Yeah, the marketplace has exactly nothing to do with Darwinian jackshit.

The marketplace only exists because we conscious and moral-values-driven humans have conceived of, passed and enforce laws which create a very artificial system of regulations which we call "the marketplace".

It starts with the man-made, very fictional concept of a corporate entity, goes on to regulate that entities conduct wrt to other such entities, assigns consumers protections, defines product safety, workplace safety and pollution standards all of which strongly effect a corporation's bottom line, disallows the monopolies which would naturally come to pass, determines tax schedules and expresses what's ball and what's foul through tons of pages of accounting regulations, exchange rates, banking regulations etc etc etc all of which creates this thing called a market place .

We live a large part of our lives in the service of, and as the beneficiaries of, commerce and the idea that it's somehow a natural product of Darwinian evolution processes instead of centuries -in-the-making conscious human intervention is a joke.

So Page is right. The problem has nothing to do with the inherently Darwinian nature of the marketplace, it has to do with the laws which enable the circular firing squad that is tech litigation in the first place. Take away the guns- the ability to patent software- and all parties will have to refocus their energies on value creation instead of wanton competitor destruction.

"The publication won't record any details about your visit, so even a government request to look at their records will fail to find any useful information. " Until Congress decides that all such communication must be logged by law.

>>First, I pointed out that Dyson has no scientific training in the highly technical subject matter from which he dramatically differs from consensus scientific view.

>. That's absurd. His "training" is irrelevant. The matter at hand is the area of his expertise.

Yeah you're playing word games. Expertise and training and mastery of a domain and ability to do productive research in a field and a million other noun phrases are all the same thing- do you comprehend the technical matter and the work of the researchers in the field and can you make contributions to advance that understanding ?

Dyson has none of this in this field, by his own direct admission, which you have attempted to dance around with your word play. Have some more, liar-

From Yale's website:

http://e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2151

Dyson about an interviewer:

"he wanted to write a piece about global warming and I was just the instrument for that, and I am not so much interested in global warming.

He portrayed me as sort of obsessed with the subject, which I am definitely not. To me it is a very small part of my life.

I don't claim to be an expert. I never did.

I simply find that a lot of these claims that experts are making are absurd. Not that I know better, but I know a few things.

My objections to the global warming propaganda are not so much over the technical facts, about which I do not know much, but it's rather against the way those people behave and the kind of intolerance to criticism that a lot of them have.

I think that's what upsets me."

That "not knowing much" fact he cites, that state of "not being an expert" that he mentions, that "not knowing better" has consequences. One of those consequences is he floats notions which the people who do know the field reject out of hand as impossible. That is not some badge of honor, that is just being wrong.

Only Sara Palin and her ilk take that as a sure sign you're right.

Only narcissists believe that, when faced with that situation, the thing to do is to throw away the accumulated knowledge and hard won agreement of technical experts who have spent their professional lives comparing their predictions to reality and submitted themselves to the rigours of peer review. People whose models' predicted results have been repeatedly borne out and whose work in effect constitutes humanity's deep knowledge of a field and go by gut.

Sara Palin and, oh yeah, Freeman Dyson.

Dyson can't "take issue with the way climate science is done" or "take issue with their techniques" or "find flaws in their methodology" or any other of a million ways to express the same idea because he doesn't understand them. That's what happens when you don't DO the work- you don't understand the work.

So, heh, I guess you actually didn't address any absurdity. But feel free to raise your own hand in victory *in exactly the same way Dyson declares his meanderings to be relevant*.

>>Oh, how foolish you are. That is sooo far from what he actually said.

I think the above disposes of that idea....let the reader be the judge.

The rest of your post consists of broad, baseless and meaningless screeching about *how environmentalists have destroyed science* etc etc which are just typical of your kind. You have the belief that by speaking words, you have the power to make the ideas in those words reality.

You also have the idea, with Dyson, that if facts disagree with you, it's all political and that you should be given the power to decide what facts are facts.

That and all that flows from it, in this case denial of an impending disaster which will put the blood of millions on yours and Dyson's hands , is the reason why conservatism has moved from being just weird and sad to dangerous and an existential threat to civilization.

