic and lies to create a situation to be manipulated to a political end. Research the NYT and realize that they've changed from global warming to global freeze at least 5 times in the last 150 years.
I need to see evidence a lot more studious than I've previously seen to support the concept of peak oil and that we are at it.
Yes, I'm a natural skeptic.
Little known historical fact: Twice as many women have reproduced as men. Just a little FYI for Jeana on her whole "women have always had it tougher" crusade.
Points 4 and 5.. more suffering that women in the workplace has wraught. Did you know that the UK is facing a critical doctor shortage right now? Why? Because they give more female schooling, and then have a hard time keeping them working. If they'd just wise up and start doing what best for society rather than what's best for political correctness, they'd be much better off.
That's because modern people, and women moreso than men, seek happiness from external rather than internal sources. HE's suposto make her happy. THE NEW CAR is the way to be happy. A 'POWER' JOB is the source of happiness....
They're all wrong. The only source of happiness is internal, deciding to be content with what you have.
June 25th, 2008 at 11:49 pm
Oh, and forgot to add for women and sources of happiness:
"If I have a child, then I'll be happy"
At that point, are they having a child or a tool?
June 25th, 2008 at 11:58 pm
Annie,
This headline from today's LA Times:
"Rotavirus vaccine proves highly effective
Los Angeles Times
The highly contagious human rotavirus is the leading cause of severe vomiting and diarrhea in infants and young children around the world, killing 600000 children annually."
Not sure if the responsible researchers were men or women. Jonas Salk was a man I'm told.
June 26th, 2008 at 12:19 am
Demonspawn Says:
"Did I say it was desirable? It's inevitable. When resources get short, people are going to start killing each other to obtain them. You can stick your head in the sand and pretend that it won't happen or you can prepare for the eventuality of it. Your call."
Except if we actually plan things rationally and take control of our situation we don't have to let resources get short.
That is my entire point. Running out of resources isn't inevitable unless you propose that human kind is completely incapable of controling itself.
If it is incapable of controlling itself the survivors will envy the dead.
"I mean, if that reasoning hasn't stopped feminism, what makes you think it's going to stop overpopulation?"
Because overpopulation will negatively effect women too... therefore there isn't a lobby group that can claim victimhood in order to press their breeding adgenda ;)
Ultimately the two situations aren't the same.
Your course of reasoning can only serve to convince me of one thing... that human beings are not going to make it... that is really what is at stake when it comes to overpopulation.
Feminism never had the same inherent threat of extinction... it poses other threats though which are disturbing.
"Ya, and so is global warming.... You do realize that, and I will put $100 down on, that the next 5 years will be a cooling cycle. Why? No sunspots. Our sun is decreasing output (it has been increasing for several years before now) Global warming is panic and lies to create a situation to be manipulated to a political end. Research the NYT and realize that they've changed from global warming to global freeze at least 5 times in the last 150 years.
I need to see evidence a lot more studious than I've previously seen to support the concept of peak oil and that we are at it.
Yes, I'm a natural skeptic."
No, you aren't a skeptic... you are something else entirely on this matter.
Allow me to explain.
You have been presented with two theories... one claiming that human activity has resulted in climate change... and the other that climate change is due to sun spot activity.
The first theory is the widely accepted theory amongst experts, has hundreds of papers to it's credit and has been explored for a very long time and fits the evidence... furthermore it has made predictions which are comming to pass.
The second theory is one which is promoted by a small minority of scientists, has much less credibility in terms of papers published which have explored this suggestion.
A true skeptic would actually be MORE skeptical of the second theory... they certainly wouldn't be betting money on it against the first better supported and more established theory.
That doesn't necessarily make the second theory wrong by the way... but it certainly isn't the front runner, and you have no legitimate basis for betting on it being correct beyond you wanting it to be correct.
There is absolutely no rational reason for the sun spot theory to be considered anything but a more remote possibility than the current front runner of human induced climate change.
So that leads us to the question of why you would bet on the underdog theory?... I suspect that it is because that theory better fits what you want to believe rather than because it has better evidence to support it... it actually has much less evidence in support of it and has been investigated to a far lesser degree.
A true skeptic would be more careful about buying into that theory... but here you are ready and willing to put money on it.
What you say here I agree with though:
"They're all wrong. The only source of happiness is internal, deciding to be content with what you have."
On this I believe you are absolutely right... true and sustained happiness comes from within... external things which make you feel happy are only momentary fixes.
June 26th, 2008 at 12:19 am
Jason,
First of all, Mr. Perfect doesn’t exist. Mr. Decent is the best we hope for.
“Also, about women going for a career and not getting involved in serious relationships... somehow men have managed to generations to meet up with women while pursueing careers and getting married well before they hit the age of 30. If men can do it, so can women... so your argument is a cop out.”
They were able to do it, Jason, because they had the little wifey at home doing everything including childcare so they only had to worry about work and/or their education. They could meet someone in high school and not worry about a thing from then on. It’s hard to juggle a home, a baby, work and school. Better to get school done, then establish yourself at work, then concentrate on a guy.
And I think we are perfectly willing to settle. We do it all the time. I think it’s you men who look for super-model girl.
June 26th, 2008 at 12:19 am
AnonymousPamphleteer,
Nice little speech. So how do I pay for the little lives I’m supposed to be bringing into the world? What if my husband’s income isn’t sufficient? Just be happy barely making it? It is so confusing listening to you men—one minute you are railing against the lazy, shiftless SAH mothers, the next you are extolling the virtues of moms pumping out babies and forgoing careers. And if you are PolishKnight, you do both in the same breath.
And maybe some of those professionals who are cutting back on their work are realizing that they want more time with their families. No one derides men who want more time with their families; why are females who do the same somehow not very good workers & taking work away from a poor, hard-working man?
Are men working for those humanitarian causes you mentioned? Why no, they get to have careers, a wife, and children. But we females have to make a choice I guess. Well, I reject it. I can have it all and I do. And I really like my life.
June 26th, 2008 at 12:26 am
Demon and Jason and the other males who refuse to see a different perspective,
The next time I hear one of you guys lamenting how they they’d get married but are so very afraid that a woman will turn evil and steal all their money and take their kids, and so will NEVER get married but will get a surrogate and have a baby that way, I hope you inform him how very selfish he is. Then tell him to join Big Brothers or hope to become an uncle. Make sure you let him know that just because he wants to be a father, he has no right until he’s duly married.
June 26th, 2008 at 12:46 am
"it is so confusing listening to you men"
If you are confused listening to me, I suspect the problem is with your listening.
There has been a very harmful structural shift in the U.S., which shift includes some very bad obstacles from our very own government, supposedly to "protect" women and "give them choices" which have in fact very substantially reduced the availability of what for the vast majority of women was arguably their most favored choice by far.
All of this so that an angry few could channel their angry energy into a "have it all" experiment with their own lives. Which experiment is obviously not a great success in this country.
What men "get to have" in case you haven't noticed it is
1. absurd work loads,
2. tremendous stress upon them to succeed because if they fail they lose all and then some,
3. shortened life expectancy,
4. responsibility for women's choices -- including choices which make involuntary slaves of men
5. a grotesque imbalance of responsibility for any bad outcome their unaccountable female spouse wishes to place blame upon them for,
6. a guarantee of loss of kids, home, life savings and more if the woman is ever "unhappy" whatever that might mean to her.
When I see someone write about how "men get to have careers" what I think is this:
Whoever wrote that has no idea the quiet desperation which most men live in throughout their entire "careers". Career means job. Job means work. Work can also mean failure. Firing. Layoffs. Bad luck. Lots of not-much-fun stuff in case you didn't know.
Career is a fancy word for "work or perish".
It is mind-boggling to me that having no choice in life but a lifelong "career" (i.e., compulsory work) could be appealing to anyone -- except possibly someone who has never had a career.
Most men would dump their "careers" for a fully paid livelihood provided by someone else -- in a heartbeat. In fact they work their whole lives in hope of achieving this -- it's called retirement.
But you write about a "career" like it is some new brand of designer purse that you simply must have. Something you read about in a fashion magazine.
That is a real jaw-dropper from where I sit.
"Hmmmm, let's see, I'll take the GQ-looking husband, the cute twin kids, that Forest Green Range Rover, a Gucci purse -- oh! And how about a fun "power job" I can talk about over lunch with my friends! -- But then I'll need some designer shoes, Anne Taylor suits, some Hermes scarves..."
Sorry Jeana, but when people talk about careers like some possession they want to acquire I know for sure they have no idea what it really is. Fun, it is not. Life-shortening it is.
Which might be why so many women are trying so desperately to get out of their "careers" in law, medicine, MBA jobs, and more. They found out that a real "career" is a back-breaking, sleep-depriving, inescapable tour of anti-fun for the vast majority of people.
Wake up and smell the carnage -- that's the smell of people whose "careers" didn't work out as they had hoped. That's the outcome of most "careers".
June 26th, 2008 at 1:26 am
AnonymousPamphleteer,
1) I work & have a career. I never said it was easy or fun, but it allows me to ensure that my family can live in a better place and have an easier life overall than if we only had my husband’s income.
2) I have one son and he’s in school all day. What should I do if I didn’t work during the hours from 8:00 to 2:45?
3) The reality is that women have to work to support themselves (if single) or themselves and their families (if married). The economy has been steadily getting worse since 2000. People go bankrupt over medical expenses, divorce, and illness. People are losing their homes right and left. It is necessary that women work. We do not have an option, most of us, anyway.
4) Work is hard and tiring, we don’t get appreciated as much as we should, medical benefits cost more and more like gasoline but real income is not going up, so we work. But work also does provide fulfillment. The women’s movement didn’t make women work. I think the economy also played a role. And if women don’t want to work and their husbands agree, then they don’t. And if we don’t want to have a baby every other year, then we don’t have to. And if we want to have a baby, then we can. And if we can support ourselves while choosing this route, then so be it.
I’m not the one who believes in a marriage strike. But I have female friends and relatives who are almost 40 and over 40 and who don’t have a baby. I feel bad for them because they want a baby and can’t find the right guy. I would support their decision to have a baby on their own. I doubt any will, but if they did, I say good for them.
June 26th, 2008 at 1:35 am
Jeana Says:
"First of all, Mr. Perfect doesn’t exist. Mr. Decent is the best we hope for."
Wrong... I could personally introduce you and any other single women to 30 or more single "Mr. Decent"'s in the span of 6 hours.
Let me give you an example of what I am talking about when it comes to some career women... the other day a woman I work with was discussing a recent guy she was dating.
Want to know why she broke it off with him?... Because he returned her calls too quickly... that's right... he called her back when she called him.
That was her reason for deciding not to date this guy anymore... it doesn't seem to me like there was anything wrong with this fellow, seemed like a "decent" guy from everything else she said... his only flaw apparently was not being unavailable enough to call her back promptly.
I see junk like this happen all the time by watching my female coworkers go through the male population like they were jelly beans... nothing in particular is wrong with any of them... they just have some odd flaw that to me seems like it is made up. She could have just as easily dumped this guy because he didn't call back soon enough.
If all this woman was looking for was a decent guy, then her definition of what constitutes decent needs some major adjusting.
"“Also, about women going for a career and not getting involved in serious relationships... somehow men have managed to generations to meet up with women while pursueing careers and getting married well before they hit the age of 30. If men can do it, so can women... so your argument is a cop out.”
They were able to do it, Jason, because they had the little wifey at home doing everything including childcare so they only had to worry about work and/or their education."
Something here doesn't follow.
Men of former generations managed to start a career and marry a woman because they had a wife a home doing everything???
Do you even see what you just said... you are asserting that men had time to meet a wife because they already had a wife... this makes no sense.
"They could meet someone in high school and not worry about a thing from then on. It’s hard to juggle a home, a baby, work and school. Better to get school done, then establish yourself at work, then concentrate on a guy. "
Again you are not making sense.
They could meet someone while they were in school... but women need to get done with school and establish their career first?... that isn't how men managed to do it though... they managed to do it specifically because they tried to establish a relationship BEFORE establishing their career. Remember what you said, they met someone in high school... that is prior to any career they ended up generating.
The reason women have gotten is screwed up is precisely because they think the education and career come first and the relationship comes later... unfortunately you have to work on establishing both as early as is reasonable, which generally means during college or soon after.
"And I think we are perfectly willing to settle. We do it all the time. I think it’s you men who look for super-model girl."
Um... have you looked around lately?... most women are not super-models... if that is what men are waiting for then we must be blind. Sure men like attractive women, but in general men aren't the ones doing the choosing. Don't believe me?... How many men asked you out before you got involved in your final relationship?... How many did you turn down or find fault with?
Somehow I doubt you are a super-model... so were all the men who asked you out "settling"?
June 26th, 2008 at 1:38 am
Jeana Says:
"It is so confusing listening to you men—one minute you are railing against the lazy, shiftless SAH mothers, the next you are extolling the virtues of moms pumping out babies and forgoing careers. "
Are we really just one collective mass?... I have said on multimple occasions here that women should NOT be pumping out babies and forgoing careers... but I guess I can't be an individual, and neither can anyone else.
We are apparently a hive mind.
June 26th, 2008 at 1:39 am
Let me clear it up for you, they aren't.
No, we'll make it. With much reduced numbers, but we'll make it.
Feminism brought the extinction of the Roman, Greek, and Babylonian empires, among other smaller cultures.
OH Jesus Christ. Truth by number of subscribers? If that's your belief then why are you combating feminism? More people believe in it than detract from it. They're "right" according to the wonderful reasoning skill you are telling me I should use.
Like the .7C temperature DROP last year?
Because, if you'll do your homework, you'll realize that the "overdog" has changed their story 5 times in the last 150 years. The same social activists which were screaming global warming were the same types of people screaming global freeze no less than 30 years ago.
Sunspot theory is the only model which fits the global climate without exception A, reason for this B, and We know this doesn't fit C. Perhaps that's why I subscribe to it?
Besides, global warming is the idea that man, with it's absolutely pitiful CO2 output is doing more damage than a volcanic eruption that outputs more CO2 in moments than mankind has in all it's history.
Hey, our CO2 is just magical somehow.
June 26th, 2008 at 1:44 am
The average temperature in April 2008 was 51.0 F. This was -1.0 F cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average, the 29th coolest April in 114 years. The temperature trend for the period of record (1895 to present) is 0.1 degrees Fahrenheit per decade.
www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/cag3/na.html
June 26th, 2008 at 1:55 am
Demonspawn Says:
"No, we'll make it. With much reduced numbers, but we'll make it."
You are acting like species never go extinct... what exactly guarantees that humans will make it through global catastrophy?
Just to let you know, 99.99% of all the species that have EVER existed are gone... saying "we'll make it" as if it is a foregone conclusion denies this fact of life.
"OH Jesus Christ. Truth by number of subscribers? If that's your belief then why are you combating feminism? More people believe in it than detract from it. They're "right" according to the wonderful reasoning skill you are telling me I should use."
Not truth by the number of subscribers... truth by the qualifications of the substribers.
The people who are supporters of human induced climate change are some of the most intelligent and educated people on the planet who have spent their entire careers looking into these matters.
That is hardly the same as some political movement which is supported by a number of people whose educational status is unimportant.
"Besides, global warming is the idea that man, with it's absolutely pitiful CO2 output is doing more damage than a volcanic eruption that outputs more CO2 in moments than mankind has in all it's history.
Hey, our CO2 is just magical somehow."
That is preposterous... the level of CO2 in the atmosphere today is at a concentration that has not been experienced through the history of the earth at least as far back as ice cores can tell us.
That is the fundamental problem... we are running an experiment with the earth that as far as we can tell has never been run before.
June 26th, 2008 at 2:13 am
and 99.9999999999% of all the species that have EVER existed never built buildings, refined oil, or used tools beyond the most simple.
There is a chance that we'll wipe ourselves out. I feel that it's much more likely that a small faction will survive. Perhaps those meek monks in Tibet will inherent the Earth.
About the only thing that will wipe out humans is stuff that will wipe out all life... like nuke war which will release TONS of CO2 and other greenhouse gases into the air which will create a fallout... winter??
Guess that leads us towards:
You speak as if there are no detractors:
Fox News | 5/23/2008
There’s a new global warming consensus in town.
It’s too bad the once-level-headed but now chicken-hearted Bush administration already has skedaddled, perhaps leaving our standard of living at the mercy of Barack Obama and his high regard for the international hate-America crowd.
The Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine this week announced that 31,072 U.S. scientists signed a petition stating that "… There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane or other greenhouse gases is causing, or will cause in the future, catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate..."
No.. no dissent at all...
June 26th, 2008 at 2:28 am
Jeana "In a way, it is the fault of you men. Because if a female gets an education, establishes herself in her career, is self-sufficient, but OVER THIRTY, she has lost her "market value" (youth and beauty, apparently), and no man will want someone who wants a baby--they're too busy looking for 20-somethings to just have fun with. So it is harder for us to find a husband (or at least, a mature man). So you have limited our options and we have to take another course--single motherhood."
Jeana, I am gobsmacked at the hypocrisy of this. I had to have the paramedics in to revive me after falling off my chair and stopping breathing.
On many occasions you have admitted that both yourself and most women want to marry men who earn more than they do. So it's not surprising that as women increase their earnings, the number of eligible men (who make as much or more than they do) tends to decline.
Women want to have all the economic opportunities, but are still less willing to trade down. So eventually women bargain themselves out of the partnering stakes. Yet when this happens, it is all the fault of us men. Unbelievable.
June 26th, 2008 at 2:37 am
Jeana,
On the question of whether women should be in the workforce, I think that up to a point it is a good thing for women to be working. If women are able to help contribute to the family finances, it takes some pressure off men.
But the idea that women should expect equal outcomes in the labour market is unrealistic and unsustainable. And it is also not realistic for women to have overly demanding careers and also raise children.
June 26th, 2008 at 2:52 am
Demonspawn
You'll like this, it fits into your whole clash of the cultures (and what they believe in) idea.
" The environmental committee of Spain's parliament approved resolutions that urge the European country to comply with the Great Apes Project — a plan developed by philosophers and scientists who say the animals deserve the same rights as their closest genetic relatives, the Reuters news agency reported."
All the best
June 26th, 2008 at 10:20 am
And it is also not realistic for women to have overly demanding careers and also raise children.
Careful here. You cannot put the bulk of the responsibility for raising children on women at the expense of career while simultaneously insisting that women who do so are not making an equal contribution to the family that should be recognized in the event of divorce.
June 26th, 2008 at 10:21 am
Jeana Says:
2) I have one son and he’s in school all day. What should I do if I didn’t work during the hours from 8:00 to 2:45?
And any employer who doesn't recognize that need for fulfilment and hire you, accomadate your silly work/life schedule regardless of his needs or wants in an employee is discriminating against you. And, you should be paid the same as your husband who works 45-50 hours a week otherwise that employer is perpetuating the paygap. Right? Because there are so many companies/businesses that can survive soley on hiring people who are available when kids are in school.
