I gave a long post on this above, probably overdoing it a bit. I short, you probably did witness something and probably something very interesting. Probably not a UFO though. Experiences like that tend to be brief and also very hard to describe because people tend to have no idea what they are looking at while it happens which makes it hard to remember or describe detail. So descriptions tend to be very vague among some people. Among others, details are very specific, but basically made up. When I say made up, I don't mean in the hoax sense, I mean in the way our brains make up a lot of what we think is genuine sensory data when it does not know what else to do. Consider the blind spots in our eyes, for example. There are these holes in our vision, and our brains just fill them in by extrapolating data from around them. Other examples, one time I was looking at a patch of leaves on the ground in the forest and the whole forest floor was covered in leaves. I realized that the patches of leaves in my peripheral vision and the patch of leaves I was staring at appeared to actually be the same and my brain appeared to just be pattern filling my peripheral vision with that pattern. Then we do the same thing with memories of events, so people see weird things they can't explain and it becomes gods, demons, ghosts, UFOs, dragons, etc. depending on what their minds are primed to see.

Anyway, given all that, it is probably hard for you to describe what you actually saw. Would you be up for trying to describe it though? Even just general shape, color, other details?

Your experience certainly could have been of something real. Hard to say what of course. It's not like lighter than air craft are not a thing. Hot air balloons, helium, hydrogen, etc. It's also not like people have not made them in the shape of traditional "hubcap" UFOs or other spacecraft in the past with the specific event of buzzing people with them and making them think they have seen a UFO. Also, it's not as if there are not a lot more ways that might not be immediately obvious. Any decent magician/illusionist will know a few.

Then there are all kinds of natural effects that can leave people questioning what they have seen. I myself remember being freaked out once for a short period of time by a firefly that got into my room and behind my blinds. For a short period of time, I could not understand what I was seeing. Ditto when I was driving once and stopped at an intersection when it was green because there was a stream of fire winding its way across the road across the intersection. That turned out to be a large volume of tiny pieces of burning ash from a cardboard box being carried by a ground current across the road. It was ultimately simple, but mind-boggling briefly as an unexplained phenomenon I had not encountered before. There are plenty of other phenomena though that can occur. Ball lightning, for example. One possible explanation for ball lightning (and there may be more than one phenomenon that is known as ball lightning) is that a lightning strike might create a plasma effect that actually creates a ball made of a fine network of carbon fibers in the air that burns. If that's the case, what does something like that look like when it burns out and is just floating through the air. Then there are weird optical effects expressed in clouds/water vapor. We usually all know about rainbows, but water vapor can also end up reflecting and refracting light in other ways. Most of us have seen mirages on roads on hot days where there appears to be a puddle on the ground that vanishes as you get close because heated pockets of air are actually acting a bit like mirrors. Such phenomena can appear in the sky as well, reflecting objects on the ground (possibly very distorted) to another location on the ground. There's an effect that can happen when walking through mist and the sun is just right where you see someone else walking in the mist next to you and it's actually your own reflection. So many other things out there that we rarely see, but that can often be observed by multiple people or groups of people at the same time when the conditions are right.

So, I have absolutely no doubt that you saw something weird and that others may have seen the same thing. I just can't draw any conclusions from that because there are just so many possibilities, many of which I am not even aware of, that you might have seen aside from alien spacecraft visiting Earth. Also, I should note that I believe you, but I also believe that, while many people have seen actual real things, the vast number of UFO reports out there are actually faked by the people who claim to have seen them. I have seen way to many videos of supposed UFOs zig zagging around in the sky that are obviously just an out of focus light filmed by someone jerking the camera around not to believe that.