We had this happen once last century. For a long time, America slept . Then it awoke to the danger- and over the objects of many conservatives- did what it needed to do.

The only difference this time is it's not just America who's going to awake to the danger and do what needs to be done. It's the entire world.

Let's review how this thread has gone, shall we?

First, I pointed out that Dyson has no scientific training in the highly technical subject matter from which he dramatically differs from consensus scientific view.

Then you claimed my rejection of Dyson's opinions and embrace of mainstream scientific opinion represented an argument from authority. You then proffered one of his more fanciful notions of how to mitigate carbon pollution, if that turned out to be necessary , something Dyson counts as unlikely.

I replied with analysis of Dyson's lunatical scheme and also a quote from Dyson in which he himself admitted he lacked the knowledge and training to hold forth upon the subject he is nevertheless holding forth on.

You then just replied to me that you don't care what the web page I excerpted says- even if it's merely quoting Dyson himself- because you don't trust "that thar libral webpage. " .

So what do we have? We have in your posts a perfect example of what conservatives are and what they do. They reject the processes and conclusions of legitimate science and the results that flow from therefrom and in its place substitute the unsupported theories of a crank and a fraud.

They insist that the conclusions of people who have submitted themselves to the rigors of science are some form of "argument by authority" even though in reality - a place they rarely visit - the entire process of science is dedicated to and results in the exclusion of conclusions based on fallacious reasoning including "argument by authority".

You live in a fantasy world based on the notion of self gratification where whoever tells you what you want to hear is right and everyone else is wrong, and a part of a conspiracy. Dyson lives there with you, and both of you have more in common with Joseph Stalin than anyone else.

Dyson is not qualified by his own admission. Scientists are not offering their personal opinions, they are revealing the conclusions of their studies. Those studies are the end product of the most rigorous falsehood exclusion process humankind has ever developed- the scientific method paired with the peer-review process. That falsehood exclusion process is the crowning achievement of all human history and has relieved more human suffering than any other human endeavor. It is nothing less than the basis of human civilization itself.

Of course conservatives hate it, because conservatives hate anything that interferes with their ability to maximize their own personal and immediate self-gratification . They call this proclivity a love of "freedom".

You're a study in denial,. You're not so mentally weak to understand what's going on with Dyson and his assault and contempt for science, but you don't decide things on the facts, you decide things on how well they dovetail with your preferred ideology.

You and people like you are exactly the reason that this little online war we've been waging for the past decade or so will ultimately go offline and end in a hot, real war; you simply refuse to treat facts as facts. You're incapable of it.

Something hangs in the balance here and that something is all future human civilization. So far, the tale of the tape says that groups who unilaterally attempt to destroy that future are ultimately and frankly brutally put down by the forces of civilization who prefer reality-based outcomes to ideological self-immolation.

I am pretty sure that preference is very deep inside the human psyche, you and your kind excepted, and will in time express itself with its usual ferocity and uncompromising attitude.

Until then, have fun playing your little self assigned role of science and reality denier . I can't say it's going to end well for you.

Those are some of the fears, and they only get worse from there.

Volkswagen is such a cool company. I wish they would turn their engineering attention to electric cars.

I hate M$ but their explanation sounds plausible. Not saying they don't have an unknown, secondary motivation also, just.,.. it sounds like something a programmer might think to do to combat the malware problem

They're going to leave out that whole "evolution" part.

against the free market , guess who's going to win this one?

http://www.stateintegrity.org/north_carolina

http://clclt.com/theclog/archives/2010/05/13/nc-more-corrupt-than-even-sc-and-louisiana

http://www.thedailybeast.com/galleries/2010/05/09/the-most-corrupt-states.html#slide5

No... it's not that the multimillionaires who own auto dealerships can't stand a new entrant with a novel product that makes their look expensive, dirty and lame. It's that they're worried about the integrity of the market place.

Freeman Dyson's scientific knowledge in this area is exactly nil.