Why in the world do you need work from 8-3 Jeana. If feminists have taught us anything it is that even women without employment work more than men and are worth 140k a year for doing hour upon hour of scrubbing cooking and laundry. Shouldn't you be using those 6 hours for your much needed sleep or "me" time that all the other women in the US are being cheated out of?
June 26th, 2008 at 10:42 am
re: The average temperature in April 2008 was 51.0 F. This was -1.0 F cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average, the 29th coolest April in 114 years. The temperature trend for the period of record (1895 to present) is 0.1 degrees Fahrenheit per decade.
...can't wait to hear the global warming alarmists explain this one. "Uh, the melting of the ice caps caused by global warming actually pushed cold air down off the North Pole. But it's only temporary and rest assured we're all going to melt. Trust us."
...30 years ago, the alarmists cried global cooling. But people weren't as gullible back then as they are now and nobody bought it... Isn't water vapor the #1 greenhouse gas? Maybe we should get rid of water.
June 26th, 2008 at 11:10 am
Climate is average temperture over time. Do not confuse the average tempertaure for a month with the-- Climate.
As to cooling I recommend this:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/01/the-global-cooling-myth/
June 26th, 2008 at 11:19 am
You might also try the IPCC FAQ.
http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_Print_FAQs.pdf
Back to your regulraly scheduled MRA debate. :-)
June 26th, 2008 at 11:34 am
pjk-
The average temperature in May 2008 was 60.3 F. This was -0.7 F cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average, the 35th coolest May in 114 years. The temperature trend for the period of record (1895 to present) is 0.1 degrees Fahrenheit per decade.
Like I've said, I've got $100 dollars ;)
And around 20 years before that they were screaming global warming... but before that...... you know the story.
It's caused because there are first order, second order, and Nth order trends. Think distance, speed, and acceleration (and whatever is past that).
Looking at distance, you'll see one thing. But distance is a measure, not a trend.
So they look at speed, and find that temperature is rising or falling or whatever, and raise the alarm bells!
And if they're really good they just might look at acceleration, and find that even tho temperatures are rising, the rate of climb is shrinking to the point where it will become negative... like is happening now.
And if you look for things that control acceleration, sunspot theory (sunspots being a way of measuring the sun's energy output) fits... very very well.
Ever notice that temperature difference between day and night? You think something other than the sun will have such a profound affect on our global temperatures? You can fill the atmosphere with CO2.. if the sun isn't putting out energy we're still freezing.
Recognized with gains (and debts) made during the marriage? Yes. Recognized with alimony? No. Once the deal is over, the deal is over.
June 26th, 2008 at 11:36 am
Lewis:
From your article:
Where does the myth come from? Naturally enough, there is a kernel of truth behind it all. Firstly, there was a trend of cooling from the 40's to the 70's (although that needs to be qualified, as hemispheric or global temperature datasets were only just beginning to be assembled then). But people were well aware that extrapolating such a short trend was a mistake (Mason, 1976) .
I'll give you 3 guesses as to sunspot activity during that time... the first two don't count.
June 26th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/07/the-lure-of-solar-forcing/
June 26th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
And here is a fun one: http://www.skepticalscience.com/solar-activity-sunspots-global-warming.htm
My supplied link has a link to the paper referenced.
Back to Single mothers by choice.
June 26th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
I guess it's easy to make your point when you lie.
http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/SunspotCycle.shtml
June 26th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
Demonspawn Says:
"and 99.9999999999% of all the species that have EVER existed never built buildings, refined oil, or used tools beyond the most simple."
What is your point?
First of all saying that we are the only species who construct "buildings" isn't even correct as many social insects do this all the time.
A bee hive, a termite mount and an ant colony would all constitute a structure or "building" within which that species makes a shelter.
In addition, every organism tends to have some sort of unique adaptation.
Echo location is also a very specific trait that is attributed to less than 99.9999... % of species... but I don't see that preventing dolphins from ever going extinct.
Yes, we humans have unique and special adaptations... but none of those adaptations can even remotely guarantee our survival.
"About the only thing that will wipe out humans is stuff that will wipe out all life... like nuke war which will release TONS of CO2 and other greenhouse gases into the air which will create a fallout... winter??"
First of all, nuclear war would not wipe out all life on earth... there are organisms known as extremophiles which are actually adapted toward surviving extreme radiation conditions which would be likely to exist even after global nuclear catastrophy.
When you say "wipe out all life"... what you really mean is all life that you are personally familiar with, like dogs, cats, squirls, etc... which isn't the same thing.
Furthermore, exactly why would nuclear weapons release tons of CO2 into the atmosphere?... I haven't looked into that much, but I see absolutely no reason why this would be the case.
"You speak as if there are no detractors"
I do?... what about when I said the following:
"The second theory is one which is promoted by a small minority of scientists, has much less credibility in terms of papers published which have explored this suggestion."
How is saying that there is a small minority of detractors speaking as if no detractors exist at all?
Just to point something else out... you have to be careful about the sources that you cite and actually check into them a bit. Please read the following:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Oregon_Institute_of_Science_and_Medicine
Pay particular attention to this statement which is made by the same exact institute:
"the dangers from nuclear weapons have been distorted and exaggerated" into "demoralizing myths."
In other words, these same people who put out the petition you are talking about also contend that nuclear weapons aren't a danger to worry about either.
This actually contradicts what you just said about nuclear war being the thing that would wipe us all out.
So which is it?... are we to believe everything this institute says as being fully credible and reasonable?... which would mean accepting both propositions that global warming is a farce AND that the danger of nuclear weapons is a farce.
OR... do we understand that this institute constitutes a radical fringe of science which is not accepted by the vast majority of the scientific community?... thus casting both claims into doubt.
Furthermore... the petition you are talking about was published in 1997... and here is what the sourcewatch site hasto say about it:
"Robinson was not even a climate scientist. He was a biochemist with no published research in the field of climatology, and his paper had never been subjected to peer review by anyone with training in the field. In fact, the paper had never been accepted for publication anywhere, let alone in the NAS Proceedings. It was self-published by Robinson, who did the typesetting himself on his own computer."
And:
""The mailing is clearly designed to be deceptive by giving people the impression that the article, which is full of half-truths, is a reprint and has passed peer review," complained Raymond Pierrehumbert, a meteorlogist at the University of Chicago."
And:
"In addition to the bulk mailing, OISM's website enables people to add their names to the petition over the Internet, and by June 2000 it claimed to have recruited more than 19,000 scientists. The institute is so lax about screening names, however, that virtually anyone can sign, including for example Al Caruba, a pesticide-industry PR man and conservative ideologue "
And:
"When questioned in 1998, OISM's Arthur Robinson admitted that only 2,100 signers of the Oregon Petition had identified themselves as physicists, geophysicists, climatologists, or meteorologists, "and of those the greatest number are physicists." This grouping of fields concealed the fact that only a few dozen, at most, of the signatories were drawn from the core disciplines of climate science - such as meteorology, oceanography, and glaciology - and almost none were climate specialists."
In other words... the petition you are talking about is 10 years old... could be signed by anyone with any political/financial adgenda whatsoever, such as PR people from chemical industries... of those who were scientists who signed it, the great majority are not climatologists but experts in other unrelated fields... and was not subjected to the peer review process in any way shape or form when it came to publishing their ideas.
You've essentially decided to put your faith in an organization that does not actually follow the tenants of science... but here you are claiming to be a skeptic???
Where was your skepticism when it came to this institute?... I found all this information in about two seconds... but you were willing to gobble down everything you heard about them in a fox news report in about 20 seconds.
Like I said, you believe it because it is what you want to believe... not because it is necessarily credible.
That being said there is SOME credible work being done which does not support global warming... but that work is in the minority... should it be ignored?... no... but it shouldn't be given MORE credit than the huge number of papers that point to global warming being a real and problematic event.
June 26th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
First, you tell me that if more people subscribe to one thing than another, then the more subscribers must be right.
Then you tell me that because I agree with one thing this group says, I HAVE to agree with everything they say.
Well aren't you the follower?
I think you believe what you believe because it's what you've been told to believe.
Again, truth is not determined by number of pundits nor subscribers.
June 26th, 2008 at 12:37 pm
Tying this back to the main topic of this thread. Some people will disregard research that does not seem to agree with what they would like to be true... or would impede them from having or doing what they would like.
This is why when women decide to be "single mothers by choice", they are very apt to ignore, disregard the vast majority of research that suggests that is a bad idea and find remote sources which seem to support what they want... even if those sources aren't very credible.
It is a sad thing to realize about human nature that people will bend over backwards to convince themselves that what they want to be true... actually is true.
However when it comes to research, you never believe what you want... you believe what the data is telling you... which means being a single mother by choice is both irresponsible and socially dangerous. This remains true even though there exist specific individual cases where the children have turned out alright... people survive freak car accidents as well without wearing their seatbelt... that doesn't mean it should be suggested that seatbelts are unnecessary.
That is what these women are hoping for... that they're child will hit the remote chance of surviving a car wreck without a seatbelt all because they want to drive wrecklessly.
The analogy is clear... being a single parent by choice is wreckless and irresponsible.
I do agree with cousin dave though that adoption should be an option as one parent is better than no parents (i.e. it's better to have someone behind the wheel of a speeding car than to have the car speeding down the street without a driver at all).
June 26th, 2008 at 12:58 pm
Demonspawn Says:
"First, you tell me that if more people subscribe to one thing than another, then the more subscribers must be right."
I said absolutely no such thing.
What I contend is that when there is concensus amongst the scientific community on a subject... that carries far more weight than just a few dissenters.
Could the dissenters be right?... sure... but the odds are against them.
But here you are betting on the dissenters and ignoring the majority... that is not rational.
""Then you tell me that because I agree with one thing this group says, I HAVE to agree with everything they say."
Nope... what I am doing is putting their statements into context for you as being just one of a cluster of radical notions that these people have put forth without the training or expertise to do so.
The guy is a biochemist... but he has strong opinions about climate change and nuclear war... but those things have nothing to do with his credentials.
I am also not saying you have to agree... I believe my exact words were :
"are we to believe everything this institute says as being fully credible and reasonable?"
That's right, you heard me... if you are taking one things they say as being credible and reasonable based upon their lack of credentials... then you MUST take everything they say as being credible and reasonable based upon a similar lack of credentials.
You do not get to pick and choose what is credible and what isn't without making a distinction on how you come to that conclusion.
The best I can surmise is that you call the global warming claims credible because you agree... but call the nuclear war claims unreasonable because you dissagree.
In which case their opinion means nothing... their opinion only has importance if you say it is important.
That isn't how being a credible witness works... if you are credible, then everything must be given the same weight.
I don't get to look at the scientific literature and cherry pick the articles I want to believe and ignore the rest... I must take them all as being credible and then examine the entire picture.
You've essentially just made this institute an extension of your own opinion... which means it no longer carries any weight beyond you saying "I think the following..."
"I think you believe what you believe because it's what you've been told to believe."
Nope... I believe it because I've actually read the journal articles on it and spoken with real experts (i.e. actual climate experts... not just random people who have an opinion) on the subject and examined their data.
"Again, truth is not determined by number of pundits nor subscribers."
But these people aren't just random people with opinions... these are the people who know the most about the subject. They know more than you... they know more than me... and the overwhelming majority of them are all saying the same thing and their research is all pointing in the same direction
You are right that truth isn't a popularity contest... but science does not draw conclusions based upon popularity... it draws conclusions based upon data. The reason the majority of climatologists support the notion that human activity has resulted in climate change is because that is what their research tells them... it is what the data shows.
The only data you present here is decades old and not even necessarily peer reviewed... I've seen other people play the same games with research here... and it tends to be with reference to domestic violence and sexual abuse where they go back to the mid 1990's and use that as gospel.
It is the year 2008... find me something recent in a peer reviewed journal that even goes so far as to suggest that global warming is a farce... it doesn't exist.
What you are presenting here amounts to a conspiracy theory... not a credible or supported theory that is accepted by the scientific community at large. The issue isn't popularity... but why they don't accept it... the reason they don't accept it is because it isn't the best theory for what we observe. Human induced climate change is the best theory for what we observe... hence why there is a general concensus amongst the scientific community about it.
June 26th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
From your own link:
You will note in my skepticalscience link the chart. The red line is indicated as being the eleven year average while the blue line is indicated as being the corresponding 11 year average climate indicator.
I also note that the chart in your link gives a consistent picture of waxing and waning.
I am skeptical that reputable climate scientists would be unaware of this data and fail to include it in their calculations.
Perhaps this will suit you better. http://www.skepticalscience.com/solar-cycles-global-warming.htm
June 26th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
Lewis,
He is going by theories and data from 10 years ago. Back then there was muct more contention and debate amongst the scientific community about the cause of global warming.
That debate is pretty much over... but people can always look back ten years ago and claim that there is an active debate going on... of course it isn't really true as for the most part it has been settled.
Furthermore, if you examine the sunspot data, you will note that it peaked in around 2000 and then started to decline until hitting a minimum now... based upon the sun spot theory we should have seen reductions in global temperatures over the entirety of the last 8 years... but that isn't what we've seen which is precisely why that notion is not accepted by most people who are experts in the area of climate study.
Clinging to research and opinions from 1998 is no different than feminists who pull out domestic violence data from 1993 and act as if it still applies today.
June 26th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
Not to be a jerk or anything, but as for this whole "who's right, the majority or the minority?" question, all I have to say is:
The majority of people out there think men have it much better than women....even in the face of mountainous evidence to the contrary.
I'm just saying.
June 26th, 2008 at 1:33 pm
Where do you get off telling me how I must think or what I must do?
How do I come to my decision of what is credible and what isn't? I'll admit I base a lot of it on the crowd it comes from. Stuff from the "we're destroying the earth" crowd faces FAR more scrutiny from me. The Sunspot model is not from said crowd, seems reasonable, fits the models, and therefore appears to be good and valid which is why I believe in it.
As for why the "we're screwing everything up" crowd receives more scrutiny? They've changed their story time and time again over the years. They've made many predictions which have not been true. They've made the "CFC destroys the ozone" scare, which lead to laws and changes and expenses which ultimately was found to be not true at all. Because the science is linked to political groups which is attempting to force similar massive economic changes.
So it's an issue of cost to the person compounded by previous failures. Subscribing to the "the world is ending and it's our fault" requires quite a substantial cost to me in the changes such a belief would require. So of course it gets tons more scrutiny than other suggestions. If you want me to give up my carbon footprint and modern luxuries, you're going to have to prove to me, beyond any reasonable doubt, that you're right and it's in my best interests to subscribe and implement such a theory. And then you've gotta convince me their your science... this time around... is not wrong.
Hrm... I guess this tangent was ultimately more on topic than anyone would of thought.
June 26th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
And no, reductions in the acceleration of global temperatures over the entirety of the last 8 years. Which we are now witnessing in it's first order form as temperatures dropping.
It's not a first-order (velocity) relationship. It's a second-order (acceleration) relationship.
And yes, CO2 is a factor, but it's akin to complaining about the roughness of the paint job slowing down the car (CO2) in relation to the performance of the engine (Sun).
Anyways, I'm fine with bringing it back onto topic.
June 26th, 2008 at 1:52 pm
Factory Says:
"The majority of people out there think men have it much better than women....even in the face of mountainous evidence to the contrary."
Yes... you are correct, they are not basing their belief on the mountains of evidence.
Sometimes large groups of people base their beliefs on mountains of evidence which support something... and other times people base their beliefs on what they want to be true regardless of how much evidence supports another theory.
The point is looking for where the evidence points... and in general people in the scientific community do that... that same is not true for the general populace which is much more inclined to believe what fits a preconcieved framework which isn't rooted in fact or evidence at all.
June 26th, 2008 at 2:01 pm
re: It is a sad thing to realize about human nature that people will bend over backwards to convince themselves that what they want to be true... actually is true.
...the pro-single mothers by choice people in here remind me of the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Thoroughly defeated in logical arguments just like the Knight was by King Arthur, they march on anyway...
June 26th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
Demonspawn Says:
"Where do you get off telling me how I must think or what I must do?"
I'm just telling you what it would take for you to be logically consistant.
Do not bring other peoples opinions into the discussion unless you are willing to contend with all of their other opinions which may or may not call into question their ability to form reasonable conclusions.
The same people you brought in who claim climate change isn't an issue... also believe nuclear war isn't an issue... and they believe both without having the credentials or expirtise to assert either theory.
Therefore both are on equilivilant ground so far as their opinion is concerned.
In other words... if you think that their second proposition is bogus just because you dissagree... anyone is free to suggest that the first proposition is bogus for exactly the same reasons.
In other words... the people you brought into the discussion as expert witnesses are not being regarded by you as an expert... therefore we can dissregard their position on climate change the same way you've dissregarded their position on nuclear war.
" Stuff from the "we're destroying the earth" crowd faces FAR more scrutiny from me."
Right... but this behavior has not been justified.
There is no reason why that crowds declarations requires more scrutiny than the crowd that says otherwise.
Essentially you have admitted to being biased on this issue, which is what I have been contending from the beginning.
When you are biased you will believe what you want even when the evidence contradicts your belief system.
When you are not biased you take every piece of data and apply the same level of scrutiny to all of it.
"Subscribing to the "the world is ending and it's our fault" requires quite a substantial cost to me in the changes such a belief would require. So of course it gets tons more scrutiny than other suggestions."
Here is the problem with what you are talking about here.
You are resisting this contention because it might require you to alter your life to fix it... in other words, it is more work and sacrifice for you if you believe it than if you believe it is false.
The problem is we have the following alternatives:
#1 - those who say human action is causing global climate change are correct
#2 - those who say human action is causing global climate change are wrong
Now, given that there is large amounts of evidence which supports contention #1... and less evidence supporting contention #2... as well as the fact that the repurcussions of #1 and doing nothing about it FAR outweigh the repurcussions of #2 and doing something about a problem that doesn't exist... the only responsible course of action is to err on the side of caution.
It really is that simple.
This is the reason why you're $100 bet is actually disingenuous.
It would be the equivilant of me saying that I'll bet you 1 million dollars that humanity will still be here ten years from now. I've essentially bet nothing... because if I am right I get 1 million dollars... and if I am wrong, humanity is gone and you won't be around to collect your winnings and I won't be around to pay it.
When you say you are willing to bet $100 that global warming is a farce what I really hear is "if I'm right I get $100 dollars... and if i'm wrong my money is worthless anyway so you can have it".
Ultimately this isn't one of those situations where we can afford for #1 to be the case and for us to do nothing... even if it means you don't like the cost of doing something about it when you aren't 100% certain it is necessary... the stakes are too high.
June 26th, 2008 at 2:08 pm
pjk,
That is a great analogy... and a great movie.
June 26th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
Jason: Sorry, I was a bit cryptic there. There's definitely a mountain of evidence to support our claims. There's an even bigger mountain of evidence between it and the public though.