Honestly, whatever Bigelow the person is like, I always did think they were onto something with the expandable modules. It at least partly addressed the fundamental problem with the ISS, which was that it was assembled from rigid modules that had to fit into the cargo bay of the space shuttle (or rockets in general) which basically meant long and thin. Consider that Skylab was 71 tons and had an internal volume of 361 cubic meters and the ISS is 420 tons and has an internal volume of 1000 cubic meters. So that's 196 kg per cubic meter for Skylab and 420 kg per cubic meter for the ISS. Now, both ISS modules and Skylab were basically cylinders, but the ratio between the required thickness of the walls and the interior volume was less of a problem in the larger (compared to an ISS module) Skylab. There were various possible solutions to this problem and part of the promise of the ISS was to explore them. Some possible solutions involved shipping much larger modules with better wall to interior volume ratios (so, closer to spherical and larger) in pieces that would fit in the cargo bay, then having the ISS astronauts assemble them in space, welding pieces together, etc. Nothing like that ended up happening though. I don't think there were even any basic space welding or other construction experiments done on the ISS (some were done on Skylab). It was really just Legos in space. For context, I was not a huge fan of Lego blocks as a kid... not without using glue, files, sandpaper, knife attachments on soldering irons, etc. Also throwing in a lot of non-Lego materials to the point where it became pointless to use any Lego parts at all.

Anyway, in the absence of actually using the ISS to explore space construction the inflatable modules from Bigelow seemed like a pretty good idea. Basically you could pack something in the same space that a traditional ISS module would fit in, but get 2 to 3X the interior volume. Still not real space construction but, inside the paradigm of modular assembly, a real potential improvement over the status quo. It never came to anything aside from one small module that gets used as a closet now, but it was the kind of actual experimentation with space habitation that was supposed to happen in the ISS.

Anyway, I had not realized until now that Bigelow himself was involved in this sort of garbage (or maybe I had, but I forgot or blocked it out). Something of a disappointment

This is clearly nonsense. There is nothing you can point to in my argument that is in bad faith. Simply disagreeing with you and explaining clearly why I disagree is not arguing in bad faith. Do you always conclude that people who you disagree with whose arguments you can't actually address are "arguing in bad faith"? On the other hand, you clearly have argued in bad faith when you committed what, from an academic perspective, is plagiarism by deceptively editing a quote to convert it from a question to a statement. That is a classic example of arguing in bad faith.

First, "replacing", not "repairing". I have replaced parts and repaired parts and I draw a distinction. While replacing a part within an assembly can broadly be thought of as repairing the assembly, it still does not count as repairing the actual part. As for replacing an O2 sensor, while it is not a massive challenge, due to the location and the inevitable corrosion, there are a huge number of jobs on a car that I consider to be much less of a pain.

Throughout this entire thread and the other branched version of this thread, I have never once disagreed with the first part of that argument. My opposition is based on the fact that:

1. As the one making the claim, you have to actually demonstrate not only that people are scrapping the cars sooner, but you also have to quantify (in a real, empirical sense, not just pulling a number out of the air) what the difference in lifetime is.

2. You also need to quantify what the actual build/scrap emissions are in a real, empirical sense so that the fractional difference in lifetime from part 1. (should it be demonstrated) can be applied to those lifetime emissions to show how much extra is generated in the way of emissions from the shortened lifespan.

3. You need to quantify what the actual emissions savings are from the specific technology in a real, empirical sense and demonstrate that those emissions savings are less than the extra emissions from reduced lifespan.

You also need to show that this is true in the general case, if not for emissions control technologies as a whole, at least for a specific class of emissions technologies. One or a handful of bad specific implementations of one technology are not enough.

As it stands, you have not done this. It is perhaps a high bar to cross, but extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Your claim is the sort of thing that makes a huge amount of common sense on initial examination and that people often find to be a convincing argument (especially if they are predisposed to grumbling about regulations, etc.). However further scrutiny shows the problem. All you have is a skeleton of an argument. You need to actually flesh it out for it to actually pass muster and you simply have not done that anywhere in these excruciatingly long threads. You have, in fact, almost totally ignored most of my mentions of the deficits in your argument and mostly just doubled down on parts of the argument that I don't even disagree with. Now, admittedly, actually proving your argument might require a large, industry-wide research project to gather all the data you would need. This is because all of the available data suggests that your argument does not hold water in the real world. Available figures for build/scrap emissions totals, vehicle lifetimes, etc. present figures that appear to make proving your general argument very, very difficult. As a result, without further data, I have to rate your overall claim as dubious at best.