Dyson on Dyson, from:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/magazine/29Dyson-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

"It's always possible Hansen could turn out to be right," he says of the climate scientist. "If what he says were obviously wrong, he wouldn't have achieved what he has. But Hansen has turned his science into ideology. He's a very persuasive fellow and has the air of knowing everything. He has all the credentials. I have none. I don't have a Ph.D. He's published hundreds of papers on climate. I haven't. By the public standard he's qualified to talk and I'm not. But I do because I think I'm right. I think I have a broad view of the subject, which Hansen does not. I think it's true my career doesn't depend on it, whereas his does. I never claim to be an expert on climate. I think it's more a matter of judgement than knowledge."

The bottom line is this Dyson, like a lot of academics from his time, is an attention seeking machine who longs to be relevant and see his name in print once again; thus his trolling of slashdot (!!!) for some love and attention.

He's going to be long dead by the time the full gravity of his malfeasance becomes manifest to those that follow him - a fact he's very acutely of.

  Excerpted without comment from

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2007/08/15/201772/freeman-dyson-climate-crackpot/?mobile=nc

As a physicist, I have never been a big fan of Freeman Dyson. He was, after all, one of the "geniuses" pushing Project Orion- the absurdly impractical idea of creating a rocket ship powered by detonating nuclear bombs-- I kid you not!

Dyson has written a new book, A Many Colored Glass, that you shouldn't waste your time and money on, as this extract on global warming makes clear. Dyson has basically joined the famous confusionist camp with Michael Crichton and Bill Gray. You can read a good debunking of Dyson here. I'll add my two cents.

Dyson says many things that are just plain wrong: "There is no doubt that parts of the world are getting warmer, but the warming is not global."

Uhh, no. The warming is global -as every set of data makes clear- that's why it's called global warming.

He says the "fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated" because he is certain the climate models do not reflect reality. I agree they don't reflect reality - but that leads me to the opposite conclusion. Dyson fails to ask whether the simplifications and omissions in climate models lead them to overestimate or underestimate climate impacts. So far, they have underestimated things like Arctic ice loss, mass loss of the great ice sheets, and sea-level rise. They don't model many feedbacks very well, and we know today that most feedbacks are amplifying.

No nonsense essay would be complete without a nonsense solution. He believes "the problem of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a problem of land management" and that the entire climate problem can be solved by increasing topsoil:

        We do not know whether intelligent land-management could increase the growth of the topsoil reservoir by four billion tons of carbon per year, the amount needed to stop the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Actually we kinda do know. The best data suggest we are losing billions of tons of topsoil each year. A major effort will be required just to stop that loss
rate from increasing sharply. Indeed, global warming itself is projected to cause both increased flooding, which washes away topsoil, and increased droughts, which destroy topsoil.

The entire essay is riddled with the kind of mistakes and dubious assertions we saw in Crichton's novel. One final point. Dyson asserts:

        They [climate models] do not begin to describe the real world that we live in. The real world is muddy and messy and full of things that we do not yet understand. It is much easier for a scientist to sit in an air-conditioned building and run computer models, than to put on winter clothes and measure what is really happening outside in the swamps and the clouds. That is why the climate model experts end up believing their own models.

Uhh, no. Climate modelers are skeptical like all scientists, but contrary to what Dyson says, they do base their models on real-world data, and their models are passable at modeling what has actually happened to the climate so far. As noted, where they have been inadequate is in underestimating the impacts we have felt so far.

But what really irritates me about this statement -which implies climate modelers are ivory tower theoreticians with no connection to the real world -is that it comes from someone who is an ivory tower theoretician with no connection to the real world, without the most basic understanding of climate science or climate scientists (has he gone to the trouble of talking to any?), a man who actually believed it was a good idea to pursue powering a spacecraft with nuclear detonations. People who live in glass greenhouses shouldnâ(TM)t throw stones.

http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Carbon-T-F.jpg

Freeman Dyson's scientific knowledge in this area is exactly nil.

The bottom line is this Dyson, like a lot of academics from his time, is an attention seeking machine who longs to be relevant and see his name in print once again; thus his trolling of slashdot (!!!) for some love and attention. He's going to be long dead by the time the full gravity of his malfeasance becomes manifest to those that follow him - a fact he's very acutely of.