The quality of the evidence is FAR more important than the quantity. For example, I'm sure there's TONS of domestic violence "research" out there that has as much value as the paper it's written on, and I'm equally sure this "evidence" is used to support all manner of draconian practices.
One of the first things removed from schools when the AAUW did their thing was the teaching of critical thinking skills. It was replaced with "it's critical you think this" skills. People are lemmings because we're TAUGHT to be lemmings...moreso today than ever before.
When scientific theory reaches the status of dogma (which global warming, er, climate change has), questioning it is MANDATORY in science. Very few have, and the dissenters are ostracised. Sounds like the Scientific community is learning a lot from the feminists.
This is, of course, the view of a layperson. I'm not a scientist, so I don't know if this is how it really is....but it sure as hell looks like it from where I sit.
When they get back to the days of teaching competing theories in science, I will regain my respect for the profession. As it is now, scientists resemble politicians and political activists more than scholars.
I reject dogma. I believe that anytime it is "unpopular" to have a viewpoint, then that viewpoint should be explored.
June 26th, 2008 at 2:15 pm
I haven't been involved with this conversation much (too little time recently), but Jason's 1:52pm point is spot on: The point is looking for where the evidence points... and in general people in the scientific community do that... that same is not true for the general populace which is much more inclined to believe what fits a preconcieved framework which isn't rooted in fact or evidence at all.
I get in this discussion often with a faith vs. science debates. To some faith and science are two sides of the same coin. To others (such as myself) there is no relationship whatsoever and the mixing of faith with science (or science with faith) just muddies the waters of both.
For instance, the ID people feel that that faith-based explanations of creation should be mixed with scientific-based explanations of creation. The problem with doing that is (most) scientists don't work on faith...we work on evidence and we know with 100% certainty that we will never be 100% certain of anything. People of faith on the other hand are 100% certain that there is a creator and that he (or she or it) did X, Y, and Z. It is hard for a person of faith to reconcile the fact that scientists are not 100% certain that they know the answer but that they can feel pretty confident nonetheless. Further, people of science have a hard time explaining to people of faith why the lack of 100% certainty doesn't make something 100% wrong either.
What does this have to do with the discussion here? Many (most?) feminists are people of faith - not people of science. There is very little difference between religion or cultism and feminism. Mainstream feminists faithfully believe women are the victims of pretty much everything and no amount of evidence to the contrary is going to sway them. The upside is that historically blind faith has showed itself to be extremely flawed...it usually just takes time and people like us banging the right set of drums.
June 26th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
DING DING DING DING!!!
Someone give that man a prize!
You're absolutely right Lance. Feminism is a religion, a faith-based political ideology at most removed. BUT......
Religions are based on "unknowable truths". For example, I'm not religious, but I can see no issue with mixing science and religion. I'll illustrate.
There's a show on television I love to watch, called "How it's Made". It's one of those shows that takes a video camera into a factory and explains the manufacturing process of, say, a table and chairs. This is exactly how I see science. It looks at a process ALREADY UNDER WAY, and attempt to describe and define mechanisms in order to understand, and manipulate, the environment around us.
Religion thinks the guy that engineered the machines is great, and that his ideas are the "right" ones.
Science describes processes and methods. It does not describe beginnings and reasons....and doesn't attempt to.
To put this in perspective, there are really two main approaches to being an MRA.
1) Throw a wrench into the machine, to stop it from running, and then attempt to fix it (again) to run properly.
2) Convince feminists that the engineer of the machine was an idiot.
Number one is easier, but only by accomplishing number 2 will we avoid having the machine torn down and an attempt to recreate it.
June 26th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
Factory Says:
"When scientific theory reaches the status of dogma (which global warming, er, climate change has), questioning it is MANDATORY in science. Very few have, and the dissenters are ostracised. Sounds like the Scientific community is learning a lot from the feminists.
This is, of course, the view of a layperson. I'm not a scientist, so I don't know if this is how it really is....but it sure as hell looks like it from where I sit."
Please don't confuse consensus with dogma... scientists do not reach consensus lightly, and the peer review process is brutal... which is why any time I see that someone has avoided the peer review process I get very skeptical because if the data is good it should stand up to the scrutiny of other experts.
So far as climate change is concerned, general consensus has been reached not because it is dogmatic... but because hundreds of individuals independant research is pointing in the same direction.
As Lance pointed out, that doesn't make scientists 100% certain... what it does mean is that if one is to place bets given the current data... betting against human induced climate change is a long shot... sort of like betting that the horse with the lame leg and fat jocky is going to win the triple crown. Could it happen?... sure... it just isn't the most likely event.
Science works as a process of refinement and scrutiny... going against the concensus is an uphill battle, but if the data really supports your ideas they will make head way.
I do agree that the public at large tends to believe in climate change theory mostly because they are just told it is true... but the scientists who research this stuff don't just believe it... they test it.
The general public just believes in the band structure theory of solids as well... but I doubt most of them even knows what that entails... but I assure you that a detailed understanding of it is what makes your computer function correctly.
I can guarantee you that if the band structure theory of solids required people to drive less and consume more we'd suddenly see fringe groups comming out against it and presening strange alternatives that really don't describe things best... but ultimately the only theories the public ever comes out against are the theories which seem to hinder them in some way that they don't want to be hindered.
Why for example are you asserting that climate change seems dogmatic... but the cell theory, the theory of gravitation, the theory of electromagnitism, etc... don't get lumped in as dogmatic as well?... technically fewer people question the cell theory or the theory of gravitation than there are those who question climate change... so I guess that makes gravity a scientific dogma?
June 26th, 2008 at 2:32 pm
Factory: "Very few have [questioned global warming], and the dissenters are ostracised. "
This is false Factory. The debate in the scientific community has been happening for decades. I can remember in middle school in the 80's we touched on it then too as part of science class. But as with all theories since the dawn of time (and make no mistake, all science is made up of theories with very little of what you would consider facts), most evidence is consistently pointing to GW as being a real issue. The problem is many people will continue to live with their heads in the sand until 100% of scientists are "100% certain"...well if that happens, they have a long wait: scientists will never be 100% certain of anything (as per my previous post). Individual scientists will only form their conclusions based upon the evidence available to the day, and its interpretation.
And scientists will continue to debate it, but as the evidence mounts in favor of GW, the population of dissenters has become quieter..not because they are being "ostracized" but because more and more of their number are becoming convinced that GW is real.
This is a prime example of another aspect in the science vs. faith debate: unlike many (most?) people of faith, scientists regularly and consistently change their minds based upon new evidence. That is why in the explanation of our physical world, science is the superior method. We aren't so arrogant as to believe that we have all (or even most) of the answers. In the physical world, we as a people will probably never have all (or even most) of the answers and scientists are ok with that.
June 26th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
By the way... we do agree that in many ways feminism has become like a conservative religious construct.
One way to test this is to see how open they are to ideas that are not supported by their belief structure.
Neither religious fundamentalists nor feminists typically accept or even consider any information which appears to contradict their faith.
You can actually see this very often on youtube where the most prolific censors are religious fundamentalist and feminist channels.
To the MRM's credit, from what I've seen most are very willing to hear people out even if they happen not to agree, and this exists across pretty much all media.
June 26th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
So if, say, a giant volcano under the Antarctic ice shelf was found to be the main reason why the ice shelfs are falling into the sea so fast, would that make you feel better about global warming?
The fact is, this has been studied for decades and STILL has precious little to recommend it. I'm not averse to living "eco-friendly"...in fact, I usually do (hell, I even drive an Elantra). But the Received Wisdom aspect of the whole global warming "debate" (there's been PRECIOUS little of that) reminds me quite a bit of the same sort of approach to "knowledge" about DV, workplace discrimination, or for that matter, rape.
I watched The Great Global Warming Swindle. I guess they did a good job, because they raised some SERIOUS questions in that documentary. I'm not saying they're "right" either, but I sure AM saying that their side of the "debate" was never given public exposure....CERTAINLY not anywhere close to what should have happened given the MASSIVE economic effects of the "solutions" proposed.
Sorry, the whole thing looks a LOT like what feminism's been doing for 40 years....assert a "reality" already decided on by "experts" has to be supported by the public...then ridicule anyone who questions the dogma.
June 26th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
Exactly Jason. As I understand it, my "personality type" (as explained by someone with far more acronyms in their head than anyone should have) is INTP. I guess this is supposed to mean I gather every bit of information possible before I make a decision. Sounds about right to me....
The verdict isn't in on global warming yet (for me anyway).
It most certainly is on feminism.
June 26th, 2008 at 2:52 pm
Incidentally, it's feminism's similarity to a religion that causes me to take the approach I do. It's why I don't think changing legislation is going to permanently accomplish anything. The "religious fundamentalist" feminists will simply look for another way to accomplish their ends.
Feminism must be invalidated in the public eye to be effective in the changes we desire.
June 26th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
Jason, good move bringing up the theory of gravity. Many (most?) laypersons accept gravity as a fact, yet a physicist will say that it is simply the best - current - theory as to why an apple falls from a tree. But it is still just a theory and we may very well find a better explanation...actually, in fringe particle theory that is exactly what's happening.
Another example is classical (or Newtonian) mechanics vs. quantum mechanics. Classical mechanics was considered "fact" not too long ago. Well it turned out to be unsupported by the "new evidence" that brought about quantum mechanics. And even quantum mechanics falls apart in certain cases as well so even it's (at least partially) wrong....and whatever comes afterward? That will be (at least partially) wrong too..and so on .. and so on. But the funny thing is, classical mechanics is still quite useful and is used every day even though it isn't 100% right.
This is part of the reason why I hate feminism and the so-called evidence it continues to manufacture. They try to show themselves as a liberal movement but they are about as conservative as one could get. One of the common traits of many humans is the desire to "believe" in something. It's what leads to religion and it's what leads to feminism...it's the exact same thing. Feminism (in its current form) will one day be looked upon as nothing more then a female supremacist cult akin to the KKK or fundamentalists.
June 26th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
Factory,
Ultimately my concern isn't wether or not people buy into GW or not... if they are willing to live an eco-friendly existance anyway I can accept that because it will help lead to the desired result regardless of their motivation for doing so.
As I explained a few posts back, the stakes are too high for GW to be correct and to have done nothing.
The costs for GW being wrong and doing something are merely monetary... the costs for the above scenario are potential global environmental collapse.
This isn't an issue we can afford to wait for close to 100% acceptance prior to doing anything significant to change course because there will always be dissenters... heck, there are still groups of people who believe the earth is flat, they would not believe otherwise even if I showed them satelite photos of the earth.
There are lots of these we believe because we are told... whether or not it is dogmatic is a matter of whether or not it can be tested. I believe australia exists for example, but I've never actually been there... so I suppose I really can't be 100% certain that a place called australia is anywhere... but the fact that it is reasonable to believe that australia does exist, I see no reason to deny it until significant evidence to the contrary has been presented.
It is fine for most people to believe GW because they have been taught it without actually having to test it personally for similar reasons... and at the present time significant evidence to the contrary does not exist. There is some, and scientists need to be aware of this and keep an eye on what is discovered... but for now we shouldn't declare that australia doesn't exist because some guy has evidence that the accent is derived from the european continent... it might be true, but there are other better explainations for how that came about rather than asserting that all the people with that accent are just located in a remote area of europe instead of another continent entirely.
June 26th, 2008 at 2:59 pm
Actually, professional women are NOT opting out in droves.
Hat Tip: Wall Street Journal
Public release date: 11-Jun-2008
http://www.eurekaalert.org/pub_releases/2008-06/asa-oor061008.php
American Sociological Association
Opting out revolution a myth: Study shows steep employment gains for women, mothers
Sociological research debunks “opting out” trend; shows rising employment rates for professional women with children
WASHINGTON, DC — Contrary to the popular perception of a so-called "opting out revolution," new sociological research from the June issue of the American Sociological Review reveals that professional women's employment rates have continually pushed higher over time, and that the employment gap between mothers and childless women is shrinking.
To determine the truth behind the opting out phenomenon described in mass media reports, sociologist Christine Percheski examined trends among college-educated women born between 1906 and 1975 and found that professional women's employment levels have made steep gains over time, especially for mothers of young children and women in historically male professions.
Despite anecdotal reports of successful working women returning to the home to assume child care responsibilities, less than 8 percent of professional women born since 1956 leave the workforce for a year or more during their prime childbearing years, according to the study.
Percheski's research shows that the number of women with young children who work full-time year-round has increased steadily, growing from a rate of 5.6 percent of women born 1926 to 1935 (referred to as the "Baby Boom Parents" by Percheski), to 38.1 percent of women from Generation X (born 1966 to 1975). More professional Generation X mothers of young children were working full-time year-round than their counterparts in any previous generation.
Percheski finds that among mothers of older children (those age 6 to 18), full-time employment is the norm for professional women of Generation X.
When examining general labor force participation rates, Percheski finds even more drastic growth. About a third of women with young children from the Baby Boom Parents group participated in the labor force while their children were under age 6, but the rate increased to a little more than three-quarters for Generation X mothers of young children.
According to Percheski, the employment gains of recent cohorts do not seem to have been achieved through reductions in fertility, as fertility levels have remained similar across women born from 1946 to 1975.
Not only are more women with children working, but Percheski's research shows a trend of women working longer hours. The percentage of professional women working more than 50 hours a week increased from less than 10 percent of women born before 1935 to more than 15 percent for most women born after 1956. Long hours were more common even for mothers of young children. Ten percent of Generation X mothers with young children worked more than 50 hours a week; but just over 1 percent of their Baby Boom Parent counterparts worked more than 50 hours a week. For those with older children, the rate was 15 percent of Generation Xers working long hours versus about 2 percent of Baby Boom Parents doing so.
Percheski also examined the characteristics of professional, college-educated women in their main reproductive years, ages 25 to 39, who were not employed or enrolled in school the previous year.
Although the vast majority of non-working women have children at home, Percheski found that an increasing percentage of women in the younger groups she studied did not. Fewer of these non-working women were married as well. Percheski asserts that this is evidence of the weakening influence of children and marriage on women's employment rates.
"Contrary to an opt-out revolution, professional women—including mothers of young children—are working more than ever," said Percheski. "Despite this increase in women's employment, we can not assume that combining professional work and family life is easy for most women. Indeed, many working women successfully combine these roles by making great personal sacrifices, including curtailing their sleep, civic involvement or leisure time."
Percheski used cross-sectional data from the U.S. Census and the American Community Survey to examine trends by 10-year birth cohorts of college-educated professional and managerial women in the United States from 1960 to 2005. She analyzed labor force participation; full-time, year-round employment; and work hours exceeding 50 hours per week. She is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology and the Office of Population Research at Princeton University.
Sociologists have also studied the factors that affect the decisions of the small percentage of women who do "opt out" of the workforce. The fall 2007 issue of the American Sociological Association's Contexts magazine included sociologist Pamela Stone's examination of "The Rhetoric and Reality of Opting Out," in which Stone describes the home and workplace dynamics that contribute to these decisions. This article is available online at http://www.asanet.org/galleries/default-file/Fall07CNTFeature.pdf.
June 26th, 2008 at 2:59 pm
Factory: "Feminism must be invalidated in the public eye to be effective in the changes we desire."
Well said. That's why I steer clear of the debates (such as above) about allowing women to vote and the like. Maintaining that women shouldn't vote (or loose other rights) will not validate our position as it is a nutjob argument. Similarly, discussions of the end of the western world being due to the influence of women do not help our case. That's just as bad as the feminist's SCUM and the like which most people - both men and women - won't buy either. Let's start building a solid, respectable movement before we go off the deep end shall we?
June 26th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
Annie: "Despite anecdotal reports of successful working women returning to the home to assume child care responsibilities, less than 8 percent of professional women born since 1956 leave the workforce for a year or more during their prime childbearing years, according to the study."
That's probably ~8% more then professional men do. Sounds like women are opting out to me....or at least that they have the freedom to do so. Women win again: women have freedoms and men have responsibilities. And yet (some) women will tell you that they are victims! Amazing...talk about lack of evidence.
Actually, I haven't been keeping up with this part of the conversation, but if you are talking about opt our rates and the like, you should read this argument here. This was done by a group of female economists who wanted to explore why there aren't more women who enter certain fields regardless of how much money is thrown at them:
http://www.econjournalwatch.org/pdf/HakimAbstractMay2008.pdf
June 26th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
Lance said:
“The problem with doing that is (most) scientists don't work on faith...we work on evidence and we know with 100% certainty that we will never be 100% certain of anything.”
I agree with the sentiment but it isn’t quite true. The Scientific Theory allows for examination of a closed system to determine certain things with 100% certainty. The explanation may not be 100% correct but it is relatively easy to make the same (ie an identical) observation 100% of the time. A good (although trivial) example is a chemical reaction – under absolutely identical conditions A + B will always give C - how it does it is a different matter - but the observation (the fact of the matter) still stands. Those observations, together with others in which perturbations upon the conditions of the experiment are made, allow testing of an hypothesis which ultimately leads to fomalisation of a theory. Proof only comes when all aspects of the hypothesis are satisfied. Another good example is Koch’s postulate – infection with a certain pathogen may “always” (ie it always appears to be) associated with a certain disease – but the postulate is not satisfied until one transfers that pathogen into a naïve recipient and that recipient subsequently develops the disease. Prior to that “test” we can only say that the disease is highly positively-correlated with the presence of the pathogen. But who would take the chance that HIV does not cause AIDS – most immunologists agree that HIV is the causative agent of AIDS but we will never (legally) show Koch’s postulate to be satisfied.
The problem with “climate” change is that it can never genuinely be “put to the test” as it were. In other words we cannot do a lab (a closed, controlled) experiment in which all conditions are identical on a real planet to test the theory – this alone makes it rather easier for the detractors to attack the theory.
Despite this, I think Jason has it pegged on two counts. First the majority of CLIMATE experts believe it to be correct – ie that the world is warming due to human activity and the second; the risks of ignoring the potential consequences are not worth the small price we might have to pay to change our habits. Go have a look at the Chevy Volt – electric transportation, it’s going to happen.
June 26th, 2008 at 3:37 pm
I thought I would jump in here before someone else picks up my rather glaring mistake. It more correctly referred to as a(n)”hypothesis” of global warming, rather than a theory.
Lance said:
Have a look at this article – followed by the URL leading to the abstract. Can you give us a brief synopsis of their findings?
June 26th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
Sounds like women are opting out to me....or at least that they have the freedom to do so.
Well, as was pointed out upthread:
And it is also not realistic for women to have overly demanding careers and also raise children.
Maybe 8% of the time...something has to give.
June 26th, 2008 at 4:21 pm
Celia: "I agree with the sentiment but it isn’t quite true. The Scientific Theory allows for examination of a closed system to determine certain things with 100% certainty."