Since it's not actually "across the board" as in your original example, then the answer is actually no. In any case, what you're saying is that it's not across the board, but that any sort of engine problem is a life-ending event for a car. That still of course requires that your speculation that it actually lowers the lifespan of the vehicle enough to be true, which is not really a fact in evidence at this point. Certainly though, if it does reduce the lifespan, then that is a technology (though not specifically an emission control one) that reduces the lifespan of the vehicle (I mean, of course it does, it's a tautology that if we accept premise A, then A is true). Of course, even then, for your actual broader point it would have to satisfy another condition (beyond actually needing to specifically be an emissions control technology, based on your additional clarification that it can't serve any other purpose than emissions control) and that condition is that it reduce the lifespan of the vehicle by enough that the difference between the lifespan with it and the lifespan without it expressed as a fraction of overall lifespan is sufficient that if the build/scrap emissions are multiplied by that fraction, they represent sufficient emissions to overwhelm the lifetime emissions savings of the technology. Still far from demonstrated in this example.

As for oil burning, that is polluting but the actual volume burning will be minuscule compared to the volume of gasoline burned. So, your cherry-picked example may certainly be an example of a poorly conceived and developed technology. I will certainly grant that. However, it still does not seem to prove the broader case even just for that class of technologies (schemes for reducing cylinder use under certain conditions whatever specific brand name they have) let alone for all cars with emissions control technologies.

It is in fact not a distinction without a difference. While the EPA standards do result in reduced environmental impact from emissions, the actual true purpose of those regulations has always been political, being mostly due to trade and energy independence considerations. You can tell because those regulations were not created as a response to an environmental problem, but to the OPEC oil crisis. They dovetailed with the EPA's mission, so they came out as EPA regulations, but the EPA is really mostly a scapegoat and the regulations should have actually come from the dept. of commerce or a similar department.

As I pointed out in the other branch of this thread, cylinder deactivation technology is actually a fuel conservation technology, not directly an emissions control technology. The car in question is not designed with that to improve EPA emissions testing, but rather EPA MPG requirements. Also, I have previously pointed out that there may indeed be very specific technologies that, individually do meet your point even if the general case does not. Of course, we've gone further than just a specific technology to a specific implementation on a specific car. We might as well be arguing over whether having airbags is much more dangerous than not having airbags because some specific recalled airbags propelled pieces of metal through people's chests on activation.

Still, if this is what you had in mind in the car A and car B example, does the Honda Pilot cost 2X as much to fix across the board than an equivalent car? If this is the real world car B, what's the real world car A? It sounds in general like the potential issues from VCM that you're describing do not significantly (or even definitely) reduce the vehicle's lifespan, which was a crucial part of the argument.

Also, you're saying that the MPG is reduced by about an average of .75 MPG by disabling it? Apparently the mileage of the vehicle is 22 MPG and it lasts about 200K. So that's about a 310 gallon gasoline savings over its lifetime which is about 2.76 tons of CO2 emissions. So, once again the question becomes if the disabling of this technology increases the lifetime of the vehicle enough that if you take the fraction of increased lifetime and multiply the total build/scrap emissions for the vehicle by that fraction, does the increased build/scrap emissions fraction exceed the 2.76 tons of reduced CO2? It sounds like, even in this highly specific case, there is not sufficient data to make that conclusion, but it seems to me like most reasonable estimates point to no.

Ok, I have to start with: What the actual #$@%, have you ever worked on a car before? O2 sensors and catalytic converters can, not be repaired under anything resembling normal circumstances. You might be able to clean an O2 sensor if it's fouled and maybe, maybe, just maybe you could do the same for a catalytic converter. Aside from that though, they are actually fabricated through quite sophisticated means, repairing them is difficult enough that it is beyond the ability of basically any mechanic (with the possible exception of replacing or splicing the pigtail on the O2 sensor if it's damaged).

