Lord Ratner
-
Posts
2,172 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
128
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Gallery
Blogs
Downloads
Wiki
Everything posted by Lord Ratner
-
Monogamy is literally natural to humans, it's what we adapted to based on our environment. While comparisons to primates are sometimes useful, the differences between them and us are exactly why they aren't humans. Monogamy exists in other species; it is natural there as it is in humans. In fact the slow collapse of monogamy has introduced a tremendous amount of conflict to humanity, which we are overcoming with technology, but we've mostly just broken the natural incentive structure and created a bunch of single-parent households. The "freedom" from monogamy has not led to what you would expect. The polygamists are still a niche and highly unstable demographic. Instead we just have a whole lot of people who are unhappy with their lack of a monogamist partner.
-
I'd like to add something here. I wish you non-AA pilots could take a peek at the political threads on our union message board. Seriously, BaseOps is some of the best, most respectful, nuanced dialog I've seen online. If everyone was as curious and calm as the folks here, the US would be in a great spot. Trump wouldn't be president and Biden wouldn't be the (D) candidate. I hope the perspectives shared here are making it into real world conversations
-
Cussing out the waitress is treating people poorly. Kicking a dog is treating animals poorly. Brake checking cars on the highway for fun is treating people poorly. What's next, he's sexist for not having dinner alone with women who aren't his wife? Having a completely mainstream opinion on the nature of marriage (that I personally disagree with) is not the same. This is the *perfect* illustration of why so many conservatives are at odds with the left, and stuck voting for Trump. Run-of-the-mill liberals conflate things like a stance on gay marriage with treating gay people poorly. Being against illegal immigration is xenophobia. Being against abortion is anti-woman. Being against lockdowns is anti-science. The problem is that now the conservatives (voters, not politicians) are adopting the same strategy, all exacerbated by social media bubbles. Not good for anyone.
-
Perhaps you and Guardian are more alike than you think. I guess I don't get the Pence thing. I'm atheist, yet I'm not confused by Christians who stands opposed to homosexuality. I disagree, of course, and have been pro-gay-marriage since I was in school, but is it really confusing when people follow the doctrine of their religion, as they have been doing for a couple thousand years? Find me one example of Pence treating a homosexual poorly. Same goes for Romney. Two better men than 99% of the political class, yet maligned for a widely held and peaceful belief... You call it "hate" the same way many on the left misuse "racist" as an attack. The words matter. Policy and philosophy differences are not hate. You can be against illegal immigration without hating immigrants. You can be against the second amendment without hating gun owners. And you can be against gay marriage without hating on the gays. I can never tell if you are intentionally obtuse or not. On the one hand you immediate locate and call out logical fallacies or unsupported hyperbole in other people's posts. But then you fill your own posts with the same. It's confusing. But I'm easily confused 🤷♂️
-
Have I ever defended Trump as honest or consistent? I think I've been pretty consistent that he's awful. I look at results, because I haven't had faith in the humans that go to Washington for a long time. The presidential results are shockingly good compared to how shockingly bad the actual presidential human is. If I voted on personality I would go for Biden then be shocked (shocked I tell you) that he was making money from his drug addict soon selling their name to the worst countries on Earth. As for Pence, completely disagree. He's boring, but he's also the only one of the four who has any philosophical basis backing his positions, and he's also the only one who is actually a good person. Best case scenario is Trump wins, then steps down on Jan 2nd.
-
That's all will and good, but your standard is one sided. If anyone had put that level of concern into allegations about Trump, there'd be no Mueller report. Hell, the story surrounding Flynn and the FBI is 100x more substantiated, a true conspiracy, and what you would think the press would go bananas over, the government going after a citizen. How's the coverage of that investigation compared to the non-stop Mueller coverage? It's not that I care that they suck, it's that they suck unequally.
-
You're being intentionally ignorant, which is not like you. What part of the story is difficult to believe? And how is it less believable than the many Trump scandals you have not had the same standard on? Are we really going to pretend that a moron who has been in the senate for four decades being corrupt is a surprise? The surprise will be if it's not true.
-
I always found this argument amazing. My wife and I make restaurant-quality food 5/7 nights a week, and it's usually between $5-10 in ingredients per person. And we only buy meat from whole foods. What are people buying at grocery stores that's more expensive than restaurants? Filet mignon?
-
The problem I have is that they aren't doing much to push the world forward. If you look at where innovation comes from, it is vastly, vastly disproportionate. If you were to remove the United States from the equation, or cripple our output to look more like the European countries, the advancement of the planet as a whole would be handicapped. My political philosophy boils down to about 75% caring about what's going to make the world better in 50 years, and 25% making sure that the people who are here now are not suffering unnecessarily. I don't care how the German people are doing right now, my question is are there grandkids going to be better off because of the German way of life, or the American way of life? And yeah, the fact that no one on the left wants to acknowledge that all of these European countries are able to do what they're doing solely due to the largesse of American military spending is rather frustrating.