True, but as you noted, a closed system the climate is not (unless you extend to the limits of the universe). Certainly if we knew all variables, then yes it could be considered closed, but very few things the "average Joe" takes for granted run in such an environment. After all, in real, practical chemistry (something I know a lot about being a chemist) very rarely will two test tubes share exactly the same conditions no matter how hard you try to make it so. A great example is in the organic lab downstairs. Being that the lab is (or was) un-air-conditioned they basically needed to shut down every other day in the summer when their solvents would begin to boil and the conditions would move far out from mean.
So certainly, you are absolutely right: in perfectly controlled environments and situations, there are truths in large part because we know all the variables. But my contention is that this is so far removed from every day experience, that it is more of a philosophical exercise then a practical exploration of realities science. For instance, I know with certainty that when I enter 2+2 on my computer that I will end up with 4 (as long as my computer is a standard deterministic model). Ok, fair enough. But when I take that further and quantum mechanically characterize a small molecule, things get a bit more fuzzy. Certainly, if I study the exact same molecule with exactly the same coordinates with exactly the same algorithms I end up with the same answer twice, but how certain am I of the accuracy of the results with regards to reality? Or assuming I'm pretty accurate, to how many decimal places? Since I know that the only answer I can know with certainty is the H-atom, I know that no matter what I do I will NEVER know with 100% certainty the correct answer. Hence, the 2-body (or multi-body) problem.
Celia: "The problem with “climate” change is that it can never genuinely be “put to the test” as it were."
Very true. And this is true about most macro-things in our universe. The only petri dish is the universe itself and it is far too large and complex to know with absolute certainty every nuance and every variable. After all, even in your A + B = C example in deionized distilled water, there will always be contamination whether chemical, physical, or environmental.
June 26th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
Celia, I can do you one better. Like an idiot I posted the wrong link. Here is the full paper:
http://www.econjournalwatch.org/pdf/HakimInvestigatingMay2008.pdf
June 26th, 2008 at 4:39 pm
Celia, I particularly like this note on the final page of the body of the article as it summarizes her findings quite well. Basically, what she has found that the more you try to push women into fields via expensive work/life balance social programs, you actually end up doing the opposite and you do more harm then good. Instead of imposing your beliefs on others (men and women) you should just let people choose that they want to do. Here's a good summary from the discussion:
"It is time to accept that the equal opportunities revolution has served its purpose, and the feminist goal of 50/50 sex ratios in all occupations and jobs is unrealistic, given the diversity of tastes, values, and preferences among men and women. Social engineering attempts to impose identical outcomes and eliminate occupational segregation completely cannot succeed, being based on selective research evidence and incorrect assumptions. My prediction that men will continue to dominate in most occupations and the highest grade positions is not appealing, even to me, but it is based on the research evidence and is realistic. Social science is about understanding the real world, not about reinforcing fantasies and wishful thinking." (bold mine)
Again, from: http://www.econjournalwatch.org/pdf/HakimInvestigatingMay2008.pdf
June 26th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
Lance said:
“. . . very rarely will two test tubes share exactly the same conditions no matter how hard you try to make it so.”
Of course, this is precisely why put the very strict qualifier “under absolutely identical conditions” on the example. I could have said A + B = C (plus or minus a standard deviation, of SEM, within a 95% confidence interval etc) but that would have been laboring the point.
“But when I take that further and quantum mechanically characterize a small molecule, things get a bit more fuzzy.”
Heisenberg would probably offer counsel that quantum mechanics, even limiting the focus the the hydrogen atom, really is beyond the scope of this thread!
I guess you appreciate why I offered my comments. It is invariably much easier to attack a(n) hypothesis than it is to attack a theory. This is one of the big problems I have with social “science” – unlike even the fuzzier aspects of quantum physics you genuinely have no hope of putting hypotheses to a valid test. In those situations one has to rely most heavily on the observational component and take especially great care in how much credence to place on any “hypotheses” offered up by way of explaining the data.
June 26th, 2008 at 5:02 pm
“Social science is about understanding the real world, not about reinforcing fantasies and wishful thinking."
Well maybe. I’d suggest that social science is about observing the real world (hopefully with as little bias as possible – after all, unlike “real” science we can’t use instruments to do this) and after doing a whole lot of that - hoping that your observations allow you to come up with some accurate or at the very least, and more importantly, USEFUL “predictors”.
June 26th, 2008 at 5:21 pm
Celia: "Heisenberg would probably offer counsel that quantum mechanics, even limiting the focus the the hydrogen atom, really is beyond the scope of this thread!"
HAHAH...but are you certain??
Celia: "I guess you appreciate why I offered my comments. It is invariably much easier to attack a(n) hypothesis than it is to attack a theory. "
Of course. And I wasn't trying to be an ass or anything of the like by reinforcing your position that there can be truths but that one needs to be concerned with practicality of a closed system (I hope you didn't take it that I was). The folks reading this thread don't have the background that you, Jason, and I have so I wanted to make it clear. We're on the same page.
Now, in terms of social science! Oh my....now that's a doozer isn't it? You know, where I went to college, El-Ed is considered a science too. That still makes me laugh.
My issue with feminists actually is extremely well explained by the article I referenced. Feminists look to outcomes - not realities. Just look at my housing development: almost all the wives choose to stay home...how many husbands choose the same? None (that I know of of course)...Every single woman staying home is counting against me. It is a no-win issue.
I also look at all of the women in my wife's research groups over the years and how many of them chose to get their Mrs instead of or along with their PhD and promptly went home or plan on going home (and these were in female-dominated research groups so don't give me the "it's because of discrimination" BS).
Women have equal opportunity. Are there some stodgy old people that think otherwise? Sure. But about the best way to prove those stodgy old people right is to give women special treatment. Let women do what men have had to do since the dawn of time: "man up" and prove their value...that's how respect is gained. Special treatment is about the worst thing you can do for women in science! If I were a woman I would be absolutely LIVID if I thought I were getting special treatment. It's like years ago when Dr. Peter Benton in ER asked one of the other black Drs if they checked the "Black/African-American" box on their application and then scorned him for asking for special treatment.
As I often say: you can't legislate respect, you can only earn it.
June 26th, 2008 at 5:23 pm
I believe in shared parenting, and I also believe that boys and girls need a mother and a father equally. However, if there is any silver lining in this "mother by choice" movement at all, hopefully there will be more societal acceptibility for the so-called pathetic "mama's boy."
Boys with over-protective mothers are largely seen as the subject of shame and ridicule, where girls with over-protective fathers are seen as charming "daddy's girls". It is sexist for society to cut the "apron strings" for boys at an earlier age than girls in order to foster independence and self-sufficiency.
MXY
June 26th, 2008 at 5:33 pm
Sorry, to be clear (since I screwed up the punctuation), I should have said:
Every woman staying home is counting against me.
June 26th, 2008 at 6:02 pm
Lance said:
“HAHAH...but are you certain??”
Ha – good one! I guess my only comment on that is - one thing’s for certain – there’s certainly a lot of uncertainty here – but perhaps in all this uncertainty some principle can be found? . . . . Sorry I know that was completely un-called for (terrible actually) but I couldn’t resist – no doubt this has been done to death on many previous occasion.
“And I wasn't trying to be an ass or anything of the like by reinforcing your position that there can be truths but that one needs to be concerned with practicality of a closed system (I hope you didn't take it that I was).”
No problem – we’re on the same wave length.
“Women have equal opportunity.”
and
“As I often say: you can't legislate respect, you can only earn it.”
I couldn’t agree with you more.
June 26th, 2008 at 7:38 pm
Celia Says:
"The Scientific Theory allows for examination of a closed system to determine certain things with 100% certainty. "
No scientist will ever contend this... the scientific method is not and has not been about certainty for a very long time.
The reason we know this is that the scientific method works by applying inductive arguments... not deductive arguments.
Only deductive arguments allow for the possibility of certainty.
Inductive arguments are either weak or strong... the goal of science is to make ever stronger inductive arguments that explain more and more of what we observe.
"The explanation may not be 100% correct but it is relatively easy to make the same (ie an identical) observation 100% of the time."
It is a presumption of the scientific method that if the conditions are identicle, the results will be identicle.
However, what science has discovered is that many systems of interest are chaotic which means they are described by non-linear differential equations with extreme sensitivity to initial conditions. Furthermore, the probabalistic nature of matter and energy in and of itself voids the deterministic view you are proposing.
Determinism has long since been abandoned by the scientific community (and with it any hope that absolute certainty will be obtained about anything)... most experiments of interest today are described by distributions with error bars... this means that even when we run the exact same experiment, we do not get "identical" results 100% of the time. Instead they tend to be clustered around a value that we then ascribe to be the true value... or at least out best estimate of what the true value is.
That is why when you values reported in the literature you will see a mean value with +/- some standard deviation of the experimental results.
"A good (although trivial) example is a chemical reaction – under absolutely identical conditions A + B will always give C - how it does it is a different matter - but the observation (the fact of the matter) still stands."
This is not always the case.
I would give a good counter example regarding the decay of radioisotopes... under absolutely identical conditions two radioactive atoms will not necessarily decay at the same exact time... one may decay after 10 minutes, another might decay after 10 years.
In these situations where the exact outcome is probabalistic, we instead describe the ensemble properties of the system... which is denoted by an aggregate half-life which only applies in the limit of a large number of atoms.
"The problem with “climate” change is that it can never genuinely be “put to the test” as it were. In other words we cannot do a lab (a closed, controlled) experiment in which all conditions are identical on a real planet to test the theory – this alone makes it rather easier for the detractors to attack the theory. "
I've got unfortunate news to share with you... no experiment run in the lab can ever be run in which all conditions are identical... we get as close as we can, but ultimately nature is chaotic and not truly described by clean and well understood linear differential equations... to make matters worse it is probabalistic too so far as we can tell.
I know many people believe that science is clean and certain... but it is not and never has been.
Lucky for us it doesn't have to be certain in order to teach us a great deal about how the world works.
June 26th, 2008 at 7:50 pm
Celia,
In addition I wanted to let you know that I'm glad you distilled my rambling down a bit and captured the importance of my two main points.
Sometimes I think my thoughts can get lost because I say too much.
June 27th, 2008 at 12:04 am
Jason said:
“In addition I wanted to let you know that I'm glad you distilled my rambling down a bit and captured the importance of my two main points.”
It was my pleasure.
I also note that the examples I gave were “simple” for a reason. Let’s face it, Newtonian physics is more readily grasped than Einsteinian as, in turn, is Einsteinian physics versus quantum mechanics - so obviously it is more facile to use Newton’s (user friendly) methods for exemplification. Similarly, concepts of fuzzy logic, it seems to me, do not readily lend themselves to straight-forward explanation in a facile, easily comprehended manner by typical posters (including me). Thus, A + B = C (± SEM or SDEV), both conceptually (and factually) is fairly obvious but the utility of solving non-linear (much less a second order) differential equations is of questionable value for purposes of demonstration for most of us. The Koch’s postulate example is also fairly readily understood by those not “skilled in the art” and no amount of fuzzy logic will, to any measurable degree, affect it.
I’m sure that not everyone appreciates the fact that Einstein didn’t agree with the quantum mechanics guys because he was convinced that the precise position of those pesky electrons really could be determined (with certainty) – he died a very disappointed guy on that one.
As an aside, I note that it has been hard enough to get courts to embrace science in any meaningful way in any number of criminal and civil matters – let alone the community more broadly so, I think it doesn’t serve our (those of us trying to fix the system) purposes particularly well by unduly confusing issues. So, I say let Heisenberg and Einstein and all their buddies hash it out amongst themselves while we practice a lot of Dewey Instrumentalism in order to “git ‘er dun.”
Finally, trying to get back on topic (ie the wisdom or otherwise of single mom families) I want to quote Annie Hunter from an earlier thread regarding parental responsibility. She said:
““. . . I'm pretty sure it is appropriate to put some, not all extra responsibility on women to ensure that the children they are bringing into this world are:
A) wanted by both parents
B) cared for by both parents
C) financially supported by both parents.
Well-said Annie Hunter!
June 27th, 2008 at 1:01 am
Masculist says "Boys with over-protective mothers are largely seen as the subject of shame and ridicule, where girls with over-protective fathers are seen as charming "daddy's girls". It is sexist for society to cut the "apron strings" for boys at an earlier age than girls in order to foster independence and self-sufficiency."
There is a double standard here, to be sure. But it is based on some more fundamental truths, and may be justified to an extent.
This double standard reflects a fundamental truth, that mothers are more likely to emasculate sons and that a mother who has too much influence tends to be an unhealthy situation. There is no equivalent problem of fathers with girls for a variety of reasons. But partly it is because the role of women in society is more certain, so they have less need to find themselves. In our society women traditionally passed from fathers to husbands, and thereafter it was the husband's job to protect her.
I'm more aware of these things because of my upbringing. Having been raised in a single mother household, and not having had any male mentors etc., no doubt affected me to a great extent. It probably explains why I am fairly cynical about women now!
June 27th, 2008 at 9:37 am
Well, maybe they'll get a chance to look for that volcano. :-)
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/exclusive-no-ice-at-the-north-pole-855406.html
June 27th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
Hey Lewis, I guess none of us know everything. :)
"The subglacial volcano has a ‘volcanic explosion index’ of around 3-4. Heat from the volcano creates melt-water that lubricates the base of the ice sheet and increases the flow towards the sea. Pine Island Glacier on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is showing rapid change and BAS scientists are part of an international research effort to understand this change."
http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/01/22/surprise-theres-an-active-volcano-under-antarctic-ice/
June 27th, 2008 at 12:29 pm
From your own 'gotcha' link, Factory.
Emphasis added.
Quote above also available at : http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/press/press_releases/press_release.php?id=341
June 27th, 2008 at 1:07 pm
Well Jeez Lewis, I'm not a scientist (although I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night), but even I know that one volcano isn't enough to affect a continent-sized chunk of ice.
The link was merely one example of MANY possibilities other than the typical global warming model. In fact, the link provided also goes on to say the other side of Antarctica is putting on weight, and has already exceeded last year's thickness, only 6 weeks into the freezing season.
The point of the whole thing though, was to demonstrate that even "confirmed" theories (like feminism for example) can be based on COMPLETELY erroneous assumptions. And can "last" for years or decades before "new" evidence invalidates the theory. Furthermore, these theories can drastically effect the lives of millions.
June 27th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
Factory: "The link was merely one example of MANY possibilities other than the typical global warming model."
It is also (and probably far more likely) one example of MANY possibilities in addition to the typical global warming model.
There is never one truth or one simple explanation for all things. Akums Razor aside, very few things in life a related to one silver bullet answer for all and one piece of new evidence doesn't invalidate a theory. If anything it just means with theory isn't 100% complete (which is fine because less then 100% complete does not mean 100% wrong either). If you are looking for certainties before making decisions then you have a long time to wait: it will never happen. You need to decide whether you are ok with that. Incidentally, you do it every morning when you get up: you can't be 100% certain that you will survive the day, but that doesn't mean you stay in bed all day either.
And don't confuse a scientific theory (or even a hypothesis) with the likes of feminism. A theory is supported by reams of evidence. Can it still be wrong? Sure - but it is at least based on something. Feminism (of today anyway) is based upon fabricated evidence, slight of hand, and a political agenda. Even if global warming turns out to be mostly wrong (instead of mostly right as it is today), it will never be as fundamentally flawed as feminism since GW is based on evidence and feminism is based on lies.
Interestingly, even when a theory is shown to be mostly wrong it is still useful as in my example of classical mechanics vs. quantum mechanics.
June 27th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
Global Warming and Feminism have a similarity in the way in which both are presented to the public. Namely, as fait accompli, you must support this because the "experts" say so.
Any "unassailable truth" SHOULD be "assailed". If it's really true, it'll withstand the scrutiny. This is, I understand, the REASON for the peer-review process. I'm not arguing the validity (or not) of the hypothesis of global warming (climate change I can get behind...because the climate "changes" every day). What I am doing is showing the two topics share a "taboo" quality to questioning. THAT is a major sign of false underpinnings....fear of being "found out".
It's not meant to be an analogy for anything more than to show BOTH are "received wisdom", and BOTH position themselves as unassailable truths.
Anytime questioning something is "forbidden", that's a damn big neon sign that says "Unpleasant truth here".
June 27th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
Factory: "This is, I understand, the REASON for the peer-review process."
That's exactly my point of why feminism and GW are not anywhere close to the same thing: GW has withstood the peer review process for what amounts to decades. It is only in recent years that is has come out to the public in full force. But you should understand though that even if something withstands this process that doesn't necessarily mean that every single scientist accepts the interpretation of the evidence. And that's fine. And that doesn't mean that everyone else's interpretations are wrong either. Science just doesn't work that way....you will never get everyone in a room to agree on anything. Scientists aren't just a bunch of machines.
Factory: "Namely, as fait accompli, you must support this because the "experts" say so."
It is a realized fact that GW is the horse running with the most evidence behind it. As I noted, this is after decades of peer-reviewed research by the "experts." I guess the question is: what is it going to take for you to accept that experts know more then you about a topic (hence why they are experts).
If you want to become an expert then go to college for 10 years or so, then go and post doc for a few years, then maybe - just maybe - you can start down the road to becoming an expert. Reading a couple of pamphlets/books on the subject or watching a stupid documentary isn't going to do it. I'm not an expert in climatology. However I trust that the experts who have spent decades studying the problem know more then I (or Gore) do on the subject. I may go in and read a few papers (from all sides - and there are more then two), but at the end of the day I as a non-expert must recognize that these folks - these experts - know more then I do. Ultimately, this stuff isn't a democracy of non-experts - like our political system is. It is a democracy of experts and unless I am an expert I need to accept that I don't have a seat at the table.
Factory: "What I am doing is showing the two topics [GW and feminism] share a "taboo" quality to questioning."
That is false. As an expert, you are free to question it and posit your own theory based upon your interpretation of the evidence. This happens all the time in science (and it still happens with GW). You just don't hear about it because most theories only make it out to the public (ie: the non-experts) once it has gone through the vetting process.
We as humans call on experts all the time. For example, I would never profess to be a plumber. I may dabble, but most likely I'm going to call on an expert as needed. The GW issue is no different.
As an aside it is interesting that many of the "experts" hated Gore's movie specifically for what you are saying: they felt that the movie would be (has been) used as a political tool and that it would undermine the decades of science that have lead to the GW theories. Unfortunately, the populous doesn't move on logic - it moves on emotion.
June 27th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
Lance, I understand your point, and resoning. I don't agree with everything I hear, from any side. I make my own opinion based on the information I'm given. I am not OBLIGATED to believe anything, whether an "expert" said it or not.
You're right, the Al Gore thing contributed HUGELY to my distrust of the whole theory. So does the massive rush to restructure the global economy with something as outright ridiculous as "carbon credits". THAT is where you lose me in the GW debate. It's just another excuse for redistributing wealth.