To continue though, maybe you mean replacing them instead of repairing them, in which case I have to say: What the actual #$@%, have you ever worked on a car before? I will grant that it is not the absolute hardest job on a car, but I can think of hundreds of jobs that are easier. I personally have removed an automatic transmission with more ease the the catalytic converters I've had to remove. They're in an inconvenient spot, but also, at the point you need to replace them, they are pretty universally a corroded mess. Actually removing the bolts holding the flanges in place with any sort of wrench is often out of the question. Resorting to grinding them off or drilling them out is often required.

Also, how is it "obvious" that you did not mean those technologies? While you might argue O2 sensors since they provide other benefits aside from just emissions, catalytic converters are there purely for emissions (I mentioned benefits like preventing corrosion in the rest of the exhaust system, but that's still only a side-effect of the emissions). Arguing that you did not mean catalytic converters is frankly bizarre.

So the iconic example of what you're talking about is a technology not directly legislated by federal or state governments that is present in a small minority of cars (more often in pickup trucks) and that can be disabled in some vehicles. Also, its primary function is not emissions, but improving fuel economy rather than controlling emissions, though it will reduce emissions as a secondary effect. Also the potential engine problems it causes happen pretty much only as a result of those "very specific circumstances" you mention, so if those circumstances are rare, then the problems don't really occur. In any case at a rough calculation, it saves about 1000 gallons of gasoline over the typical lifetime of a typical vehicle with that system. So that's around $3000 at today's prices, but who knows really over more than a decade of inflation and fuel price fluctuations. Of course, this is not about money, but emissions, so that's about 8.8 tons of CO2 saved. So the question once again becomes whether there's a reduction in the lifetime of the vehicle big enough that the fractional difference between the vehicle's potential life multiplied by the total amount of emissions from manufacturing and scrapping is greater than nearly 9 tons. Let's say it reduces the car's lifespan by 10%, that would mean that scrapping and manufacturing would need to produce something like 90 tons of emissions for your argument to work. Your claim that this single feature would "reduc[e] vehicle useful life from 250K to 150K" seems a bit hyperbolic. If that were the case though, adjusting my calculations, it would be about a 1200 gallon difference between the two vehicles over 250K, or about (with a replacement of the vehicle with an equivalent one 150K) which equates to 10.87 tons of CO2. So, that would mean that the emissions from a build/replace would need to be 26.7 tons. That still seems pretty unlikely. So, while you do provide a better specific example here of a technology (even if not actually an emissions technology per se) that might reduce the lifespan of the vehicle, it's still doubtful that excluding it would reduce emissions total emissions inclusive of scrapping and construction.

It's not uncharitable. It's a completely fair synopsis of what you said. The example you provided was quite clear.

Umm, sorry? What?! I should have specifically asked you to clarify? You specifically wrote:

Which is it? Is your argument very simple, or should I have asked for clarification? In this thread, there are 5 replies by me and 5 by you since then and I made my understanding of what you wrote very, very clear in the very next post after the above. If I was actually somehow misunderstanding you, it stretches credulity that you would have continued the thread this far without clarifying yourself or at least indicating that there was something to clarify. Saying, at this stage, that you were initially unclear and continued to be unclear throughout a long conversation and that it was somehow my responsibility to ask you to be clear stretches credulity to the breaking point.

As for your claim that I was not arguing in good faith, that was not even in this thread, it was in a sub-thread that you branched from this one. Also, you claimed that I was not arguing in good faith in the context of claiming that I was misinterpreting the concept of a bathtub curve. That claim in no way related to, or creates any obligation to ask you to clarify the original argument you made in this thread. The bathtub curve is irrelevant to your original lack of clarity on what you now claim you actually meant.

As I have already pointed out, two of those are not even actually emission control technologies. They are fuel efficiency technologies. Some degree of emissions reductions is simply a beneficial side effect. You can tell because car companies put them in specifically to meet fuel-efficiency requirements, not specifically emissions requirements. Consider that since start-stop vehicles meet emissions requirements when driving, there's basically no chance that they would not meet them at idle even if they didn't stop the engine when idle. Ditto for dynamic cylinder deactivation. Such engines meet emissions requirements with all cylinders running, which makes it very unlikely that they would not meet emissions requirements otherwise. Car manufacturers don't need those technologies to meet emissions requirements, but they may need them to meet fuel efficiency requirements. Even if you want to argue that they really are primarily emissions control technologies (though I don't see how you can) they are clearly dual purpose technologies if they handle both fuel consumption and emissions.

