[lug] Anyone else hate to get rid of old equipment?

[Maxwell Spangler]

On Wed, 2010-05-26 at 09:11 -0600, Carl Wagner wrote:

> So in essence, I don't trust the raw data, and without that, garbage 
> in->garbage out.
> And I am concerned with anything that will cut my standard of living in 
> half or worse. Remember Cap and Tax is just the start.
> What if we spend 30 Trillion dollars and it turns out to be a naturally 
> occurring event.  How do we get the money back?
> Don't believe the above?  What would it take to get back to 1850 carbon 
> emissions levels?  Kill off 80% of the population?

Skepticism is healthy but organizing too much effort to fight change for
the sake of fighting change is not healthy.

I won't debate your long list of ideas and suppositions because of how
unproductive it would be overall.  What matters is that we have a common
ground to discuss things overall such as pollution is bad (but a
necessary by-product of our lives) and nature is good (but we will
impact it as long as we live.)  I trust science instead of my opinions
or yours in order to guide us to recognizing problems and suggesting
courses of action.

What I truly appreciate about the scientific process is that its only
goal is truth.

If the process is applied correctly, from nothing you will get an
initial theory, then law about science.  Later, another application of
the scientific process will disprove that law and replace it with
something more accurate.  Repeating this has given us a world of nuclear
power, solar powered mars rovers, ships as big as tall buildings that
float more resources than some small towns and planes that fly at the
speed of sound.  It is layers upon layers of work searching for truth
that has provided this.

You can live a life of skepticism but you must be willing to ultimately
be open to accepting scientific fact.  Also, you must be willing to
accept that human beings are flawed and make mistakes: along the way of
learning truths about science we may make mistakes and go in the wrong
direction.  You can't dismiss science because along the way some
scientific beliefs have been proven wrong.  It's the process you must
respect and support.

BTW, for all this talk about science, I believe it has to be balanced
with more spiritual interests as well.  Science will give us nuclear
bombs but it won't tell us when it is right or wrong to use them.  For
that we need religion, philosophy, etc.  That's a big part of the
environmental debate as well, but as most of your list dealt with
skepticism over what others say are facts, I thought I'd write about my
trust in science to help us with our path forward.

-- 
Maxwell Spangler
========================================================================
        Linux, Unix and Database Administration
        Currently: Boulder, Colorado
        LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/maxwellspangler