June 27th, 2008 at 3:47 pm
Where we lose you, Factory, is in the policy implications, just as with Demonspawn. You do not appear to want to go where the science suggests policy go. If you reject the science you are free to reject the govenmental policy and more importantly the personal behavior implications aren't you?
I trust the scientists.
I do not trust the policymakers to lead us to a future where the world's energy needs are met with something that is not fossil fuel without making a worse mess of it.
June 27th, 2008 at 3:49 pm
Lance,
"Reading a couple of pamphlets/books on the subject or watching a stupid documentary isn't going to do it. I'm not an expert in climatology. However I trust that the experts who have spent decades studying the problem know more then I (or Gore) do on the subject. I may go in and read a few papers (from all sides - and there are more then two), but at the end of the day I as a non-expert must recognize that these folks - these experts - know more then I do. Ultimately, this stuff isn't a democracy of non-experts - like our political system is. It is a democracy of experts and unless I am an expert I need to accept that I don't have a seat at the table."
Brilliantly stated.
There are areas within which every scientist is an expert... but outside of that niche they must defer to other experts.
I also am not a climatologist, and while I have read some of the papers that make it into the more generalized journals such as Science or Nature... I certainly don't keep track of the more detailed and less flashy research that makes it into specific climatology journals which an expert most assuradly would.
The experts are aware of many more details than I could ever hope to be unless I decided to switch fields and gain expertise in that particular niche.
I know I'd be somewhat pissed if a geologist suddenly came in and started declaring they knew better than me about my field of expertise, so I certainly wouldn't act like I know better than they do about these issues.
While we often tend to cluster scientists into a big group... within that group we all understand that everyone is specialized.
Trusting the experts is extremely important... but science is never about placing blind faith in anyone. Questioning their results and conclusions is important, but at the end of the day the odds are that the expert knows more than you do... which means if I am going to place a bet, it is going to be on what the expert is supporting, unless I have increadibly compelling evidence to the contrary.
The popularization of science is great... but at the same time it is a bit disconcerning that some people feel that reading a book by Stephen Hawking suddenly makes them a cosmologist... ready to put what they have read and interpreted on the table against people who have studied that material in far greater detail for the vast majority of their lives.
June 27th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
Lewis, the science might make sense. The political objectives "dictated" by the science don't make sense to ANYONE except environmentalists.
June 27th, 2008 at 4:30 pm
Factory,
You are right that carbon credits are stupid.
The better method would be to just put a tax on carbon emissions as opposed to suggesting that rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic will stop it from sinking.
June 27th, 2008 at 4:38 pm
Meh, whatever. I'm in agreement with Bob Lutz. The Volt isn't important because of some stupid "carbon footprint" idea...it's a good idea because it potentially saves money, will contribute to a major shift in the power infrastructure of North America (opening the way for alternative energy sources, like NUCLEAR (heh - I live in a province that exports major amounts of Uranium). AND it makes sense from a national security standpoint.
If all "environmental initiatives" made sense like this, I'd have no problem with them. But they don't. Like feminism, the vast majority of environmentalist policies are based on how they think people SHOULD be, not how they are. In this way, feminism and environmentalism are natural bedfellows.
This is in addition to the "wisdom from on high" attitude. And while YOU think non-experts shouldn't get a say, my contention is that YES WE SHOULD. I live here too, these policies will likely affect me MORE than they will these ivory tower academics, and there's no way I'm going to hand over my future to yet another set of "experts" that tell me they have it all figured out....er....except for this, and that, and the other thing. If you can't explain something to a layman, you don't understand it yourself.
Come back when you've actually got answers that MESH with the other "experts" out there (hint, I'd even settle for the ones that AGREE with the data coming to the same conclusions...but the majority don't).
June 27th, 2008 at 4:45 pm
Factory, you may want to take a look at The Economist a bit on the credit issue and on the GW issue. I'll try to find the reference when I have a minute this weekend (I just tried but I didn't have much luck). They did an excellent piece in the last year framing the debate in economic terms. They weighed the pros and cons of action vs. inaction (and also "what if the experts are wrong"). It was a good read.
In terms of cap-and-trade, can you suggest an alternative? Assume for a moment GW is real, how shall we compel polluters to stop? Make laws that say by a certain date they must stop? We could do that, but that sounds like over-regulation to me and it doesn't provide for a cushion. It amounts to a question of stop polluting or die (which is bad for business). A cap and trade system on the other hand provides that cushion and a market-driven approach to fixing the problem. It gives companies time to change without cutting too far into their bottom line (as taxes could). So I'm not sold on the idea but as a free-market person, I like the premise.
June 27th, 2008 at 5:10 pm
Well, I can think of a couple of ways to "fight" environmental concerns. Like tax breaks for companies that develop environmentally positive products.
If you want to get rid of greenhouse gas inflation, there's not a single expert out there that doesn't admit human's influence is TINY compared to all the other systems contributing to atmospheric "contamination". In fact, the WORST offender is livestock. So, you go out and develop non-livestock methods of feeding the world (that they actually LIKE...that's important), and you'll do more than you could by outlawing automobiles worldwide.
The point is there is no connection between reality and a LOT of what environmentalists suggest as "solutions". Emissions standards and safety standards are (ironically enough) WHY cars aren't getting near the fuel economy they should. The do-gooders out there are making things impossible.
For example, the IIHS is calling for a threefold increase in strength to the roofs of all automobiles, because something on the order of 118 Americans were killed the year before because the roof collapsed. Sounds pretty fair, until you realize that average fuel economy in cars hasn't really increased because they're ....HEAVIER because of all the "standards" imposed. AND they're less efficient because of all the emissions gear strung along the exhaust. And while 118 deaths is a lot for those 118 families...in a country of 300 million, it seems a tad insignificant. Quite the trade...millions more gallons a year in consumption for a possible 118 lives saved.
That is precisely the reasoning used to justify ALL SORTS of injustice...including arguing against men getting shared parenting, because a (small number) of men are abusers, "we need to make sure the whole system changes to reflect that".
Dumb, dumb, dumb.
June 27th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
If you find that article though, I'd be quite interested in reading it.
June 27th, 2008 at 5:12 pm
Factory Says:
"This is in addition to the "wisdom from on high" attitude. And while YOU think non-experts shouldn't get a say, my contention is that YES WE SHOULD. I live here too, these policies will likely affect me MORE than they will these ivory tower academics, and there's no way I'm going to hand over my future to yet another set of "experts" that tell me they have it all figured out....er....except for this, and that, and the other thing. If you can't explain something to a layman, you don't understand it yourself."
This is an oversimplification and innaccurate.
Often times you will hear people say that if you cannot explain it to the layman then you don't have a good grasp on it.
That isn't the problem... experts explain these things to lay people all the time... they are called professors and they teach people who prior to taking the course were not experts.
The problem is that many lay people expect to be able to understand these things in a few simple sentances... maybe a five minute conversation at best.
I assure you that a climate expert could explain and teach you everythine about the subject at hand... do you have a few months to invest in being shown the ropes?
Knowledge is not something that is obtained instantaneously or even in short periods of time... it takes a heafty investment.
I could teach you about quantum mechanics if you wanted... but it isn't going to be a short conversation, it takes even bright students an entire year just to understand the basics... what makes you think that the test for understanding is the ability to explain something in two seconds?
Many of these concepts are difficult... the limiting factor is not the understanding of the expert... it is the time it takes for the lay person to assimilate all the new information. Learning takes time and people in general don't want to invest the time it takes to learn complicated subjects.
As for "turning over your future" to the experts... you have a choice to make... imagine you are on a plane where the pilot and copilot have both been poisoned and die. Do you just up and say that you'll take the wheel?... or do you first ask around to see if there is someone with some experience as a pilot who can handle the situation?
Your position is the same as asserting that you are just as logical a choice for getting that plane safely to the ground as someone who has flown planes before... but you aren't... the fact that they have experience trumps the fact that you are in the same predicament they are and have the same things at stake.
As I said, I am not an expert in climatology, but I can explain the following few things to you.
#1 - Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas which means that it traps infrared radiation within the atmosphere instead of allowing it to bleed out into space... it essentially acts like a thermal blanket.
#2 - The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is directly correlated to how much of this thermal radiation the atmosphere traps
#3 - The earth has a carbon cycle which removes CO2 from the atmosphere... when in steady state that concentration remains constant
#4 - The burning of fossil fuels on a global scale pushes us beyond the ability of the earth to sequester carbon from the atmosphere... hence the carbon dioxide accumulates in ever increasing concentrations.
#5 - The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is higher than it has been by very significant amounts (I.e. over an order of magnitude) as evidenced by ice cores which allow scientists to measure atmospheric gas concentrations going back more than a half million years.
#6 - The concentation of CO2 is continueing to increase which when related back to point 2 means we are trapping ever increasing levels of heat... think about it as putting on additional layers of clothing
#7 - Small changes in the average global temperature lead to significant changes in the environment and weather patterns... think of the earth sort of like it was your body... you maintain 98.6 degrees and feel fine... if you go up just 2 degrees you feel like crap... go up 6 degrees and you are in serious danger of death if the fever is not immediately reduced.
You can have an equal say in the interpretation of the data... but to do so you need to get the training.
I don't get to have an equal say in my medical diagnosis... if my doctor says I have cancer I don't get to tell him I dissagree and that it is just an inflamed appendix and he needs to perform an appendectomy... the expert (i.e. the doctor) is the one that determines the available options and then I determine which ones of those I am going to take. In that regard the climate experts are the ones that get to suggest the alternatives for fixing the situation... we then get to choose which avenue we want to follow.
Their recommendation is to reduce carbon emissions... as reasonable "patients" we have a responsibility to take that recommendation VERY seriously and not try to foist our own theories as being competators with their own. If you have an alternative theory then put it to the test... start collecting data and publish papers on it... otherwise you have no leg to stand on.
June 27th, 2008 at 5:20 pm
Factory,
You are correct that out calculus as a nation is off so far as safety is concerned.
The reason fuel economy is not where it should be is complex, but the major issue is that cars are heavier than they should be, and part of that is excessive safety measures.
Ultimately, if all the cars on the road were lighter, we would all be safer too.
It is really an arms race... because if everyone is driving around in 1000 lb cars... the one guy in the 2000 lb car is safer at the expense of everyone else... then everyone else gets a 2000 lb car to be as safe as that guy... but someone else gets a car that is 3000 lb and is even safer compared to the people in the lighter automobiles.
We have to acknowledge that driving is an inherently dangerous activity and take reasonable precautions... reasonable does not include increasing the weight of cars by hundreds of pounts at the expense of our environment.
June 27th, 2008 at 5:28 pm
Lance,
When I was at a lecture given by one of the deputy secretaries from the department of energy, they make a very compelling argument that the proper policy to help fix things is to generate a carbon tax which makes alternative sources of energy competative in the market place.
Doing this would provide incentives for industry to heavily invest in developing this infrastructure... not to mention the tax money collected can be directly reinvested into R&D based initiatives whose focus is improving the technologies we have available for wind and solar (especially solar).
To me this is the plan which makes the most sense given the circumstances.
June 27th, 2008 at 5:28 pm
But we don't have to think that everyone who isn't an "expert" is automatically dismissed.
I think it's kind of funny that I can't tell someone that I pulled a muscle in my own back unless some "expert" called a doctor diagnoses it for me. I don't know how to raise my kids unless it's some method an "expert" approved of. That's the problem with the "trust the experts" move.
Good, then I'll listen to global warming "answers" when you find a climatologist which is also a historian, socioeconomicist, military expert, and insert criteria Z here. Because according to you, he can have absolutely ZERO idea of the impact of his suggestions outside of the scope of climatology. So yes, we may save the climate, but we'll destroy everything else in the process. So much for "experts"
And are we sure that this works accurately 100% of the time, just like carbon dating?
There's as much faith in science as there is in religion, just so you are sure. For a simple demonstration of that principle, allow me to ask you a question: What is the orbital period of Pluto?
June 27th, 2008 at 5:32 pm
Factory, I didn't say we non-experts shouldn't get a say in the politics that go into our response to the science. What I said was we non-experts should accept the fact that we don't get much of a say in defining whether or not it is real. The fact is unless you are an expert you just don't have all of the evidence to make that call (do you realize how many peer-reviewed journals there are in climatology? Start reading..). We need to stop being know-it-alls and accept that sometimes there are some things we don't know.
However, what we as non-experts do have a say in is how we want to respond. The experts say - through the peer review process - that this is happening. Ok, sounds good. Ok, what do we want to do about it? That's up to us and our elected officials to decide. The problem I have with non-experts is they think they can have a seat at the table in interpreting the evidence. Simply put, we as non-experts don't have the background to make that call. Now you can study and you can study and you can make yourself an expert, but watching a few talking heads blather on about left vs. right or liberal vs. conservative does not make you an expert...it makes you an armchair quarterback.
In terms of environmentalists, I would be the first to agree. I'm an economist at heart and some of the worst policies have come out of the tree huggers. But you should realize that climatologists aren't the same thing as tree hugging environmentalists. That's where your analogy between scientists and feminists breakdown. Environmentalists? Sure...they usually have a political ax to grind and they and feminists often share the same bed. But scientists? More often then not they are simply interpreting the evidence. Scientists certainly aren't perfect (not by a long shot) and like any human they have their biases and they don't always get it right, but they generally at least attempt to make a scientifically sound judgement.
Factory: "If you can't explain something to a layman, you don't understand it yourself....but the majority [of experts] don't [agree with one another] "
Explain something to a layman? What do you think the experts are trying to do? It's the layman that just refuses to get it. And further, the layman refuses to accept that the experts will never be 100% certain. The layman wants iron-clad answers. The layman is in for a rude awakening as 100% certainty will never happen until it's too late to do anything about it.
And me personally? I never said I was an expert.
Now in terms of your take on the "majority [of experts]" not agreeing. Where do you get that rubbish? Most experts DO agree. Some do not. Why does that bother you? You want that iron-clad answer..100% agreement and 100% certainty. It will make you sleep better. Won't happen. Never will. We can't even guarantee that the sun will come up tomorrow. Why do you assume we can guarantee that GW is real?
June 27th, 2008 at 5:35 pm
Ahh yes.. the "everything works until one person 'breaks the rules'" paradox.
FYI, that invalidates the solution unless we control everyone.
How do we get other countries to control their carbon output.. do we invalidate their sovereignty? Do we take them all over (and produce MASSIVE CO2 footprint with the war effort)?
June 27th, 2008 at 5:45 pm
Demonspawn Says:
"I think it's kind of funny that I can't tell someone that I pulled a muscle in my own back unless some "expert" called a doctor diagnoses it for me."
You can tell people whatever you want... but as a non-expert you don't get to proscribe yourself morphine for the pain because you think that is what is best.
That is my point... non-experts can have their own ideas, but ultimately they don't get to proscribe the remedy.
"That's the problem with the "trust the experts" move."
And the problem with letting the non-experts determine the remedy is you'll get people abusing the system... just like you'd get hundreds of junkies deciding they need morphine and codine for the "pain"... when in fact they just want to get high.
Patients don't just get to determine treatment options for themselves... similarly non-experts don't just get to determine treatment options for the environment.
"Because according to you, he can have absolutely ZERO idea of the impact of his suggestions outside of the scope of climatology."
If the climate goes haywire... the rest is immaterial.
If fixing the climate causes a huge economic depression that is infinitely better than having a smooth economy up until the point that the planet is no longer habitable... and then we all die.
"There's as much faith in science as there is in religion, just so you are sure. For a simple demonstration of that principle, allow me to ask you a question: What is the orbital period of Pluto?"
The faith involved in science and the faith involved in religion are not and never were the same thing.
The only thing scientists have faith in is that our universe is self consistant and describable via mathematical relationships.... that is it, there is no other faith involved.
If the universe is not consistant... or the universe cannot be described via mathematics... then science does not work.
The faith involved in religion is such that supernatural forces exist which have a specific interest in humanity for good or evil purposes... furthermore, religions have faith that these supernatural forces have contacted human beings and described to them how we are to live out lives... furthermore, religions have faith that these supernatural forces can interceed into the workings of the universe to perform miricals... the list goes on and on.
If we assume that the universe is consistant... and we assume that the universe can be described via mathematical relationships... then the orbital period of pluto can be determined by observations that are shorter than the orbital period merely by using the mathematical relationships derived for other moving bodies and saying that since the universe is consistant... those same relationships apply to pluto.
Interestingly enough... all of the "faith" we put into science is the same "faith" we put into getting out of bed in the morning... how do you know that you won't fall through the floor for example?... you don't... but since we all function under the assumption that the universe is consistant we conclude that since we were able to stand on the floor yesterday and for countless days before that... we won't suddenly pass through it today either.
June 27th, 2008 at 5:51 pm
Well Jason, what would you say if I told you that I was trained and worked as a photographer for 15 years, then started selling cars....and I rented What the Bleep do we know...repeatedly...because I like that sort of "light entertainment"? What if I told you I SUBSCRIBE to Scientific American....keep in mind, I'm an Artist (of all things) reading Science!
I might not be able to quote texts and studies, but I can say things like the concept of the universe actually being two dimensional, with the "third" dimension actually being illusory, is quite fascinating. And I'd LOVE to know if string theory, or some other cutting edge science, actually will prove the existance of the spirit world (don't laugh, read up on quantum physics and string theory, and what the universe might "look" like there...cool stuff).
The problem with people who have too much university under their belt is they think that's the only way to "know" something. My design prof used to say "Don't let university get in the way of your education"....words to live by. And I do.
I apply critical (some would say hyper-critical) thinking to nearly everything I'm told. I question absolutely EVERYTHING (to the unending frustration of my friends and family). Frankly, the self-important air of environmentalism is THE NUMBER ONE reason why I regard it with suspicion.
How does this tie in with this thread?
.....well, you got me there.
June 27th, 2008 at 5:51 pm
Lance,
"We can't even guarantee that the sun will come up tomorrow. Why do you assume we can guarantee that GW is real?"
This is exactly what I was getting at just before :)
Science does hold two things to be axiomatic... if those two things are true, all of the rest of science is on solid ground.
#1 - the universe is constant (i.e. the laws of nature don't just change at random on us)
#2 - the universe can be described via mathematical relationships (i.e. we have a reliable method for predicting things and explaining things)
You are correct that I cannot guarantee that the sun will rise tomorrow... but so long as these two axioms are true, then I can say with confidence that it will.
June 27th, 2008 at 6:01 pm
Jason, I get your point. You're still not getting mine. Here's a link from a climatologist's web page (he is a "dissenting view" in global warming) that nicely illustrates a couple of reasons why the global warming people are losing (or lost) credibility. Ironically, it's quite similar to why feminists are losing credibility.