As for "urethra (sic) injection" (ouch!) that is indeed primarily an emissions reduction technology. However, can also potentially improve combustion leading to increased fuel economy and serving yet again as a dual use technology. It can also potentially reduce engine wear. It's also present in what, 3% or so of passenger vehicles? I mean, it does wrap around to the original post you replied to about diesels and emissions, but you specifically referred to "...cars that are new right now..." in your first post on this thread. Overall, diesel technology does not seem that relevant. Still, to continue on urea injection, it does not appear, overall, to actually limit the lifetime of the vehicle in any significant way, which it would have to do in order to be relevant to your argument.

I am not wrong in my interpretation of a bathtub curve precisely because I have thought about it. Also, of course every item will not fail at mean time to failure. We're talking about statistical methods. I never claimed any such thing.

The bathtub curve for a car is a composite statistical representation of the likelihood of failure of components at any given point in its lifecycle. It all all based on averages. Every component in the car has its own bathtub curve specific to its role in that particular assembly (in other words, it might have a different curve in a different assembly where it is exposed to different stresses, use patterns, environmental conditions, etc.). Also, there is a tendency towards a bathtub curve, but not every class of part will follow the actual bathtub pattern, it's just an average tendency. All parts failure graphs added together will tend statistically to add up to one curve for the car which typically takes the shape of a bathtub curve.

At the end of a typical bathtub curve, component failures over time go up sharply. Your example requires that car A and car B have the same bathtub curve, but that on car B, any repairs cost twice as much as car A. It also implies that there is a limit at which the owner of either car will give up on further repairs because the total cost of repairs (after the warranty expiration) is too high. From those premises, you posit that the car with higher repair costs will have a shorter lifespan because the owner will give up sooner. Within the constraints of the example, I do not argue with the assertion that such a situation would lead to a longer lifespan for car A and never have. However, I do argue that the extension in life for the car with the lower repair costs will not be significantly longer than the lifetime of the car with lower repair costs. You appear to argue that the lifespan for the cheaper to repair car will be, on average significantly longer, but you never quantify. Can you do that now? Do you think that the point where the repair costs for the cheaper car will reach the maximum will give it 2X the life of the more expensive car? 1.875X as long? 1.75X as long? 1.625X as long? 1.5X as long? 1.375X as long? 1.25X as long? 1.125X as long? 1X as long? Somewhere in between those values? More than 2X as long?

Simply looking at the curve shows that the end of the graph is a concave up curve, which somewhat resembles exponential curves or curves tending towards asymptotic to a vertical line. Since the bathtub curves for car A and car B are the same, we will just use the same graph for both and call X1 the X value where problems can't be fixed under warranty and are all the owner's responsibility. We will call Z1 the failure rate of components where the owner of car B will give up on further repairs due to the dollar value and Z2 the failure rate of components where the owner of car A will give up on further repairs due to the dollar value. I think we can agree for this argument that Z1 is 0.5*Z2 since car B costs twice as much to repair, so a doubled failure rate should be the point where car A is also scrapped. In other words X2 and X3 are the time values where the owners of car B and car A respectively give up on their cars. The function describing the curve will be f(x). So f(X2 - X1)=Z1 and f(X3-X1)=Z2. Now, look at the graph (the example bathtub curve in the wiki article you linked will work). On that graph, X1 will be on a part of the curve where it is relatively stable (the "constant failure rate" portion). X2 will be on a part of the bathtub curve where it starts to go up sharply (the "increasing failure rate" portion) and X3 will be further along the line where it goes up sharply. Specifically, X3 will be at a point where the Y difference to the Y value of X1 is twice that of the difference in Y values between the Y value at X1 and X2. Now, we don't have a real-world bathtub curve, just a conceptual one and we don't have any real values for anything. What we do know, however, is that we have values along a concave up curve. That tells us absolutely that the difference between X1 and X2 MUST be larger than the difference between X2 and X3. Given any reasonable placement of X1, X2 and X3 on the example graph, it should be significantly less than that. Therefore, even in your own example, there is not a big gap in lifespan for car A and car B. Basically, as I keep saying, the model is technically valid, but it only proves your point with very contrived values plugged into it.

