There Have been Some Complaints

Discuss life, the universe, and everything with other members of this site. Get to know your fellow polywell enthusiasts.

Moderators: tonybarry, MSimon

MSimon
Posts: 14334
Joined: Mon Jul 16, 2007 7:37 pm
Location: Rockford, Illinois
Contact:

There Have been Some Complaints

Post by MSimon »

In the main that General has taken over.

viewtopic.php?p=32265#32265
blaisepascal wrote:
KitemanSA wrote:Sorry, bad logic.
Then let my comments stand as a sign of frustration at how dominant the General forum is currently in traffic on talk-polywell right now.

The main interface I use for looking at talk-polywell is the "View posts since last visit" link, as that's where you go to see, well, new stuff. Finding anything in the archives is very difficult, but that's the nature of fora software like this.

If I had joined within the past couple of weeks, rather than a couple of years ago, my first impressions of the forum would have been dominated by posts that, too me, appear heavily "right-wing": full of AGW-denialism, claims of the evil government takeover by Obama and company, global anti-American conspiracies, the irreparable harm caused by Democrats, various bits of argumentus ad hominem by calling Opama and Democrats "socialist" and "communist", etc. The exact details escape me because I've learned that my blood pressure is best controlled by ignoring the "General" forum to the best of my ability.

If I were new here, with my political opinions and leanings, I would probably have been driven away by the apparent tenor of the General forum. I would have been left with the impression that the board was radically right-wing and political, and not technical, despite the advertised claims it was a polywell fusion site. As I would have been looking for information on polywell fusion with no desire to argue politics, I would have left.

It makes me wonder how many others have felt unwelcome or driven off by the political content of the General forum.
Here are a couple of my thoughts:

There is a lot of evidence of cooking the books by "AGW" scientists. This is going to be bad for all science. From here on and for a long time only engineering demonstrations of science (i.e. practical applications) are going to hold much water.

Politics: engineers are right wingers (in the main). Maybe this is only true in America. Enlighten me.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

Diogenes
Posts: 6967
Joined: Mon Jun 15, 2009 3:33 pm

Post by Diogenes »

I am of the opinion that the discussions in Theory and Design have basically ground to a halt because people can't think of anything further to discuss in the absence of real Data. I have abandoned the Theory and Design areas primarily because I regard the discussions in there as little more useful than arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

What the website needs is NEW INFO to steer it back on target.

Apart from that, if Polywell Fusion works, (and we get some data) then all the other sundry discussions will abate, and people will once more focus on the Fusion aspect.

If Polywell Fusion is demonstrated to be unworkable, then who cares if people discuss other stuff on a website dedicated to an unworkable idea ?

ravingdave
Posts: 650
Joined: Wed Jun 27, 2007 2:41 am

Re: There Have been Some Complaints

Post by ravingdave »

MSimon wrote:In the main that General has taken over.

viewtopic.php?p=32265#32265
blaisepascal wrote:
KitemanSA wrote:Sorry, bad logic.
Then let my comments stand as a sign of frustration at how dominant the General forum is currently in traffic on talk-polywell right now.

The main interface I use for looking at talk-polywell is the "View posts since last visit" link, as that's where you go to see, well, new stuff. Finding anything in the archives is very difficult, but that's the nature of fora software like this.

If I had joined within the past couple of weeks, rather than a couple of years ago, my first impressions of the forum would have been dominated by posts that, too me, appear heavily "right-wing": full of AGW-denialism, claims of the evil government takeover by Obama and company, global anti-American conspiracies, the irreparable harm caused by Democrats, various bits of argumentus ad hominem by calling Opama and Democrats "socialist" and "communist", etc. The exact details escape me because I've learned that my blood pressure is best controlled by ignoring the "General" forum to the best of my ability.

If I were new here, with my political opinions and leanings, I would probably have been driven away by the apparent tenor of the General forum. I would have been left with the impression that the board was radically right-wing and political, and not technical, despite the advertised claims it was a polywell fusion site. As I would have been looking for information on polywell fusion with no desire to argue politics, I would have left.

It makes me wonder how many others have felt unwelcome or driven off by the political content of the General forum.
Here are a couple of my thoughts:

There is a lot of evidence of cooking the books by "AGW" scientists. This is going to be bad for all science. From here on and for a long time only engineering demonstrations of science (i.e. practical applications) are going to hold much water.

Politics: engineers are right wingers (in the main). Maybe this is only true in America. Enlighten me.

Am I to understand that someone is complaining that there is too much free speech going on in here? Too many ideas being exchanged? That these discussions aren't pertinent to science?

Imagine that.

It's Joe's Board. If he lets it be known that he wants such discussions stopped, I can assure everyone that I will stop. I respect his property and his right to do with it as he sees fit.

CaptainBeowulf
Posts: 498
Joined: Sat Nov 07, 2009 12:35 am

Post by CaptainBeowulf »

Yeah, there can really be no more effective discussion in news and theory until one of the following happens:

1. Dr. Nebel/EMC2 and the Navy release more data. Detailed WB-7 and WB-8 data would be preferable.
2. FAMULUS or someone else, like a university project, gets a Polywell to the point where it produces better data than anything we have from WB-6 or earlier.
3. Any of the particle physics modeling wizards get going again and produce some really good models for us. However, I don't see how we could have any real confidence in the models without a bit more solid data.