-
It's not necessarily mandatory. If you can demonstrate that you have a certain amount of money, insurance is optional depending on the state. The rule is there to protect other drivers from your mistakes. Not to protect you from anything at all. In either case, you have a choice.
-
Spread it out. Move the major federal institutions to different states. Dept of Education in Iowa, NRO in Maine, HUD in Alabama. You get the idea. D.C. is a big part of the problem. It's 2020, you can operate with physical separation. Build a government made of the people who make up the country.
-
Trump is the polarizing balance. Conservatives have been called Nazis and deplorable for years. Liberals just weren't used to such overtly shitty treatment by the political class. The left set up the conditions under which Trump was possible. He did what other Republicans refused to do; he mimicked his opponents. No more masks. If the average citizen hadn't finally seen the political class for what it is, we deserve what we get.
-
Calling bullshit on this one. A candidate using a teleprompter *during interviews* is mind blowing. If a Republican candidate made even a fraction as many gaffes, you'd never hear the end of it. Oh wait, that's exactly what happened with W. Bush. Does anyone really think Bush was in worse mental shape then as Biden is now? The coverage sure indicates otherwise. He's always been a moron. Now he's a moron who can't think straight. If Trump had any brains, which he probably doesn't, he would just let Biden talk for the entire 90 minute debate. Instead he interrupted for the entire debate, protecting Joe from his greatest weakness: talking.
-
There is a group of people, mostly very smart, who believe through the most altruistic intentions that the world we have could be much, much, much better for everyone if everyone simply listened to them. And they're right. If everyone just agreed to the system they propose we would all, on average, be much better off. Problem is, it's that universal compliance bit that is the impossible prerequisite to Utopia. There's nothing new about it. Ask yourself why the leaders of BLM would proudly describe themselves as trained Marxists. What does Marxism entail? And how have previous Marxists accomplished their revolutions?
-
Shack
-
Yeah... The whole "he was asking for it" by driving a "drug dealer" car is a bit much. If drug dealers suddenly discover the amazing heated and ventilated seats, near silent road noise, and two panel panoramic sunroof of the Hyundai Sonata, am I supposed change cars to protect myself from unjustified police intervention? America absolutely, positively has a problem with police brutality and general policing philosophy. An analysis of the evidence suggests that this problem is not due to race, but the complex relationships in America between crime, race, poverty, and the history of racism make it easy to blame skin color. But changing the automotive tastes of law-abiding citizens is not the answer.
-
On the contrary, it's on the scientists pushing the theory. When their models are capable of accurately predicting the future temperature changes, and the associated effects, then it will be "settled" or close to it. As of now the track record is *terrible.* This is a fundamental concept.
-
Ok, it's pretty clear you don't have anything to go on here, just repeating what you've been told. There's so much evidence, because there just is! Everyone agrees. Well spoiler alert, there's a lot of evidence to the contrary, pointed out by a wide range of involved professionals, not just pilots online. We know the Earth is round because we have observed it, and any theories to the contrary are easily and repeatedly disapproven. Further, we can predict physics outcomes based on the round Earth theory that occur every time. Not so with global warming. To compare the two is gross ignorance of the science. The point of the hypothetical is that if we wouldn't stop nature from doing it, why do we stop mankind from doing it. The fact you consider these types of questions to be simple or irrelevant displays the lack of thought you've put into it. There's no nuance in your position, which generally indicates that it's an adopted position. Anyways, best of luck. You'll just stop talking about it one day, rather than issue a mea culpa. Global cooling, overpopulation, global warming, peak oil, acid rain... Global catastrophe is a natural human interest. It just never seems to pan out. Also, I'm not a Republican you walnut. Don't project your own inadequacies on others just because they disagree with you.
-
I did the AU ACSC masters course. It was actually pretty good, focuses on leadership, costs nothing, and had very good instructors with 100% flexibility for the travails of military life.
-
The irony here is that everything you ascribe to skeptics is equally applicable to believers. I'm not type 1, 2, or 3, I'm all of the above Your lack of understanding of how research and science works is on display. The finality and confidence which supporters of the theory display is completely out of line with the tenuous nature of scientific inquiry. But for fun, let's hit all three. Type 1: The Earth is only warming (by the amounts claimed) if you take every or any form of measurement and apply specific, subjective adjustments to the recorded data. If you take the most accurate and consistent measurement source, satellite data, you'll see very little warming at all, not at all in accordance with the models or headlines. This happens to be the case with *every* temperature data set. Every single one is adjusted in the same way. Older temperature are lowered, newer temperatures are raised. Type 2: I've already gone over the weaknesses of the theory of CO2 as a greenhouse gas. Much weaker as a supposition than arguing the temps are rising, which is why type 2 is so common. Type 3: Valid. Concern. But I like to ask a hypothetical to reset the baseline. If we found out next year that global warming is 100% real, it's happening at the rates advertised, and the forecasted effects will all come to pass, *but* we also discover definitively that it is completely natural and uninfluenced by humans, do we try to stop it? Do we fight against nature? To a number, every environmentalist and supporter I've asked has said no. So if it's ok for natural global warming, why does man made warming suddenly become a problem? All three types have valid complaints. And everyone someone comes in preaching about the science (which most haven't read), they have never spent any meaningful amount of time researching the opposition. High profile scientists have been run out of the sector for low levels of dissent. That's not science, it's religion.