In summary, I understand bathtub curves just fine. Well enough to recognize that they make a better argument against your point than for it. The difference in lifespan between the cars needs to be larger than real world information indicates and/or the emissions of manufacturing/scrapping a car has to be larger than real world information indicates and/or the impact of emssions-control technologies on car emissions needs to be lower than real world information indicates in order for your theory on emissions to hold water. Oh, also, for your specific car A and car B example, you would also have to show that a car with emissions control technology actually costs twice as much to repair as one without. I simply accepted that as part of the example (while pointing out it was unrealistic) but for your general argument to apply to the real world, you would have to show that as well.To repeat myself, you have to show some actual facts backing up the values that go into your model for it to provide the results you claim it provides.

That is not the argument you originally made. You made an argument that boiled down to car A and car B one with emissions control technologies and one without with the implication that emissions controls technologies as a group are bad and lead to more emissions. Ultimately, it does not appear that emissions control technologies as a class have the effect you mention. It is possible that specific, individual technologies might have the effect you spoke of, but discussing those specific technologies individually is different from discussing them as a group. You would need to discuss them individually for that. So it sounds like we have wasted a lot of time on the wrong argument. If we were to discuss the individual technologies and their cost/benefit in terms of emissions, it seems we would also need to lay some ground rules on what we are considering as far as the negative effects of emissions. For example, are we just considering greenhouse gases, or are we also considering ozone depletion, acid rain, ground-level particulates, unburned gasoline evaporate, ground level ozone, other ground level pollutants, etc.? Also, does the discussion extend beyond chemical emissions to other things. For example sound? Part of the purpose of the car's exhaust system is to avoid poisoning the driver, but parts of it are devoted to addressing noise pollution. Clearly mufflers and resonators do fail and need replacing and exhaust work done by a mechanic can be quite costly, potentially leading to a car being scrapped early because expensive exhaust work is required to pass inspection. So, should noise-control tech be omitted by a similar argument? Ultimately, the biggest problem with your initial argument was the non-specificity. If you're more specific, I might completely agree on the one particular point.

There do not seem to be precise numbers to find, but we really only need a rough approximation here. I can guarantee we're in about the right ballpark. As for various toxins, etc. getting into the environment, that is certainly a concern, but you basically have three options: recycle it, burn it, or discard it into the environment. Recycling you should definitely do where you can, and there certainly is some recycling, though not as much as one would hope. Discarding it into the environment is ultimately just another way of polluting since it will break down eventually and produce pollutants that way. Then there's burning what you can't recycle. If done properly at high temperature and using a catalytic process to treat the gases that come out, plastics can be converted pretty much entirely to CO2 and water vapor. Of course, plastics may have various additives to deal with that won't just turn into CO2 and water vapor. Those can include elements like tin, silicon, etc. Mostly though, those can end up as ash which can be dealt with. Obviously burning still presents an issue of producing CO2, which is a greenhouse gas. However, the quantity is negligible relative to the output of a fossil fuel burning ICE vehicle.

Your overall impression is not supported by typically quoted figures. Also, once again, your argument relies on a shortened lifespan for emissions-controlled vehicles that increases the frequency of manufacturing and scrapping new vehicles so much that the fractional increase in emissions from the cycle of manufacturing and scrapping increasing slightly overwhelms the lifetimes savings in emissions of the emissions controlled vehicle. So, whatever the emissions there are from the manufacturing and scrapping, they would only increase by a relatively small fraction. In the meantime, the emissions from the emissions-controlled vehicle are significantly lower. You have a high bar to demonstrate that the increase in emissions even happens in the first place, then that it is greater than the simultaneous decrease in emissions.

