Michael Lorrey wrote:
> As someone who spent a number of years as an energy analyst,
> developing energy conservation technologies, you don't know what you
> are talking about. Every trend in resource cost is downward, and
> availability is upward. Stopy buying the Green lies.
For heavens sake. How is this supposed to convince somebody who's
actually worried about energy depletion? You might actually *change
someone's mind* if you explained yourself! :p
[Hint: Most Greens think that energy prices today don't tell you
anything; that reflecting on prices and price trends today is like
jumping off a building and saying "I'm not going to stop suddenly!
I'm going faster and faster!" Answering this (wrong, but initially
plausible) intuition might actually do some GOOD.]
> Oh, you really are a mess, aren't you? Resources do not get
> 'destroyed'. They just get reallocated.
Truuue, but just saying so isn't enough. Oil *looks* like it gets
destroyed when it's used. How will your comment change someone's mind
about that intuition?
> Every technological advancement allows the amount of resources
> needed to produce every dollar of economic activity to decrease all
> the time. Where do you think all the wealth of our economy comes
> from? It didn't just come from us trading iron and corn back and
> forth and paying a wage. Technology increases productivity, which
> decreases the amount of resources you need to live an ever higher
> standard of living. Get off the Malthusian BS, he was disproven long
> ago.
So instead of actually naming a technology or two, you just assert that
technology will continue to increase our productivity. Do you see why
this doesn't help?
> > Yes, but they were working from an ascending paradigm. Extropianism is
> > Gnosticism reversed, the exact same stand within a descending paradigm.
>
> No, its an ascending paradigm based on factual data. I quite
> understand how you are so confused.
Who's THAT supposed to convince? Just *claiming* that your beliefs
are based on facts is no argument!
Now, maybe you don't have time to give a reasonably complete list of
facts or supporting arguments or whatever. But, if so, you didn't
actually have time to provide a good argument. And a bad argument is
much worse than no argument at all.
-Dan
-unless you love someone-
-nothing else makes any sense-
e.e. cummings
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon May 28 2001 - 09:50:21 MDT