Comment News at 11! (Score 4, Informative) 134
Drunk people fight over stupid shit. Tune in this Sunday for our round-table debate: is this really news for nerds?
Drunk people fight over stupid shit. Tune in this Sunday for our round-table debate: is this really news for nerds?
used to be required in university statistics intro classes: http://books.google.com/books/about/How_to_use_and_misuse_statistics.html
I suspect that book is still foundational in most University advertising/marketing progams.
The ultimate game of lawn-darts!
Or a nice game of "Global Thermonuclear War".
Let's be clear here. You cannot infer anything beyond the Nyquist limit. However, if your average resolution limit is 1m years and you are not seeing major changes more rapid that 10m years, there is an extremely low likelihood that there are any processes operating at a lower frequency than that. (I would imagine the samples are somewhat stochastic.)
I do not know what the resolution limits are for this data nor what sort constraints the data provide. My only point is that one must be precise when speaking about these sorts of things. "Rapid changes" and "low resolution" are meaningless terms.
"We spent as much on LHC as we spend on 1/5 of a submarine. In other words, the LHC costs about 2.5 attack submarines;"
...as long as we define 2.5 as being the same as 1/5.
...or "we" (the U.S.) paid for a relatively small fraction of the total cost of the LHC.
There is a subtle difference between expressing ones views and defending them
I'd argue, that the difference is merely quantitative — as in, how much you are willing to say (or do) in support of your opinion before shrugging and walking away. As opposite to qualitative — as in whether you are willing to say (or do) anything at all.
Defending one's view presupposes that the view has come under attack. Expressing one's view does not.
The only views worth having are those that need no defense. They are well-supported by established evidence.
Would care to defend this view? How about a Periklynian dialog?
Nope. I have no need to. And certainly not in public, on the internet, with a stranger. That sort of activity is, like sex, best done in private and with people I know and trust.
There is a subtle difference between expressing ones views and defending them that you (and others) may have missed.
Views that are worth having are worth defending against opposing ones.
Why exactly? They are your views. Why do you need to defend them? Either they hold up on their own, or they don't.
In fact, I would argue that the exact opposite is true. The only views worth having are those that need no defense. They are well-supported by established evidence. All views should be treated with a commensurate level of skepticism based on the evidence available to support them.
"Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines." -- Bertrand Russell