"CBS News sinks to new low; publishes crackpot global warming story, attributes it to Associated Press, kills it with no retraction"
The webpage: http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/06/19/cbs-news-sinks-to-new-low-publishes-crackpot-global-warming-story-attributes-it-to-associated-press/
Now YOU might know who this guy is, and YOU might totally disagree with him, but I think he brings up a couple of GREAT questions...like "Are we sure the temperatures are even being measured accurately?" He's surveyed hundreds, and found a good portion of them installed in parking lots, on roof tops (covered in black shingles), etc... A good read.
If I, an uneducated layman who would take months to wrap his poor little tired brain around climatology, can see serious flaws in common practices...how much faith do I place in "experts" that can't?
June 27th, 2008 at 6:02 pm
Prove that is the end result. You can't.
Thus is the faith in science.
P.S. you didn't tell me the time it takes Pluto to orbit Sol. It wasn't a rhetorical question, the answer proves something.
June 27th, 2008 at 6:02 pm
Sorry...hundreds of temp reading stations...
June 27th, 2008 at 6:05 pm
Factory,
Just a few things.
The first is that I've seen "what the bleep do we know" and I can tell you with absolute conviction that it does not capture the essense of quantum mechanics at all... in fact a large portion of that video is complete garbage from a scientific stand point... but the visual effects are nice.
The second is that I read scientific american too... however that is not a peer reviewed scientific journal... it is just a science popularization magazine which tries to highlight hot topics that they think will sell magazines. It is nice to read, and they do get experts to compose articles... but it does not replace reading actual academic articles.
I think it is absolutely great that you like to read up on the potential consequences of string theory, or how altering the dimensionality of the universe might affect fundamental physical constants.
What I need for you to realize though is that this just makes you a fan of science... you are up in the stands rooting for different theories to make a move, or do something new and interesting... but you are not a player.
I can follow professional tennis players and root for them and have opinions on their game and even have my favorites... but that doesn't make me a professional tennis player... nor does it mean I understand the game the way they do, or that I can play the way they do.
I want the public to embrace science, I want the public to love science and learn about it... just like I am sure professional athletes want the public to follow the games and root for their favorite teams... but if you want to be given the same credability as the people playing... you ultimately have to stop being a spectator.
Ultimately everyone cannot be an expert in everything... if I want legal advice I goto a lawyer... if I want medical advice I goto a doctor... if I want to understand the nuances of quantum gravity I goto a theoretical physcist... I don't goto a legal enthusiast... or a medical enthusiast... or a physics enthusiast.
The climatologists are generally saying the same thing (yes there are some who do not agree, but they are in the minority)... and as a climat enthusiast, I do not get to declare my opinion to hold greater weight than theirs.
See what I mean?
June 27th, 2008 at 6:09 pm
Actually, yes I do.
I do when my opinion is "they haven't convinced me".
June 27th, 2008 at 6:10 pm
Oh, here's one that'll get the atheists here...if you want a REALLY interesting read...Vox Day's "The Irrational Atheist" is a page-turner and a half (ok, not strictly true since it's a free PDF). A LOT of what he says in there can also be transcribed to most collectivist thinking...like feminism.
This is one area where I get to play "dispassionate observer", as I am neither Atheist, nor am I a member of a religion...although I do tend to conceptualize in the Judeo-Christian mindset. He's a fantastic debater, and has a lot of VERY straightforward statements, universal ones even, that he then backs up with solid, unassailable evidence (he flatly states that non-religious governments are FAR more brutal than religious ones, for example). Oh yeah, and he doesn't quote scripture once.
A lot of MRA's would do good to read this book, if only to get an idea of the mindset required, the sureness of resolve, and how it portrays.
June 27th, 2008 at 6:14 pm
Demonspawn Says:
"Prove that is the end result. You can't.
Thus is the faith in science.
P.S. you didn't tell me the time it takes Pluto to orbit Sol. It wasn't a rhetorical question, the answer proves something."
I cannot prove it because science makes inductive arguments... not deductive arguments.
Proof only exists in deductive logic.
In inductive logic you only have strong claims and weak claims... and it is a strong inductive claim to suggest that if the climate goes through a wild metamorphosis, we will not survive.
You are trying to argue that unless you have 100% certainty... it is based on faith.
But that is disingenuous as it makes the whole notion of faith meaningless... I mean, from a philosophical standpoint how can you prove we are even holding a conversation over the internet?... it could all just be a hallucination... but you have "faith" that you aren't hallucinating.
Ultimately we don't use the word faith that casually to apply to everything.
Also, I did answer your question about pluto, just not as you would have liked as I recognized what you were trying to assert.
Here is the argument you were going to make... the orbital period of pluto is greater than the amount of time that we have observed pluto since it was discovered... therefore we must have faith that science is right!!!... and then you'd declare victory.
I circumvented that whole game by getting to the root of the issue and telling you the only two things science holds as axiomatic.
The first being that the universe is consistant.
The second being that the universe can be described via mathematics.
If those things are true... then the calculated orbital period of pluto is not based on faith... it is based upon these two axioms being true... if these axioms are false then the whole of science is useless and futile.
Science cannot explain a universe that is not consistant and which defies description.
June 27th, 2008 at 6:22 pm
Yes, Jason, I know what you mean. You know more about the intimacies of Quantum Mechanics than I do, and therefore your opinion holds more weight. Fantastic.
It doesn't mean I have to automatically believe you and worse yet, take your recommendations for action unquestioningly. I meant to show that I am capable of understanding things outside my sphere of expertise, by the way, not to show I'm a "player in the game". I found your assumption a tad condescending...but then I always do when someone pats me on the head and says "you wouldn't understand"...be if figurative OR literal.
Now, step outside YOUR zone of expertise for a second or two...
You have a product (idea) to "sell" to the public. You (the scientific community) generally SUCK at public relations. It took a long time for Discovery to be watchable, IMHO and for example, and I LIKE science.
I'm a salesman. For a living. Which means I get to be the "expert" for a while. You cannot tell a customer that "This is the best one, now buy it. Don't argue, just buy it. Price? We'll figure that out when we get to the till, will that be cash or credit?" It's not going to work. People are getting pissed off, and for good reason.
If you can't show TO THE LAYMAN the benefit of "buying" your "product", you will NOT make a sale.....EVER!!!
(whew...I'm sweaty now)
You have done a poor job as a community in "presenting your product" to the people. You've convinced only the most gullible and the most in agreement with the stance...peer pressure is taking care of the rest.
This is PRECISELY what feminism does.
Or did you not notice?
June 27th, 2008 at 6:23 pm
No, it's a weak claim.
It is much more likely that the global warming will create shortages on food and other goods to the point where we start killing each other off to gain exclusive access to them (point #2 of the bacteria model above). The reduced human count will reduce the carbon output and therefore a smaller group of humans will survive just fine.
Human nature will right the problem long before we all die.
June 27th, 2008 at 6:26 pm
Factory,
I understand that you are skeptical... and I think it is important for people to be skeptical. I also thing that data collection needs to be done properly and if it is not that needs to be addressed.
Also, I don't want you to think that I am suggesting you couldn't be a climate expert... I am not either... I am just dealing with the realities that neither of us are and as a result we have to actually be MORE skeptical of our interpretation of these issues than the interpretation made by the experts.
Ultimately there is more reason to call ourselves into question on these things than people who study this for a living... what I am saying is that if you want to dissagree with the diagnosis then you have an uphill battle because you are not the expert.
The same way if I goto a doctor and think I have one problem and he tells me I have another... I might be 100% correct... but it will be an uphill battle to get my point across because I start out with an opinion that counts for less than the professional.
June 27th, 2008 at 6:27 pm
"You can tell people whatever you want... but as a non-expert you don't get to proscribe yourself morphine for the pain because you think that is what is best."
Only because the "experts" made sure they were the only ones ALLOWED to do so. No more reason, no less.
Blind faith is blind faith.
June 27th, 2008 at 6:33 pm
Jason, and to tie this back (sort of) to MRA's...
The existance of "experts" is purely a function of efficiency. We have them because we get more done that way. This does not mean that experts are "right" any more than the local village idiot, it just means the chances of being "right" more often are greater. I'm POSITIVE some guy noticed gravity, AND THOUGHT ABOUT IT, way before Newton. But Newton had the means to publish his theory..ergo, he's a genius!
Additionally Jason, environmentalists, like feminists, expect everyone to radically change their lives, disrupt the economies of their countries, rearrange society...basically re-invent ourselves....because they SAY SO?
I don't think so.
June 27th, 2008 at 6:48 pm
Factory Says:
"It doesn't mean I have to automatically believe you and worse yet, take your recommendations for action unquestioningly. I meant to show that I am capable of understanding things outside my sphere of expertise, by the way, not to show I'm a "player in the game". I found your assumption a tad condescending...but then I always do when someone pats me on the head and says "you wouldn't understand"...be if figurative OR literal."
I have been trying to come up with a decent analogy and think I have one... but the first thing I want you to know is that I am not saying "you wouldn't understand"... what I am saying is that in order to understand at the same level as an expert... you need to go through the same training as an expert.
I am sure you are quite capable of doing that, but you decided to become an expert in something other than climatology or physics.
Ultimately I think it is more condesending for anyone to suggest that by dabbling in a field they somehow have an understanding on par with that of someone who devoted their life to it... what it basically asserts is "you may have studied this for 25 years... but I saw this 30 minute tv program the other day so my opinion means just as much as yours does".
Such an assertion is equivilant to suggesting that the requirements for getting a PhD should just be to watch a short documentary as opposed to 4+ years of study followed by 2+ years of post doc all the while being trained by an advisor... and then after all of that finally being recognized as a member of the community.
Becomming an expert in any field is not equivilant to taking a defensive driving course in order to get ones insurance rates lowered.
Now for the analogy.
Let's say you went to the doctor for a rouine check up but you feel perfectly fine. After the check up your doctor tells you they are concerned because some of the test results indicate you might have a heart condition. He recommends that you go in for further tests (but the tests are going to cost money of course). As I said before, you feel perfectly fine... do you trust the doctor that the tests are necessary?, or do you just assert that you know better because your evidence of feeling okay trumps their expertise and the results they have examined?
Let's say you decide to go in for a more comprehensive stress test... let's then say the doctor decides based upon the results of the stress test that you are at high risk for a heart attack unless you have a surgical procedure performed (again the procedure costs money)... and again you feel perfectly fine. Do you go in for the surgery?... do you ignore their advice because you think you know better?... or do you go for a second opinion?
Let's say you decide to got for a second opinion and that doctor runs their own battery of tests and comes to similar conclusions... but they offer an alternative means to remedy the situation... one that will not require surgery, but will require a complete change in your diet, an exercise plan that will be monitored, and weekly check ups. Again, you still feel perfectly fine. What do you do?... go for the surgery play?... go for the lifestyle change plan?... or ignore both because you think you know better?
This is the same sort of situation we are dealing with here... the experts have weighed in and the vast majority are saying we have a particular problem... those same experts have offered various solutions which we might try to enact... but you think everything is fine and think you know better... what do we do?
June 27th, 2008 at 6:55 pm
Factory Says:
""You can tell people whatever you want... but as a non-expert you don't get to proscribe yourself morphine for the pain because you think that is what is best."
Only because the "experts" made sure they were the only ones ALLOWED to do so. No more reason, no less."
There was a time when morphine was sold over the counter... an end was put to it when people realized how addictive it was and that the people using it were abusing it. It wasn't some conspiracy by the "experts" to control things.
It was a recognition that addictive substances needed to be controlled in order to prevent abuse and the serious health consequences associated with addiction.
June 27th, 2008 at 6:58 pm
I might not be a climatologist, but I DID stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
:)
Again, you miss the point Jason. I understand your logic, I get your reasoning (although I don't 100% agree with it). What you are missing is that without John Q Public on board, you're dead in the water. And economic pain will overcome any "responsibility" in short order.
No public support = NO FUNDING (I have to explain this to an MRA?) :)
There very well might be TONS of convincing evidence. I've even seen some. I've also seen people dispute the interpretation of that exact same evidence. Problem is, people will do what's most comfortable FOR THEM. People buy big trucks until gas gets too expensive. Women disparage men until men get too hard to find. Same thing.
Like the men's rights movement, scientists are terrible at self-promotion. Like the Feminist movement, you rely on bully tactics and peer pressure to "get the job done".
Not a good combination.
June 27th, 2008 at 6:59 pm
Factory,
Think about what you just said here:
"This does not mean that experts are "right" any more than the local village idiot, it just means the chances of being "right" more often are greater."
If experts have a greater chance of being right... then by necessity they are right more than the local village idiot.
Let's extend this away from the local village idiot scenario and consider the following.
An expert in a field looks at the data and comes to one conclusion... a layman examines that same data and comes to another conclusion... who are you going to bet on?
I personally would bet on the expert simply because the odds of them being correct are greater... it isn't a guarantee, but if I am going to bet it won't be on the long shot.
June 27th, 2008 at 7:01 pm
That analogy would hold true if the real problem wasn't "one expert comes to one conclusion, another expert comes to a different one".
June 27th, 2008 at 7:03 pm
Factory,
"What you are missing is that without John Q Public on board, you're dead in the water. And economic pain will overcome any "responsibility" in short order.
No public support = NO FUNDING (I have to explain this to an MRA?) :)"
lol... well here is my toung in cheek strategy... For the first time in 30 years we might be able to put the women as victims argument to good use and get them to argue that global warming is worse for women since they suffer from hot flashes and the increased temperature will make menopause unbearable... therefore we need to infuse huge amounts of money into initiatives to curb our impact on the environment.
June 27th, 2008 at 7:06 pm
Factory,
"That analogy would hold true if the real problem wasn't "one expert comes to one conclusion, another expert comes to a different one"."
I understand what you are saying, but as Lance has explained, you will never achieve complete 100% concensus amongst the scientific community.
Similarly I am sure in that scenario that you could find some doctor somewhere that gave you a clean bill of health... not every doctor on the face of the planet is going to agree either.
Our standard has to be below 100%... because 100% does not occur.
June 27th, 2008 at 7:14 pm
Now for my more serious response:
"Problem is, people will do what's most comfortable FOR THEM. People buy big trucks until gas gets too expensive."
This is why I thought the carbon tax strategy made sense, it incentivized people to individually explore conservation while the governement would obtain money it could turn around and invest in research and industries that dealt with cleaner energy generation.
Even if you don't buy the environmental reasons for such a plan... there are also very legitimate energy resource reasons to enact that sort of policy. The first to generate the technology to have an independant power grid, a second is to ensure that whatever oil we do have goes toward air planes where we do not really have an alternative.
June 27th, 2008 at 7:16 pm
Look, in the interests of moving on to a relevant topic (though curiously the theme of this conversation IS relevant), I'll summarize your argument as I see it, and respond.
Because experts are more likely to be right, and most experts agree that global warming is real, and caused by mankind. We should take their recommendations because to do otherwise would result in catastrophe.
Is that about it?
OK, my response.
Yes, experts ARE usually right. They are also people, who have values and agendas, just like everyone else. They also have funding sources that can dry up if their ideas are not "popular". Also, a global system being as big as it is, there's considerable chance for MULTIPLE layers of inaccurate information to be built upon one another (like the temp station survey, for instance).
There's evidence of ideological interference in the reporting of climate related material, even to major news outlets MAKING UP STORIES! There are numerous complaints of "global warmers" locking dissenting view out of academia, and funding. In short, there is AMPLE evidence of manipulation going on here, enough for anyone that looks to see.
Then there's the whole idea of these guys proposing "solutions" to the "problem" they report on! What?!?!?! Ok, next time the computer repairman is over, I'll ask him how to fix my car. There's lots of computer junk in there after all...he'd probably know....
(sheesh)
And lastly, a large number on the "yes" side does not make it so. In fact, most of the scientific "luminaries" outlined in textbooks were the scientific OUTCASTS of their day....goes to show you about consensus. So there.
Anyway, I get what you're saying. I just think scientists (not science) lack credibility...and sink further every single day with this alarmist nonsense.
And Jason, moving aside the subject matter, this is identical to arguing with a feminist. Now you have a new perspective.
June 27th, 2008 at 7:21 pm
Again jeana, as with the constant suspicion directed at men, you don't live with that disposability or the deep knowledge of it. The men close by you obviously don't view as disposable. After all they have something you can benefit from. Beyond your sphere however?
I learned of my own disposability and it's relationship to my gender very young when my dad explained that what I thought was a televised lotto draw was something else entirely. That the right(or wrong) ping pong ball bouncing out of a barrel could be my death warrant. Imagine having a scratchie ticket with a prize of a bullet in the brain or amputation of a body part. Or filling a stadium with all the eighteen year old boys in the community and randomly dumping a few moarters into it.
You REALLY, REALLY don't get it jeana.
Really? Maybe your spin could do with an update. Men are attracted by indicators of potential reproductive success(as are women). What do you think these may be?
Interesting in the west at the moment. A lot of men have had enough of womens requirements of men and are walking away. Take it from me they are freeing themselves. There's "no good men around" is the refrain we hear weekly in the media. No responsibility sheeted home to women of course because men are just so infantile. Fifty or so years ago women got sick of mens' requirements of women and jacked up. Womens Lib was born - and later morphed into feminism. And yet cosmetic sales have increased dramatically, hemlines go up on an almost daily basis, there are TV shows glorifying prostitution, stripping etc all aimed at a female audience. What we actually need is a dose of womens lib instead.
Genetic science has demonstrated that twice as many women as men have managed to reproduce through the species entire history. Put another way there have been three times as many childless men as there have been women. What happened to those men do you think? Busy oppressing women no doubt.
Most likely they were off dying somewhere so you and yours could have new land to live on and resources to waste, or to retain the ones you have. Oh, and oppressing you at the same time.
The worker crop will consist of those males consigned to "drone" status. Keep an eye open for the growing debate about polygamy. This cropped up in the debating airwaves in Aus in the last week with, to me, surprising support from many women. In the past male drones, disposable in any terms, have been cannon fodder for the rest of society. Most died on battlefields or in seriously dangerous labour and never got within a bulls roar of having children.
Wait and see.
In a sense we already have a state of polygamy. A significant proportion of the female population are married to the government, CSA, sperm labs. The trend is towards an equivalent to polygamy without human beings in the role of patriarch.
Feminism set out to remove the patriarch and then proceded to recreate him in non-human, institutionalised form.
Maybe the source of all the current confusion is that feminists stuffed up. If they'd not recreated him so soon maybe the men would have shrugged their shoulders and left anyway. Then they wouldn't have had to share anything with men at all.
We certainly need to find ways of inspiring folk other than making lots of money. Religion is an attempt at achieving something along those lines. They unfortunately fall prey to demagogues lusting after power AND wealth. As do "parliaments" which have been other forums for philosophical endeavour. It can't come from the masses which are both inclined toward, and steered toward
Don't know where the answer may lie. Does our development as a species have a shelf life?
To the eight percent we need to add those women who are unable to "retire to the nursery" because nobody will pay their bills for them. AKA those women the "no men willing to commit and therefore are Peter Pan" articles are written for.
