Subject:
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Re: Keeping Larry Amused
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Sun, 30 Jan 2000 23:35:47 GMT
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Reply-To:
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lpieniazek@novera.com#stopspam#
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Viewed:
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2921 times
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Jasper Janssen wrote:
>
> On Thu, 27 Jan 2000 19:00:54 GMT, Larry Pieniazek <lar@voyager.net>
> wrote:
>
> > There is a cost from lightning too, and if we wanted to, we could
> > prevent lightning from ever happening. But the cost of preventing it far
>
> I don't know exactly what you're smoking, but I think I'd like you to
> keep it away from me.
>
> How, pray tell, could we prevent lightning from ever striking?
>
> Note, _ever_ means _one_hundred_percent_ effective.
Note carefully that there is no claim that the following is *practical*
or a good idea. Merely that it is doable. In fact it is hugely
impractical and a terrible idea. Lightning is a good thing, actually,
despite the fact that sometimes it knocks over trees.
But that's the point. There are many things out there in the world that
could be prevented, but instead it is a better idea to let them happen,
because the cost of preventing them is too high, or because there are
side effects from preventing them. Those things, which no one in
particular is causative of, still have to be dealt with. When a tree is
struck by lightning on my property, or a meteor lands, or a trespasser
dies, someone has to clean it up. That someone is me. It's not FAIR,
it's not just, it's going to cost me money, but that's the way of the
world. If I (or my insurance company, in my stead) am not responsible,
please tell me who is.
Now, to rid the earth of *all* lightning, (and let me emphasise again
that this is a hugely expensive, impractical and thorougly bad idea, but
nevertheless *possible* as a pedagogical device) *all* we have to do is
change the conductivity of the atmosphere such that all the static
electricity has a low resistance path to ground. That is, that we deny
the opportunity to let charges build up sufficient to have high voltage
discharges, because they discharge right away in a diffuse manner with
no channels or pathways for high voltage flows...
Now, how do we do that? Remember, cost is no object, we are ignoring all
the extremely terrible side effects of doing this, we are only
considering it as a debating device to show how ridiculous it is to rail
against things that cannot practically be completely prevented......
*Merely* have a fleet of aluminum dust bombers in the air at all times
sufficient to keep the entire atmosphere saturated with conductive dust.
Unfortunately, we will all die soon from inhaling aluminum dust (the 1/2
of us that don't die in bomber wrecks since we all will have to take
shifts flying these bombers, and it's going to take a LOT of bombers).
But we will have eliminated lightning.
Now, if you say, but thats hugely impractical, you've missed the whole
point of this post. It's doable.
We could similarly eliminate all falls, all deaths from cancer, all auto
accidents, all meteor strikes, all of almost any class of event X where
X is any bad (or thought to be bad... maybe meteor strikes are actually
beneficial and we don't know it) occurence. But at what cost? That's my
point.
Tieing it back to immigration....
It was rash of me to say that there is absolutely no downside at ALL
from allowing unfettered immigration, other than the increased draw on
welfare. There are downsides. Immigrants might well come here and starve
and somebody would be stuck cleaning it up. But carry out an analysis,
how often are we talking about? There are a hundred other bad things
that might happen because we allow open immigration that someone who
didn't specifically cause the event gets stuck for, too.
But if you carry out that analysis you should also carry out the
analysis of the cost of NOT allowing it. I'm satisfied that it would be
far higher, in libertopia, to not allow it. Many more undesired side
effects. Here in the US with our current system, we can't allow
unfettered immigration.
Now, again, I repeat, I was shortcutting when I said what I said that
started this whole sorry subthread. I shouldn't have shortcutted. I
should have been 100% precise. But I wasn't, and it caused lots of havoc
and wasted time, words, and effort. And THAT is one reason why I find
.debate so tiresome. Nobody can connect dots on their own, everything
has to be spelled out to the nth degree and no shortcutting is allowed.
Yawn.
That, and of course the teaching pigs to sing aspect...
With rare exceptions such as Frank Filz, most of us are pretty sure we
know all the answers already (and I include myself in that group) and
trying to change the mind of anyone is like teaching pigs to sing, you
get muddy, the pigs get annoyed and nothing else changes.
--
Larry Pieniazek - larryp@novera.com - http://my.voyager.net/lar
http://www.mercator.com. Mercator, the e-business transformation company
fund Lugnet(tm): http://www.ebates.com/ ref: lar, 1/2 $$ to lugnet.
Note: this is a family forum!
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Message has 1 Reply:
Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Keeping Larry Amused
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| (...) I don't know exactly what you're smoking, but I think I'd like you to keep it away from me. How, pray tell, could we prevent lightning from ever striking? Note, _ever_ means _one_hundred_percent_ effective. Jasper (25 years ago, 30-Jan-00, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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