Actually, this argument reminds me of the anti-solar power argument I still see from time to time where someone argues that solar panels take more energy to manufacture than they could ever generate. If that was ever true, it is not even remotely true today and has not been true for probably longer than I have been alive. It is similar to your argument in that the argument can be boiled down to subtracting the energy used for manufacture (and scrapping/recycling) from the total lifetime generation of the panels to conclude if they are energy positive. However, actual numbers are needed to conclude that solar panels would not be worthwhile for general purpose power generation from that model/framework. I mean sure, if P then Q... but P?

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!! You just took something that was posted as a rhetorical question, then quoted back to the person who wrote it after deceptively editing it to appear to be a statement, then try to claim that I'm the one not arguing in good faith? Now that's rich. I'm sorry, but that's some serious intellectual dishonesty for which you should feel deeply ashamed. I mean, that's the kind of shoddy rhetoric that people use to try to "win" debates in the eyes of the gullible, but who are you trying to pull it on? At this point in the conversation, it's unlikely there's anyone other than the two of us reading. Do you actually somehow believe that you can trick me by misquoting me to myself?

Understand that abbreviating quotes is perfectly fine to remove irrelevant information or to replace pronouns with nouns without having to quote entire other sentences, etc. However, it is vitally important to preserve the original meaning when doing so. In an academic setting, I have had professors who would certainly refer a student for academic discipline for plagiarism for that.

Anyway, I've made the point I was trying to make in the comment you replied to multiple times and you are systematically avoiding addressing it in any way, obviously preferring to deflect instead. Your attempted sour grapes dismissal seems to be ample evidence that you can't actually refute my argument and defend your own. So, I suppose that's pretty decisive that your initial conclusions were flawed... unless you can come up with some other defense.

Yeah, Musk is a delusional, drug-addled fabulist. He has a habit of continually asserting that difficult things will be easy, or at least easy for him and his companies. I think it's an extension of narcissism where he convinces himself that he's just so great and talented that, when he comes up against things that are serious challenges for others, he will overcome them easily. Then he just goes into a sort of fugue state when he actually runs into the challenges, then just sort of resets without learning a lesson.

It is notable that SpaceX puts basically all of its effort into spacecraft and pretty much nothing into the actual requirements of living on Mars (or landing, for that matter - it is completely unclear how his spacecraft are supposed to land on loose regolith without destroying themselves with all of the material that gets kicked up). Apparently, they do have a department for that, but I've never heard anything about any research they've done or technology they have developed beyond some concept art. Apparently they also sneak some language into the Starlink EULA getting users to agree that Mars is a sovereign planet. Basically though, they really have only worked on the how to get there part of the equation. Heck, even there, they seem to have mostly on the how to get a payload there part of the equation without much consideration of what to do when the payload is a group of living human beings.

There are lots of things they could be doing. For example, SpaceX is one company that actually does have the resources to actually be the ones to finally try out a spinning space station so they can do testing in orbit of how human-like animals actually handle reduced gravity. Or they could do additional testing on how to manage agriculture on Mars and on in situ resource utilization, etc. As far as I can tell though, they aren't really doing any of that stuff.

Instead, they're trying to get Starship to stop exploding before fully completing a mission. Even if they can do that, there are some serious questions about the real cost of a launch (since Elon's projected figures are maybe just a little ridiculous). Not to mention if stainless steel will actually end up being practical because of all the added weight. So, even if they solve that and Starship turns out to be a great way to get things to Mars, that's only a small part of the puzzle and the research and development that will need to be done for a basic Mars colony, let alone a million people on Mars any time in Elon's remaining 40+ years (his estimate, not mine).

You're going to have to elaborate on:

They do, but for most consumers, the Cavendish is the banana. When it gets replaced by the next cultivar, there's going to be a lot of consumer confusion. Of course, this has already happened with the Gros Michel before the Cavendish. Still, I get the feeling that consumers today are possibly a little more pampered in their tastes, so the switchover might not be that easy.

Well, they did get a lot of promises that should have amounted to a guarantee that Russia would not invade. At the time it also seemed like the post-war order was still on a "never again" footing as far as tolerating invasions in Europe, etc. But yeah, more actual, specific commitments in writing would have been a good idea considering what was being given up.