  Excerpted without comment from

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2007/08/15/201772/freeman-dyson-climate-crackpot/?mobile=nc

As a physicist, I have never been a big fan of Freeman Dyson. He was, after all, one of the âoegeniusesâ pushing Project Orion â" the absurdly impractical idea of creating a rocket ship powered by detonating nuclear bombs â" I kid you not!

Dyson has written a new book, A Many Colored Glass, that you shouldnâ(TM)t waste your time and money on, as this extract on global warming makes clear. Dyson has basically joined the famous-confusionist camp with Michael Crichton and Bill Gray. You can read a good debunking of Dyson here. Iâ(TM)ll add my two cents.

Dyson says many things that are just plain wrong: "There is no doubt that parts of the world are getting warmer, but the warming is not global." Uhh, no. The warming is global â" as every set of data makes clear â" thatâ(TM)s why itâ(TM)s called global warming.

He says the "fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated" because he is certain the climate models do not reflect reality. I agree they donâ(TM)t reflect realityâ" but that leads me to the opposite conclusion. Dyson fails to ask whether the simplifications and omissions in climate models lead them to overestimate or underestimate climate impacts. So far, they have underestimated things like Arctic ice loss, mass loss of the great ice sheets, and sea-level rise. They donâ(TM)t model many feedbacks very well, and we know today that most feedbacks are amplifying.

No nonsense essay would be complete without a nonsense solution. He believes "the problem of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a problem of land management" and that the entire climate problem can be solved by increasing topsoil:

        We do not know whether intelligent land-management could increase the growth of the topsoil reservoir by four billion tons of carbon per year, the amount needed to stop the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Actually we kinda do know. The best data suggest we are losing billions of tons of topsoil each year. A major effort will be required just to stop that loss rate from increasing sharply. Indeed, global warming itself is projected to cause both increased flooding, which washes away topsoil, and increased droughts, which destroy topsoil.

The entire essay is riddled with the kind of mistakes and dubious assertions we saw in Crichtonâ(TM)s novel. One final point. Dyson asserts:

        They [climate models] do not begin to describe the real world that we live in. The real world is muddy and messy and full of things that we do not yet understand. It is much easier for a scientist to sit in an air-conditioned building and run computer models, than to put on winter clothes and measure what is really happening outside in the swamps and the clouds. That is why the climate model experts end up believing their own models.

Uhh, no. Climate modelers are skeptical like all scientists, but contrary to what Dyson says, they do base their models on real-world data, and their models are passable at modeling what has actually happened to the climate so far. As noted, where they have been inadequate is in underestimating the impacts we have felt so far.

But what really irritates me about this statement â" which implies climate modelers are ivory tower theoreticians with no connection to the real world â"is that it comes from someone who is an ivory tower theoretician with no connection to the real world, without the most basic understanding of climate science or climate scientists (has he gone to the trouble of talking to any?), a man who actually believed it was a good idea to pursue powering a spacecraft with nuclear detonations. People who live in glass greenhouses shouldnâ(TM)t throw stones.

The IRS is not part of the Obama administration. They are. They are part of the Treasury Department. Yeah you know that the day to day direction of the IRS is not overseen by any administration. Your assertion amounts to saying the President is the secret instigator of every misdeed or misstep of everyone in every department. I didn't think I had to make that explicit. Guess I didn't know who I was talking to. The fact are, as I said, that the IRS was scanning for scammers using the keywords the scammers themselves chose of their own freewill. It's not the IRS's fault that the tea party is also filled with manipulative liars who seek to illegally claim for themselves tax exempt status. The police have to go to where the criminals are. Maybe thew tea party should spend more time looking at who is in their membership and less time complaining the cops are harassing them.

The whole point is that scientists have been making models and predicting changes derived them form them for decades now and the observed changes in the climate do indeed line up with the predictions

The fact that you can say they do not is just a testament to how profoundly people can kid themselves.

Dyson' play is a pure "argument from authority" play. As I said in the original post, he is not doing science, he's attempting to leverage his authority in one domain into authority in another.