-
Isolating the causal link isn't enough if you completely destroy the correlation by using a more granular scale. The theory of human-caused global warming is based on a whopping 50-100 years of industrialized activity and the associated rise in CO2 as a result. Any historical use of temperature and CO2 activity (even when ignoring the near impossibility of estimating a "global" temperature from times before precision and satellite instrumentation) needs to compare short-term shifts measured in years and decades, not centuries and millennia. Climate change is much closer to economics than it is to science. It's almost entirely retrospective with no ability to effectively isolate the multivariate problem down to individual, testable components. And like economics, the theories and models are often unable to predict the future, making them invalid. The rabbit hole to go down is the actual temperature datasets. The Manhattan Contrarian has a great series in this where the arbitrary yet consistently one-sided adjustments to the data sets are shown to be loose at best. Those datasets are the foundation for nearly all climate research. Bad foundation, bad house.
-
Exactly. The only people who are certain of this movement are the people with no direct connection to the science. It's just another team position to be certain about because the other team disagrees.
-
Charts can be funny like that. https://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/11/does-co2-correlate-with-temperature-history-a-look-at-multiple-timescales-in-the-context-of-the-shakun-et-al-paper/ Even if I knew nothing about the theory, models, or underlying data, the overwhelming and religious-like commitment to the cause by a whole bunch of politicians, actors, other non-scientists is enough to make me skeptical. But I do know more, and dang near every time a supporter of the theory posts a chart, there's something the chart is misrepresenting.
-
For decades the government pushed the notion that, to be healthy and slim, we needed to avoid fat and intake carbs. Decades and an entire epidemic of obesity before we are finally starting, only now, to realize how wrong they were. Clean air ≠ Carbon dioxide reduction. The science of climate change, and all the incredibly complex measurements, studies, and theories about the effects, boils down to a single theory. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas of small impact, but it increases the major greenhouse gas (water vapor) such that we are seeing and will continue to see a temperature runaway directly caused by humans increasing the CO2. There is all sorts of research showing that the Earth is warming. Granted a lot of that research is not nearly as concrete as the narrative would have you believe. Take a look at the satellite data and compare it to the theory. Digging into the various generations of temperature records and seeing how lopsided the adjustments are is another eye-opening chore. But even if you take the historical temperature data, as presented by the proponents of the theory at face value, the most critical component, that mankind has caused it, is dependent entirely on a theory of carbon dioxide that is not supported by the long-range historical data (ice ages during periods of much higher CO2), and is almost impossible to test on any sort of scale that would prove it one way or the other. And on this shaky ground, the United States is supposed to reduce its carbon footprint in a manner that would utterly devastate our economy, and only have a single digit percent impact on the overall change in temperature. So even if you accept the temperature data at face value, and you accept the theory of carbon dioxide as an impactful greenhouse gas at face value, you also have to accept that the rest of the world, including the largest polluter (China), is going to follow our lead in a manner that will have an actual meaningful impact on the rate of warming. That's a terrible bet, and the billions and trillions of dollars that we put towards this endeavor are much better spent on protecting forests, cleaning the plastic island out of the ocean, reducing known pollutants from being put into the atmosphere (like the smog plague of the 70s), defending endangered species, or any other number of measurable and worthwhile environmental endeavors. That's the short version.
-
Biden did what he needed to, not seem sick or weak. His answers were ok, but he didn't say anything that I thought had a good punch. But it's hard to notably punch the guy that everyone else spends all day punching. Trump needed to back off, save the "classic Trump" stuff for later. Came out of the gate way too fast. But he has no crowd, and that's his happy place. It seems like his best line of attack was the Hunter Biden stuff, but he flubbed when Joe brought up his dead kid. Should have praised then pivot, instead he just pivoted. Not sure what his plan was for the taxes fight. Either just lie it all away, or what he meant to say was "I pay millions in taxes through my business, not personal income, that's just how it works." But he didn't get that across. His climate answers were good-not-great, but firmly good. Medical was all over, but Republicans have been dropping the ball on Obamacare replacement for years. Better answer: I'm not going to bankrupt the American economy on unproven technology and theories when we can spend the money meaningfully protecting our rivers, forests, and oceans from pollution. He did get Joe to fumble a bit with the green new deal. The pandemic stuff was weak. He could have slaughtered Joe by pointing out the sheer stupidity of blaming him for the number of deaths, and keep going back to January, but instead he just kept saying how couldn't handle it. Weak. The hunter biden stuff seems to shake Joe the most, so I bet there will be more of it. You can tell Trump doesn't do well in a dynamic debate. There were some softballs he missed completely because he's so stuck on what he expected to be asked. Two examples were condemning white supremacists and committing to an orderly transition. Those are "Yes, but..." questions, and he turned them into just "but..." questions. He could have scored home runs on both of those. I don't think the first debate moved the needle.