June 27th, 2008 at 7:23 pm
Gwallan,
I didn't finidh reading your whole post... but you quoted me as saying something that I think was written by someone else.
June 27th, 2008 at 7:24 pm
# Jason Says:
June 27th, 2008 at 7:14 pm
Now for my more serious response:
"Problem is, people will do what's most comfortable FOR THEM. People buy big trucks until gas gets too expensive."
This is why I thought the carbon tax strategy made sense, it incentivized people to individually explore conservation while the governement would obtain money it could turn around and invest in research and industries that dealt with cleaner energy generation.
Even if you don't buy the environmental reasons for such a plan... there are also very legitimate energy resource reasons to enact that sort of policy. The first to generate the technology to have an independant power grid, a second is to ensure that whatever oil we do have goes toward air planes where we do not really have an alternative.
-----------------------------
Interesting. This is where I get cynical. Because a carbon tax will get the party that brought it in, voted out. And the government will NOT use the tax money that way, it'll go into "general revenue" and you KNOW IT.
I got one. Develop an electric car, with a generator on board in case you run the battery too low. Then sell it because oil is really expensive. It'll be great because then people will be reducing their "carbon footprint", AND they'll be saving money! Even better, the government could give a tax credit to purchasers of this car, and write off the expense as their "commitment to Kyoto"...thereby fulfilling both the spirit AND letter of the accord, without causing economic hardship to the population.
Scientists....want to tax the hell out of you, and take that money and put it into ...hey, hiring more scientists!
The no pain, revolutionary, and curiously sensible electric car? The product of that "biggest, baddest polluter and all around corporate meany"...GM
Eggheads aren't good for EVERYTHING. At least, not the scientific eggheads.
June 27th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
@Jason...
You are correct. It was Demonspawn. My apologies.
June 27th, 2008 at 7:43 pm
You forgot the 3rd axiom: The models being used are correct.
With Pluto, I can buy it because we've got other planets which have given results that fit.
With global warming....? Yes you have the added burden of demonstrating the correctness of the models.
I agree with Factory that this has been "relevantly off topic" ;)
June 27th, 2008 at 7:45 pm
Factory Says:
"And Jason, moving aside the subject matter, this is identical to arguing with a feminist. Now you have a new perspective."
Just to point out, the arguments you are presenting are pretty much identical for the arguments presented by creationists who want to see ID taught in science classes.
They assert arguments like this one:
"Yes, experts ARE usually right. They are also people, who have values and agendas, just like everyone else."
and this one:
"There are numerous complaints of "global warmers" locking dissenting view out of academia, and funding."
and even this one:
"a large number on the "yes" side does not make it so. In fact, most of the scientific "luminaries" outlined in textbooks were the scientific OUTCASTS of their day....goes to show you about consensus."
Here is the interesting thing though. Science as an institution tends to be fairly egalitarian... every idea is subjected to the same scruteny, and only the very best ideas bubble to the top... the less useful ideas sink to the bottom.
The ideas all have "equality of opportunity".... they do not have "equality of outcome".
What you are looking for is that all the ideas have equality of outcome... that all ideas be given the same credibility at the end and all treated equally even after they have been weighed and measured in terms of their relative merits.
Scientists are people who have egos, they have values, and they have adgendas... but academic dishonesty is punished VERY severely... if a scientist is ever found to fabricate data or manipulate results they are done for... there is no mercy on this issue. You may push for your ideas all you want, but if the data isn't there to support it... making it up is tantamount to putting your entire career on the line.
As for "locking out" dissenting views... they are not locked out, if the research is sound it gets published and gains traction... if the research is not sound it gets squashed in the peer review process. Here is that equality of opportunity thing... all papers have the opportunity to be published... they just have to prove they are worth while first, and they do that by being send to random experts in that field. Just because you are a scientist and write a paper does not entitle you to get it published... that would be equality of outcome.
Lastly... those luminaries you speak about... Einstein was one of them... he had radical ideas that went against everything the rest of the community held to be true. He went through the peer review process just like everyone else, his papers were examined for the quality of their content and the rigor of his analysis. His work was published because his ideas were found to be novel and worthy of examination by the community. Once his ideas got out there and others explored them his ideas slowly became integrated into the whole of physics... concensus was not immediate and it took work for him to convince people his ideas were right and that the previous concensus needed to be overturned.
The same can happen now within the field of climatology... if someone presents good data and analysis that points in another direction it will get published. If more data then comes in pointing in that same direction more scientists will be convinced to alter their view. Science is a meritocracy... good research and good analysis trumps everything.
For now it is wise to stick with the current concensus and act as if it is correct even though 5 years from now a new concensus might emerge... at that point it would be wise to go with the new concensus. It would be unwise to function under the suspicion that the concensus will change when that is a bet made on a guess with no evidence to support it.
June 27th, 2008 at 7:46 pm
Demonspawn:
"I agree with Factory that this has been "relevantly off topic" ;)"
And I agree with both of you... but it has been a fun debate :)
June 27th, 2008 at 7:50 pm
Factory says:
"Because a carbon tax will get the party that brought it in, voted out. And the government will NOT use the tax money that way, it'll go into "general revenue" and you KNOW IT."
This is probably correct, and it makes me sad because ultimately that would be the best way to fix things in my opinion.
Artificially make alternative energy competative, use the taxes to promote making alternative energy even cheaper and to promote new businesses associated with it... but yes, that tax money would probably end up being filtered elsewhere.
June 27th, 2008 at 7:54 pm
Demonspawn Says:
"You forgot the 3rd axiom: The models being used are correct.
With Pluto, I can buy it because we've got other planets which have given results that fit.
With global warming....? Yes you have the added burden of demonstrating the correctness of the models."
You bring up a good point... it is important to demonstrate that the model is accurate. The problem however when it comes to the global environment is to demonstrate it would require running global experiments on the climate and see if the results fit the predictions.
As a result, while I understand that you'd feel more comfortable buying into the model if it was fully demonstrated... are you willing to let scientists run an experiment on the planet to do so?
If you are then we can consider the whole CO2 emmissions reduction initiative to be for the sake of demonstrating the accuracy of the model.
June 27th, 2008 at 8:07 pm
Wow, I step away for more then a few minutes and things go nuts. Unfortunately, I'll have to come back again later tonight. One key item though. I believe it was demonspawn who said it:
"You forgot the 3rd axiom: The models being used are correct."
As someone who works in (computational) modeling every day, the key is how one measures *correctness*. When I create a model I know right off it won't be 100% accurate (and it certainly won't be infinitely precise). Many of the climate models are exactly the same: assumption on top of assumption on top of assumption. As Jason said, we can use an ~accurate model but the only truly accurate model is the environment itself. And since we don't have another planet laying around with which to experiment (yet), we have to do with what we have. It is not perfect and experts in their fields know that they aren't perfect.
Ok, I'll return.
June 27th, 2008 at 8:09 pm
"equality of opportunity" would, in an educational setting, mean it gets presented, and students have an opportunity to reject whichever "argument" they disagree with. Pre filtering the idea BEFORE they are taught is necessary, sure...but taken too far they become "brainwashing" and "propaganda".
There was a time when it was acceptable to argue the creationist vs darwinian theory, and both would be accorded equal respect and consideration.
And there's another area hard core atheists share with feminists...no theory but their own should even be considered. Which is yet another reason why I don't blindly accept "expert" opinions.
June 27th, 2008 at 8:21 pm
The thing is, and curiously this STILL applies to feminism, the real danger is in the desire of the person doing the "grunt work" to contribute to "saving the world". It doesn't take falsification so much as taking the "wiggle room" in the data and leaning in one direction or another with it. If there was one solid block of science, and everything related to climate change theory came from there, it'd be more accurate.
But what you have is thousands of people, in thousands of little steps, and with thousands of interactions to pass findings from one to another. And every time this happens, the ideological leanings of that person has an effect on the presentation of the data. This is seen every time someone makes a synopsis of research.
Sure, most scientists actually use the data...unless the findings are "solid"...but that could just mean the findings fit what the next scientist expects. People base research off previous research all the time...even when previous research is so faulty as to be laughable, if it fits the desired worldview (see feminism), it gets used.
Why do you think climatologists are any different from other people? How about geologists? Any of the natural sciences?
So, it's very possible that ideological leanings are the most important factor, with erroneous data collection a close second, to consider when deciding whether or not to believe in climate change.
It's also possible for the most well-meaning person in the world to cause harm to untold millions.
Glad I don't have to deal with that pressure.
June 27th, 2008 at 8:22 pm
Jason,
Please do not advocate the govt interference with the market to raise the prices of a product you deem undesirable. The govt of india did the same to textile power looms to benefit handloom industry, effect - the handloom industry workers live in utter poverty. Their product is sold solely on "patriotic" appeal and quality pretty much sucks. And people who can afford will buy cloth somewhere else.
Same thing with prohibition, heavy taxation of alcohol causes bootlegging market to soar. Heavy taxation of fuel will build a black market of gas. These measures NEVER work and end up hurting the intended beneficiaries. Gas prices will go up by themselves. And tech will catch up and make non-conventional energy cheap. Its painful to wait, but it will happen. Till then try and stop turning corn into oil - or soon I will not be able to afford bread anymore.
June 27th, 2008 at 8:26 pm
Let's put it this way. I trust a scientist's findings a LOT more if it doesn't mean getting their mug on TV. If it's mind-numbingly boring subject matter...I'm willing to believe the guy is totally accurate. When it's a "sexy issue", it gets a LOT more scrutiny.
June 27th, 2008 at 8:28 pm
Look at what has been done to the corn market. Even if the entire world starts producing corn, it will not suffice the need of the USA for fuel. There isn't enough land. Not all politicians holds a doctoral degree in the matter they are voting for and are most likely to make some mistake (heck even PhDs make mistakes) and the law thus passed will force that mistake on everyone.
June 27th, 2008 at 8:41 pm
Hey Pankaj, there's that Law of Unintended Consequences thing again!
This is not to make light. Most people here have no conception at all what the doubling of the cost of food has done in many parts of the world.
Does it make you feel better to know that the reason why E85 is so popular, is because it's easy to convert a regular gasoline engine into an E85 compatible engine, thereby getting CAFE credits? If all the people running around in E85 capable vehicles started actually burning E85, corn would be worth it's weight in gasoline.
Then EVERYBODY gets to starve, while North Americans complain about the crappy mileage you get with E85.
E85 was PURELY a means of obtaining "scientific" objectives set out by CAFE, and the environmental lobby. No automaker wanted to do it, although they got behind it pretty quick when they had to.
ANOTHER example of what happens when you try to legislate an outcome.
June 27th, 2008 at 9:20 pm
Factory Says:
""equality of opportunity" would, in an educational setting, mean it gets presented, and students have an opportunity to reject whichever "argument" they disagree with. Pre filtering the idea BEFORE they are taught is necessary, sure...but taken too far they become "brainwashing" and "propaganda"."
Equality of opportunity for ideas in science do not and should not take place in the classroom.
Suggesting that it should is the same as saying that equality of opportunity for employment should be determined by the customers and not the business owners.
Businesses do not hire people based upon what their customers say... Intel doesn't gather a cluster of end user computer buyers in order to see who they should hire to develop the next generation of computer chips.
Business recognizes that consumers lack the credentials to determine who is qualified for that job... similarly students lack the credentials to determine what theories have merit and which ones are bogus.
There is a reason we do not describe the luminiferous ether in physics classrooms... because the notions have been debunked and proven to be less accurate than relativity.
There is a reason we do not teach medical students that disease is caused by demonic possession and requires a priest to excise the demons.
Theses were all accepted theories at one point... but they have been replaced by more effective and accepted theories.
I know you say that some filtering is necessary... but who determines the filtering?... if a student wants to learn about the luminiferous ether they are free to look it up, the information is not hidden from them... but it does not belong in physics classes because the general concensus amongst experts is that it is wrong.
This isn't the same as political discussions where you need to present both sides... science is not a democtratic process... it is a meritocracy, only the best ideas make it through.
Refusing to teach medical professionals that disease is the product of an imbalance of the bodily humors is not akin to propaganda or suppression of information.
Ultimately by the time scientific information makes it into the school system, it is not usually a matter of significant debate... the matters of scientific debate are hashed out at the tops levels and then filter down.
"Which is yet another reason why I don't blindly accept "expert" opinions."
Who said anything about blindly?... my point is this... if you don't want to believe them, you are likely to be wrong so you'd better have a REALLY good reason for not believing them.
Somehow you trust the scientists and experts enough who developed semiconductor technology to use their products on a regular basis... why is that?
For all you know your computer could be a ticking time bomb ready to explode at any moment... lithium ion batteries for laptops for example have caught fire before... why take a risk like that just to use the internet?
Could it possibly be because you like the internet and want to use it, therefore you are willing to give those scientists and engineers the benefit of the doubt?... but that you don't like the implications of GW and don't like that it might result in you having to make life style changes, therefore those scientists get untold amounts of skepticism?
This is why the general public does not and should not get to decide these things... because they will decide based upon convenience and what gives them the greatest benefit... scientists on the other hand go through years of training to at least try to ensure that they don't make decisions in this manner. Does it always work?... nope... but just like regulating who gets to proscribe morphine decreased the number of morphine junkies, so does regularing who gets to interpret science decreases the number of crackpot theories that people buy into because they "sound good".
June 27th, 2008 at 9:29 pm
By the way, if you don't believe me about the crack pot theories thing... try looking up the planet x theory which states that global warming is a result of an unseen planet flying through the solar system in a direct path toward the earth.
These are the sorts of things untrained scientists come up with.. they develop strange scifi-esque ideas and use pseudoscience that they kludge together to try and concoct wierd alternative explainations for current events.
They then seek out isolated bits of information they think they can present as supporting their conclusions and expect everyone to give it the same weight as real research.
This is what we need to defend against... and that is why we give "experts" more credability out of the gate.
June 27th, 2008 at 9:47 pm
Pankaj Says:
"Heavy taxation of fuel will build a black market of gas. These measures NEVER work and end up hurting the intended beneficiaries. Gas prices will go up by themselves. And tech will catch up and make non-conventional energy cheap. Its painful to wait, but it will happen. Till then try and stop turning corn into oil - or soon I will not be able to afford bread anymore."
First of all, turning corn into ethanol is a terrible idea... so far as I can tell scientists aren't behind that plan, corn farmers are.
The data indicates that turning corn into ethanol doesn't even save you any energy... technically sugarcane is the much more efficient choice so far as that is concerned, but our land isn't well suited for growing sugarcane... hence why there is this crazy corn initiative.
I don't know any scientists who back this corn fuel thing... the idea is stupid and should never have been explored on production scales. As a matter of scientific inquiry to see if it could be done... sure... but not to create an inefficient industry.
As for gas prices going up on their own... they will, don't be surprised if gas is running around $7 a gallon by next year.
The reason I support a carbon tax which immediately filters back into developing research and business associated with getting us out of this mess is because it is the best way to turn the problem into the solution... people are going to buy gas no matter what.
Saying that a black market will spring up is silly... we tax cigarettes to support initiatives for lung cancer research and we haven't seen a huge under ground tabacoo market spring to life.
When you say "tech will catch up and make non-conventional energy cheap" what leads you to this conclusion?
This is what the general public believes... it is what the general public believes about most social problems... "science will save us... just you wait and see".
The thing is that these issues are not simple... fuelcell cars were supposed to be on the market by 2004 were the projections back in 1998... well here we are in 2008 and the best we've got are electric/gas hybrids.
You are underestimating the significant technical challenges because you want to believe it will all just work out... what I can tell you is that you shouldn't be so confident about that.
The best bet is to infuse more money into research and industry to help stimulate those areas.
Here is the thing... rapid technological progress in a very short period of time IS possible provided a few things take place.
1 - The technical challenges are well understood (we are okay on this point)
2 - The goals are limited and well defined (we are okay here too)
3 - You provide practically unlimited funding and government backing to the effort (here is the problem)
Yes we developed the atomic bomb in just a few years... but the manhatten project met all 3 conditions... you can't get rapid scientific progress on demand just because it would be nice, the manhatten project would never have worked if they only knew the challenges and the goals but had limited resources... it would have taken decades... that is why currect nations who are trying to develop nuclear weapons aren't doing it in 3 years... they don't have a manhatten project style initiative.
See the problem?
You want the miracle, but don't want to invest in it... well if you don't invest, it's not comming in the time frame you think it is.
June 27th, 2008 at 11:57 pm
You're right Jason. I'll leave science to the experts. Because I can't be trusted to make up my own mind. I won't pay any attention to gaping holes in theory, or the fact that science demands just as much "faith" as religion.
I obviously don't share your passion for climate change. Now I have a new perspective...that of the person who tires of a thread. :)
June 28th, 2008 at 1:35 am
Factory Says:
"You're right Jason. I'll leave science to the experts. Because I can't be trusted to make up my own mind. I won't pay any attention to gaping holes in theory, or the fact that science demands just as much "faith" as religion."
It has nothing to do with your ability to make up your own mind.
It has to do with your ability to interpret the data they have collected.
I don't go into a doctors office, hear their diagnosis, pull the charts and test results from their hand and then declare that I can make up my own mind about what the data is saying... I don't have the training to do that... to do so is arrogant to say the least.
That person went to medical school for 4 years, did a residencey, and then worked as a physician for many years to gain the experience to interpret those results... I don't just get to waltz in there and act like because I may have read something on a website somewhere, or saw a documentary that I now have an equivilant ability to interpret any of that information.
That being said it is important to look into things and be your own medical advocate... but that is it... it doesn't extend any further than that.
Similarly, if a bridge engineer decides a bridge is unsafe and traffic gets closed down so it can be repaired... I don't get to declare that I'll inspect the bridge myself and determine if it is safe for me to drive across... I don't have the skills or the training to do that.
But here you are acting like you can formulate your own opinion on the data that is on par with the analysis of someone who studies these things for a living and has made a career out of it... sorry, but that just doesn't fly.
You say that you see "gaping holes in the theory"... but have already admitted that you just watch videos and read scientific american... that doesn't permit you to get a good picture of what is going on.
Any PhD student would be required to do what is called a literature review before having an opinion that strong for or against a theory that is new and still being investigated... that literature review would consist of reading through perhaps 100 or more papers from various authors across various journals over several years... you haven't done any of that, but still declare that there are "gaping holes"... sorry, but you haven't done enough work to make that declaration yet.
You are saying there are gaping holes simply because you don't like the implications and somehow mistrust those who are involved in the research when I doubt you could even name the main players or what universities or institutions they work for... let alone where there funding comes from.
Then you talk about faith... faith is defined as belief without proof... but in this case you are believing things about a group of researchers whom you know nothing about, and believe things about a theory you havn't taken the time to explore in earnest... it's just easier to play the "I guess I just can't be trusted to make up my own mind" game... rather than actually digging through the literature to make up your own mind the same way an expert would... by doing lots and lots of reading.
