ITER Newsline Mention of Pollywell

[AcesHigh]

if a "leftist" like me said something in this thread, is because the forum has ALREADY been taken off by the right and teapartiers.

find my posts about politics in this forum. You can count then in one, two hands at maximum (I am talking POSTS, not threads), and they are at most answers to teapartiers posts.

now, count the politic related posts and rightist rants of some forumers, even moderators here... they number at hundreds...

we do have people like Diogenes who ONLY post political stuff, lunatic rantings about the "leftists"

[AcesHigh]

The 'news' section used to be good on this site and motivated me to come here.....

...and then.... one day... it turned into something that wasn't very good......

Some stronger moderation here is required to keep this site worth visiting, I think.

I already complained about this, nothing was done. This forum was about science but more and more, mainly the General section, turned into completely political threads.

its kinda obvious that if politics are allowed to such degree, where some forumers (yes, Diogenes) appear to be almost trolling, there will be spills at other sections/threads.

[Aero]

This has been an ongoing complaint for at least two years. Its not going to change ... it will only get worse ...

The guidance is to post non-specific topics on the general forum, but as you may have noted, when posting on that forum you will be lucky to get a few on topic replies before the thread is hijacked.

These last posts are definitely topic drift and appropriate for the general forum, not news.

[Betruger]

I don't see how that's obviously the only outcome.
Complaining doesn't get things changed. Making a credible case for change does.

On the contrary, given the demographic here, it should be fairly easy for self-moderation to get things back in order. And by order I don't mean less eccentric discussion either.

General is what you get when people who get to know each other run out of things to talk about. Sex, politics, and religion are timeless topics that never fail to get people interested and/or excited. It's human nature.

There might be more right-leaners than left-, but it's not self-evident at all that that's a recipe for trouble. Character, independent of political lean, is what's decisive there. And anyway, MSimon has it right. The kind of pragmatism natural to engineering does attract, for whatever reason, more Right than Left in my experience.

And it's not hard to not read topics you aren't interested in or can't stand. There again the true problem can be induced: it's not what political flavor topic drift and spills, but that someone coming here for Polywell/Fusion news has to wade thru unrelated debate.

[Roger]

I know, its a shame. I objected to this trend from the beginning. There far too many here that lack self control, the result is as you see. Talk-Polywell is known as the playground of conservative politics, instead of being the premier source for polywell things.
l

As the person who started this topic, I confess that I am deeply disappointed that it so quickly veered off into a completely unrelated political rant. You guys have totally tunred me off to this forum. The forum appears to be dominated by political crack pots who do a real disservice to what I thought was the fundamental purpose of the forum, i.e. to share information and promote a wider understanding of the Polywell concept. Practically every topic on the News forum rapidly devolves into some non technical diatribe. There maybe some good scientists and enginners participating in this forum, but the bizare, political/economic ideas that infiltrate so many posts, makes me question the validity of many posts. Clean it up or this forum will soon become a freeking joke and take the Polywell concept into the realm of cold fusion.

[AcesHigh]

There might be more right-leaners than left-, but it's not self-evident at all that that's a recipe for trouble. Character, independent of political lean, is what's decisive there. And anyway, MSimon has it right. The kind of pragmatism natural to engineering does attract, for whatever reason, more Right than Left in my experience.

And as everywhere on the internet, people think they know a lot more about other realms of knowledge than the experts.

Just as in economic forums I´ve run into economists that think they know more about engineering than the engineers, here at Polywell we meet engineers that think they know more about economics than economists, more about global warming than the experts in it, etc.



I wonder btw how the different areas of science lean to the right or left. So engineers lean right... what about biologists? Theoretical physicists? Astronomers?

[KitemanSA]

we do have people like Diogenes who ONLY post political stuff, lunatic rantings about the "leftists"

Which is why I have basically stopped responding to his posts.

[TallDave]

"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts." -- Feynman

I don't mind thread drift into politics as there are often political aspects to science issues. I don't even mind thread drift into complaining about thread drift.

In the General forum, especially, I think people should post what they like, and we can all exercise our ability to past anything we don't care about, within the parameters of reasonable civility. Coercive measures seem an excessive response.

Freedom of speech should be limited only by the freedom to ignore.

[Skipjack]

I don't mind thread drift into politics as there are often political aspects to science issues.

I do mind a thread drift, because politics in this forum means a single direction. This is bad for reasons that I mentioned earlier. If you can not understand that, then this is a reason for concern and shows that you understand very little about how politics actually work.
For this very reason and reasons that you (among others) are actually complaining about certain aspects of politics and science, science should be by principle unpolitical.

Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts

"Not everything great men have said is of equal greatness or relevance" -- me

[rschaffer8]

Thanks to those who took my post in the spirit it was intended, which was basically as a wake-up call. In the spirit of trying to practice what I'm preaching, I have decided not to respond to TDPerk's provocative and insulting response to my post.

[ltgbrown]

In the spirit of trying to practice what I'm preaching, I have decided not to respond to TDPerk's provocative and insulting response to my post.

Which you just did!

All this "drift" is do to the lack of data. When (I say when instead of if in the firm hope that we will get) data is made available, all this "topic drift" and personal attack stuff will diminish drastically (note that I did not say go away since we all recognize that we are human.) I believe most of what we are seeing is frustration over not KNOWING. We believe. Some believe it will work. Some believe it will not. But neither have the data, yet, to say they know. NEITHER.

So, the challenge to everyone here is to resist the urge to say something when there is nothing to say but something derogatory or demeaning born from the frustration to having to listen for yet another day, week, month, or god forbid year (s), to what people believe instead of know.

I have a dream that some day, in about 6 months give or take a little, we will have some data. Something more to discuss than "it looks like....". And this website will be the place we hear about and discuss it. If we continue down the rabbit hole of digressing into political diatribes and derogatory comments, then this site will "die".

I would prefer it did not, since as has been stated more than once, there appears to be a different quality to discussions here.

[Betruger]

And as everywhere on the internet, people think they know a lot more about other realms of knowledge than the experts.

And fortunately the internet is an excellent medium for getting to the bottom of such disagreements.

I wonder btw how the different areas of science lean to the right or left. So engineers lean right... what about biologists? Theoretical physicists? Astronomers?

You tell me. The trend is there. "How" or "why" is another question.

[vankirkc]

As the person who started this topic, I confess that I am deeply disappointed that it so quickly veered off into a completely unrelated political rant. You guys have totally tunred me off to this forum. The forum appears to be dominated by political crack pots who do a real disservice to what I thought was the fundamental purpose of the forum, i.e. to share information and promote a wider understanding of the Polywell concept. Practically every topic on the News forum rapidly devolves into some non technical diatribe. There maybe some good scientists and enginners participating in this forum, but the bizare, political/economic ideas that infiltrate so many posts, makes me question the validity of many posts. Clean it up or this forum will soon become a freeking joke and take the Polywell concept into the realm of cold fusion.

What he said!

I come to these forums now because they seem to channel the right wing lunatic fringe. An entertaining read when I'm bored, but hard to cast it as informative about Polywell, or to acquire any sense that the posters are objective, informed or credible.

[Betruger]

Lunatic fringe?
What's not informative about Polywell in the Tech/Evangelical/News forums? How's the forum characteristically not objective/informed/credible in those sections?

Lunatic fringe? As opposed to what, the sanity of mainstream complacency? The nonchalant tolerance for corruption in today's mainstream big govt machine? Crop out a couple of rabid right wingers and T-P is no different from most frankly-spoken forums of technical professionals I've seen; forums of the internet or real kind. There's just as much dissent and contention at e.g. NasaSpaceFlight, only there it's colored differently: there's different biases and hang-ups, and moderation is stricter due to population/traffic size.

[TallDave]

By my count we have about half a dozen lefty commenters in this thread denouncing and bemoaning rightwingers and their crazy extremist uninformed ignorance. Cry me a river, guys. Most of us not on the left suffered your favored views all through our education and still get them daily from the MSM. If you don't want to read them, on by. We've learned to do it, you can too.

The issue here was never Rand Paul, but the stomped woman.

You mean the MoveOn extremist with an arrest record who violently attacked Rand Paul's moving car twice and after the second attack was restrained with a foot on her shoulder while people yelled "Get the cops!"?

You didn't see the full video, did you?

Yes, the foot on the shoulder was probably unnecessary, even excessive. But generally when violent criminals (which she is) attack someone and are restrained, it isn't considered an outrageously outrageous outrage if they get a little roughed up in the process. You guys really need to take your own agitprop a bit less credulously.