June 28th, 2008 at 3:57 pm
"because it is the best way to turn the problem into the solution... people are going to buy gas no matter what."
Not true. People are going to buy things they can afford. Also collecting taxes on anything never helps. All it does is fill up the coffers of the govt, which causes lobbies to try and extract it right out through stupid politicians.
"When you say "tech will catch up and make non-conventional energy cheap" what leads you to this conclusion?"
Look at what happened with transportation from foot, horseback to motorcars, jets etc. None were supported through taxpayer money. Look at any modern technology. It has always been supported more efficiently through the market. You will never find an efficient use of money whereever govt is involved. Try it, don't take my word for it. So meanwhile, the people who are supposedly going to benefit from the taxes will suffer and become poorer.
"The thing is that these issues are not simple... fuelcell cars were supposed to be on the market by 2004 were the projections back in 1998... well here we are in 2008 and the best we've got are electric/gas hybrids."
Jason, fuelcells cars are available, but the cell walls have a problem and so costs would be prohibitively high. You can invest in a company to make them, but no one will buy your car, because its very expensive to buy and has a ridiculously short amount of life.
Besides projections are estimates and things never go as they are imagined to. Doesn't mean you have to involve an entity that spends 200-300% more on the same project (AND incurrs much longer than 4-5 years).. does it?
"what I can tell you is that you shouldn't be so confident about that."
And why is that? I am not confident, but I do trust the human desire to make a profit.
"The best bet is to infuse more money into research and industry to help stimulate those areas."
Throwing taxpayer money at a problem... usually does not solve the problem. Hey if you want to throw money, throw it voluntarily, don't drag everyone else with you.
"Yes we developed the atomic bomb in just a few years... but the manhatten project met all 3 conditions... you can't get rapid scientific progress on demand just because it would be nice, the manhatten project would never have worked if they only knew the challenges and the goals but had limited resources"
Actually the atomic bomb was pretty much developed by the time govt got involved. All it needed was convincing the govt to allow and help scientists to build one (note it was the scientists who approached the govt first). On the other hand, the germans dragged the scientists to the lab (Einstein escaped them) and forced them to build the bomb. Results are pretty much clear. I don't know why people keep thinking that govt is smart. Can you vouch for the intelligence or integrity of any one politician? Yet you believe that allowing this collection of humans is better than the rest of the people at making such decisions, abrogating authority to spend their own money from the individuals and giving it to these special group of people!
June 29th, 2008 at 3:46 pm
Panjak: "Look at what happened with transportation from foot, horseback to motorcars, jets etc. None were supported through taxpayer money."
Common misconception but it is false. That's like saying that alternative fuels cost tax payer dollars but oil and other fossil fuels do not. After all, look at the huge tax breaks oil gets.
Today, who pays for the roads for the motorcars? Answer: government. Who paid for much of the research that went into better modes of transportation? Answer: government (often in the form of the military).
Your argument has been played out ad nauseam but it is incorrect. Government dollars have always played a huge role in pre-production (and even post-production in the form of military spending). Most people don't realize that this government investment in so-called "every day" tech like motorcars, jets, etc only because these items have became "every day" items many years ago. It is easy to compare these mainstays of today to the cutting edge and assume that government should have no place because you think it had no place before. But such a comparison is flawed if you don't know your history: for better or for worse, government has always been an investor in the future. Just look at the land grabs in the 1800's...that too was government investment in future advancement.
After the government has made its investment, then you are absolutely right: it is time for the market to take over. But speaking as someone who has worked hard in the commercial space with both VCs and government sources, there are some things that aren't ready for prime time but that should still be researched as often today's basic research becomes tomorrow's high-tech. Just about everything today can trace its roots back to an idea in the lab that depended upon government money to keep it going because the research at the time was too early stage for a VC or investment bank to take over.
And in terms of "efficiency" of government money...I always love that argument as it betrays a lack of understanding. So what is your metric (ie: how do you define "efficient")? A grad student or post doc paid via government dollars at a university costs pennies on the dollar when compared to scientists already in the field. Further, these students are gaining the experience they need to enter the professional field so you are getting even more bang for the buck. Further (again) these students often work 60-80 hours weeks for that very little pay. That sounds pretty damned efficient to me.
The problem with today's small government crowd (of which I am generally a member) is that they see ALL government investment as flawed. So while I agree that a government actually doing the work is (usually) highly inefficient, government investing in others to do it through subcontracts, grants, etc is often - though certainly not always - far less so. That's especially true when these non-governmental entities must compete with one another for a limited number of dollars. Is it perfect? No - of course not. But some things - especially in high tech and basic science - need some initial investment prior to the free market taking over. Why? Because VC's like a proper risk/reward balance. They are in this to make money (as they should be). If something isn't going to make money for years or decades then there is no sense for VC's to invest. In fact, most of them steer clear of something that is what is called in the business as a "pre-revenue venture." But just because there isn't a market (today) doesn't mean we shouldn't do the research for it today.
What people don't get - especially those who just make widgets all day - is science is a lifelong process. Great discoveries are built over decades or even centuries and unfortunately a free-market-only method is not very good at beginning the process....only fleshing something out once it becomes a (potentially) viable product.
Personally, I'm about as much of a free market, fiscal conservative as you can get. But unlike most armchair quarterbacks, I live this stuff and I understand the balance that must be maintained if we as a country expect to remain competitive. So should government be involved with "direct to consumer" items such as health care, retirement, and so on? No it shouldn't. Also, should we consider a massive re-org so that the research ends of things like the NIH, the military, and NASA be spun out to NGOs and NGEs? Perhaps. But if we want to maintain our dominance in science/tech then we MUST continue to have government investment in basic research and early stage pre-production.
June 29th, 2008 at 3:49 pm
Factory, I looked around the Economist site and found the following that may be of interest to you:
http://www.economist.com/research/backgrounders/displaystory.cfm?story_id=7852924
AND
http://www.economist.com/research/backgrounders/displaybackgrounder.cfm?bg=1010789
June 29th, 2008 at 5:38 pm
Come on jason you know better than this -> "Today, who pays for the roads for the motorcars? Government."
Roads are paid for by the gas tax - i.e. motorists.
"After all, look at the huge tax breaks oil gets." -> I don't support these, they should not get tax breaks. Even more reason to reduce taxes paid by common people. If the govt was falling short of funds, it would be significantly harder for lobbyists to gain these tax breaks for their favorite special interest.
"Who paid for much of the research that went into better modes of transportation? Answer: government (often in the form of the military)."
Wrong again. Look at Orwel and Wilber wright, look at Henry Ford, Benz, and James Watt. None were "pushed" (rather paid) by the govt to make what they did. Yes, the govt paid for vehicles it needed, just like any other customer. When the gas prices go up, common people will seek to reduce transportation and energy expenses thus buying the alternate energy methods - and the best one will win out.
"So what is your metric (ie: how do you define "efficient")? A grad student or post doc paid via government dollars at a university costs pennies on the dollar when compared to scientists already in the field. Further, these students are gaining the experience they need to enter the professional field so you are getting even more bang for the buck. Further (again) these students often work 60-80 hours weeks for that very little pay. That sounds pretty damned efficient to me."
Efficiency in any realm is defined as percentage output benefit per input resource. If you look at the work performed by any academic entity, you will see that a significant majority of them do not utilize the dollars the way they are supposed to. How do I know? Cause I see it happening day in and day out, every single day in my last 5 years. Most graduate students would be fired within a month for under performing in a private institution even considering their pay scale. As for experience, if you go to a recruiter, your academic experience, unless you have done some really ground breaking stuff counts for mere trinkets. For every 10 grad school faculty I see only 1 that I would keep to if it were in my control.
"But some things - especially in high tech and basic science - need some initial investment prior to the free market taking over."
Can you cite one tech sector that has this happen? Practically speaking, the only and most wasteful sector this has happened in is space exploration. The private sector went for launching of satellites for communication, the public sector dallied in useless explorations like moon and now mars spending untold trillions of tax payer monies. Everyone knows that there is no use of these flights till we actually make launching cheaper, yet govt does it in sort of a dick fight.
"Great discoveries are built over decades or even centuries and unfortunately a free-market-only method is not very good at beginning the process....only fleshing something out once it becomes a (potentially) viable product."
Again, please cite an example. As far as I know there exists no such example.
June 29th, 2008 at 9:01 pm
Pankaj, first I'm Lance not Jason.
Pankaj: "Roads are paid for by the gas tax - i.e. motorists."
(0) Who originally built the roads? Who built the interstate system for example? Government.
(1) The gas tax still goes through government on it's way to paying for roads.
(2) What percentage of roads are paid for by the gas tax? I'm guessing less then 100%...probably far less then 100%.
Panjak: "Wrong again. Look at Orwel and Wilber wright, look at Henry Ford, Benz, and James Watt. "
No I'm not wrong Panjak..you're only citing the people who finally took the basic research and "spun it out"... The car and airplane were built based upon a LONG history of prior inventions. For instance, the combustion engine - which makes the core of the car and plane - was originally designed by the likes of Leonardo da Vinci and Samuel Morland (both of whom were supported by government investment) among others. The car itself was built originally by Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot who was (surprise, surprise) supported by the (French) military around 1765 according to Wikipedia. And the plane was built on the shoulders of such giants as da Vinci and these research goes way back both among independently wealthy and among government supported faculty and patrons.
Again, you are citing examples of people that took ideas often originally researched using government money and profited from them. That's a good thing and that's the way it is supposed to work. Don't get me wrong: companies do make discoveries (my own does all the time), but you can't discount the importance of academic/government-sponsored research in forming the nucleus of many of the things we take for granted.
You also seem to think that scientists/engineers just wake up one day with the cure for cancer or the next great technology. I can guarantee you that every pharma company, every technology company, every major X company in the world subscribes to a massive number of journals whose primary authors are academicians supported by government money. Incidentally, there is a reason why the areas around Berkeley, MIT, Princeton, and just about every other major university are popping with technology startups: there is a ton of tech being transitioned out all the time.
Panjak: "Most graduate students would be fired within a month for under performing in a private institution even considering their pay scale."
In terms of your "experience" I can't comment. But in my experience - in both academic and starting and successfully executing several high tech ventures - you are mistaken. If you are trying to compare a new student to a seasoned veteran then I have no doubt that the veteran will produce more per hour...but tell me: how do you think the veteran became a veteran? Do you think that he/she just woke up one day and became a scientist? We have a saying in science: grad students are cheap. We can put grad students (and post docs) on an idea and see where it goes. So if I can buy a bunch of grad students/post docs for price of one veteran, my productivity will be measured just fine. However, the seasoned veteran does still have his/her place as their experience also has value.
Panjak :As for experience, if you go to a recruiter, your academic experience, unless you have done some really ground breaking stuff counts for mere trinkets."
Try applying at J&J, GSK, Merck, etc...etc.. without a Ph.D. and come back and talk to me. In science, most of the time you spend in grad school is in productive research - not in taking classes and the like. The take home here is grad students - and especially post docs - are analogous to the "journeymen" of old.
Panjak: "For every 10 grad school faculty I see only 1 that I would keep to if it were in my control."
Haha...I don't doubt it. But I'm not sure that this would be their fault.
Panjak: "Can you cite one tech sector that has this [technology transfer] happen?"
And I did add technology transfer because I think that is what we are talking about...at least that is the modern parlance for something that has been happening for centuries. There are many sectors:
- Pharma/biotech - happens all the time...and pretty much every day. Look at all the biotechs that are spun out and then absorbed.
- Computers - just about everything in computers began as an idea in an academic lab, a military lab, or both. The Internet is a prime example. OSs..programming languages...etc..etc..
etc...etc..
Panjak: "Again, please cite an example. As far as I know there exists no such example."
In addition to all of the items I have already cited (including your own), my own company whose technology was licensed out of a university and is now being marketed...
Actually, in recent decades an understanding of technology transfer is far easier. In the US, tech transfer is a required activity of just about any university taking government money.
That's the story of science/engineering: basic research is key. The laser for instance was a theoretical construct almost 50-100 years before it became a central technology of our entire communication system. What is going to be the next laser? Chances are it's genesis will be in some university lab somewhere.
Ok, I think this conversation is about played out....and we have moved pretty far off topic.
June 30th, 2008 at 11:44 am
Pankaj Says:
""But some things - especially in high tech and basic science - need some initial investment prior to the free market taking over."
Can you cite one tech sector that has this happen? Practically speaking, the only and most wasteful sector this has happened in is space exploration. The private sector went for launching of satellites for communication, the public sector dallied in useless explorations like moon and now mars spending untold trillions of tax payer monies. Everyone knows that there is no use of these flights till we actually make launching cheaper, yet govt does it in sort of a dick fight."
I can name several... and Lance is absolutely correct when he ascribes the need for government investment during the extremely high risk initial stages of research that tend to investigate long shot ideas that sound wonderful, but of which only a few ever truly pan out... or will take too long to pan out for a typical VC (there are some so-called "angel" investors who take said risks... but they are one in a million and even they do not have the resources to back many projects).
High tech areas that necessitated government funds to get going include nanotechnology, the human genome project, the development of computational chemistry software.
Furthermore, what you need to keep in mind is that when business is eventually born out of these fields, the experts who are hired into those fields are the graduate students and post docs who worked on initially developing the techniques and tools necessary.
As a result is is pretty much guaranteed that they will be more efficient and better at attacking the problems AFTER they have gained substantial experience working out the initial bugs during the basic research phase.
Business does not typically follow the basic research route unless there is a very clear path on how to get there.
The most revolutionary alteration to microchip design in the last 20 years was born out of basic research at the university level and then adopted by the likes of Intel... what I am refering to is the introduction of halfnium dioxide as the new gate dielectric material as opposed to polysilicon. This discovery was not made by intel... it was made elsewhere and then lisenced by and refined by intel into a viable product.
That is how it typically works... government money funds basic research into areas of interest by the scientific community (also the government will decide areas they want looked into and then accept proposals that compete for those funds)... when intellectual property of interest to the market has been developed, it is lisenced to either a start-up company or to a larger company to be funded by those resources and developed into something that is useful to an end user consumer.
There is a reason why missions to Mars are funded by the government... but if substantial interest was generated over a material discovered there, then business would compete to get there first to exploit it... business would not gamble on the prospect that maybe something interesting is there... but if something interesting is there they will be all over it.
This is how it's pretty much always worked as soon as the cost of basic research started to sky rocket... gone are the days of Edison when the equipment you need to do anything really intersting costs over six figures.
July 9th, 2008 at 10:15 pm
". business would not gamble on the prospect that maybe something interesting is there... but if something interesting is there they will be all over it."
Well said. And you support gambling with your money?
About semi-conductors, at first look what you said seems reasonable. But if you look at the people accredited with developing semiconductors (aka basic material research in semiconductors), it was done at universities financed by mostly private institutions, persons and charities. I have learned that there was at least one Indian scientist at the University of Calcutta that has contributed to the semiconductor development. And I can assure you that he did not get any funding from the govt. He is considered to be a pioneer in radio communication using semiconductors - something new I did not knew to this day.
These people actually made things work, unlike Leonardo DaVinci, who was not an engineer, but was probably closer to a artist/philosopher with an imaginative much like that of an engineers. James Watt was not funded by the Govt. The Wright brothers were not funded by the govt - in fact they had to be really careful with dealing with the govt, because they would be sidelined and their discovery stolen from them. Take a guess why the generous people of govt made them feel that way.
"I can name several... and Lance is absolutely correct when he ascribes the need for government investment during the extremely high risk initial stages of research that tend to investigate long shot ideas that sound wonderful, but of which only a few ever truly pan out"
Please try. To this date, I have not found one that has been legislated into effect by the govt. Yes VCs or rather Cs should be allowed their own sweet time to make the things they will. You know why? Because - they don't waste their money on things, but its ridiculous to assume that VCs don't understand the risk-benefit balance. Who better to understand the risk and benefits than one that has already played this game successfully many times before?
When you suggest that the govt put this money forth, what you are suggesting that the common man put his money into riskier gambles with such high odds that these daring VCs would not bet their money on them. All with no choice to the common man on whether he wants to participate or not - through compulsory taxation.
Sounds fair to you? Not to me. If anything institute a voluntary collection to fund these things. Lets see how many people will participate.
July 9th, 2008 at 10:25 pm
"This is how it's pretty much always worked as soon as the cost of basic research started to sky rocket... gone are the days of Edison when the equipment you need to do anything really interesting costs over six figures."
Yes, but gone are the days where it would take 15 years to take a product from the lab to the market or that of taking a year of analysis of data or simulation of a particular airfoil. Everything is faster and cheaper if you adjust for inflation. Heck, Edison would not have dared to buy a computer in his day to do a 1 bit calculation, today he can have a galaxy of clusters with the same kind of investment. To say that it was easier then, is pretty much fallacious - the society was not ready for the industrial research labs (note that after these industrial research labs came about, the speed of development of science has grown exponentially). Those were days when you would need to wait months before you get a decent piece of equipment. Imagine working with a 15 pound voltmeter which would be inaccurate, not to mention the precision would be nothing like the one of a $20 handheld you can buy at the nearest radio-shack today. Forget that, Edison did not have VC's he was one himself. Today, not so much. Industries routinely conduct research with or without university participation. Do you think the risk averse component of these managements are wasting money in these industries? Come on, you know better than that!
July 9th, 2008 at 10:54 pm
One interesting tit-bit of stupidity of govt. when it comes to development of technology. The British when they were conquering India, they were fighting the local rulers. In this time, the biggest weapon they had was the cannon. They were approached by an Indian merchant-inventor who wanted to sell them an invention which could be help them in weaponry. They declined.
He incidentally turned around and approached an Indian ruler who bought that invention. Now, what is the significance? Well you know those MLRS that the US military uses as well as "And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air" from the star spangled banner?
Well the British HAD to buy them, that is after they suffered the ferocious power of the weapon we today call as a Missile (rocket propelled). Two funny coincidences.
1. The British East India company refused to buy the weapon (like the VCs rejecting the risk)
2. The ruler bought it - but due to inefficient development of the missile, still failed to utilize them effectively (like the govts anywhere around)
3. The British East India Company bought the rockets and then used them, quite effectively integrated them into naval warfare and used them against the Americans and other European enemies.
Interesting, isn't it? Its a classic example of the VCs although avoiding risk, but once they are convinced of the benefit and risk, they jump in and make much better use of the tech than any govt. Note that the Indian rocket merchant-scientist, was not funded by anyone, but himself. i.e. he was an entreprenuer himself.
Its simple examples like these that convince me that it is better to convince VCs and Cs to cash in from a discovery than to get govt to cash out a discovery. It will be hard, but then, reality is always hard. BTW, looking at corn-ethanol controversy - I can safely say that it is much easier to get govt money for all the wrong purposes than for the right purposes, instead the govt creates hurdles in the way of some better methods (e.g. Hemp-ethanol?).