If people really want to see some action maybe they could see if they can help FAMULUS out in some way, if he wants any help.

I think Art's critiques have demonstrated that we can't get much further without more data.

In the meantime, why shouldn't we be able to talk with each other? Sure there are some strong opinions, heated discussion and occasional flames, but people seem to have similar interests and to have decent debates. Debating is a good way to learn things, even if it's not about Polywell.

I will be glad when new data is released and News and Theory can take over again. But I don't expect that to happen until at least late spring.

CaptainBeowulf
Posts: 498
Joined: Sat Nov 07, 2009 12:35 am

Post by CaptainBeowulf »

As for rhetoric, yes, the rhetoric gets quite strong at times. This usually happens in political conversations these days.

I've already stated on here that I'm right-wing. However, I do accept that calling Obama a Communist is like calling people like me Nazis. I don't think Obama is Joseph Stalin. But, I believe in freedom of speech. If people want to throw around epithets, we're all grown up - we should be able to deal with it.

MSimon
Posts: 14334
Joined: Mon Jul 16, 2007 7:37 pm
Location: Rockford, Illinois
Contact:

Post by MSimon »

Any one who wants to help Famulus should go here:

http://iecfusiontech.blogspot.com/2010/ ... night.html

The meet up is at 8:15 in New York City. I have given Roger Fox a heads up. Maybe he will have a report. Or maybe I can get Famulus to say something. I'm sure he will do a blog post.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

TallDave
Posts: 3140
Joined: Wed Jul 25, 2007 7:12 pm
Contact:

Post by TallDave »

Eh, there's too much whining imo.

If you don't want to read something, then don't read it. Here's the world's smallest violin playing in sympathy to the complaint you lost valuable seconds of your life skimming over something that drifted off the topics you're interested in.

MSimon
Posts: 14334
Joined: Mon Jul 16, 2007 7:37 pm
Location: Rockford, Illinois
Contact:

Post by MSimon »

CaptainBeowulf wrote:As for rhetoric, yes, the rhetoric gets quite strong at times. This usually happens in political conversations these days.

I've already stated on here that I'm right-wing. However, I do accept that calling Obama a Communist is like calling people like me Nazis. I don't think Obama is Joseph Stalin. But, I believe in freedom of speech. If people want to throw around epithets, we're all grown up - we should be able to deal with it.
But he is a communist. Look at his appointments. Or look up his mentor Frank Marshall Davis. Or his father (in absentia - who he idolizes). Or his grandmother.

Communism runs through his whole life right up to the present.

Community organizer?

Now is he personally overt about his communism? Of course not. He wouldn't have been elected. Seriously: "share the wealth" ?

There are leftys I admire: Joe Lieberman. Why? He knows that a strong economy is good for the poor and is required to support handouts.

But Obama? ..........

Look up his New Party connections.

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/p-j-gladni ... -new-party
In June sources released information that during his campaign for the State Senate in Illinois, Barack Obama was endorsed by an organization known as the Chicago "New Party". The 'New Party' was a political party established by the Democratic Socialists of America (the DSA) to push forth the socialist principles of the DSA by focusing on winnable elections at a local level and spreading the Socialist movement upwards.
And if you search there are pictures of him at a New Party meeting. So he was not just endorsed. He was involved.

Picture here:

http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/200 ... s-win.html
Obama actively sought the New Party’s endorsement and urged the Marxist members to join his campaigns. The New Party went so far as to claim Obama as an official member of their organization. The New Party socialists were affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America.

Of course, Obama has a long history of relationships with Marxists. His first mentor in high school was noted Communist Frank Marshall Davis. He admitted he attended socialist conferences during his college years in his first book, "Dreams From My Father", page 122:
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

CaptainBeowulf
Posts: 498
Joined: Sat Nov 07, 2009 12:35 am

Post by CaptainBeowulf »

Oh I agree he's said Communist sounding things. I just think he's your fairly standard cynical politician. Amongst other things, he leveraged the current pseudo-hippies in their early twenties brilliantly. I said during his campaign that he was promising different things to different groups, things that couldn't be reconciled.

In reality, he can't fulfill most of his promises because they were unrealistic to begin with. Can he fix the economy and implement a 20 to 50 % reduction in carbon emissions? No, the two are currently mutually contradictory. Perhaps he could fix the economy and thereby raise the revenues to conduct research into new energy technologies like Polywell. But he can't do both in one term. He just threw around a simplistic slogan - "change" - and lied about what was possible.

I think he was just using the New Party, like he was using other groups.

When we say Communist, we're generally referring to the Soviet Union and Mao's China. I doubt Obama has serious intentions to set up gulags, turn the police and intelligence services into a secret police, put commissars in the military, confiscate your property and make you live in a communal residence with 3 other families, and kill 30 million people. Or invade and annex neighbouring countries, and sovietize them.

Depends on whether you think "death panels" were intentional - I just think that the health reform legislation was poorly conceived and written.

Is he a socialist? Yeah, he's a socialist. He will likely keep raising taxes (although probably not as high as the Euro "social democracies"). He will probably make more of a mess of the economy through some sort of attempt at more stimulus combined with unrealistic carbon emissions cuts. He might well screw up in Afghanistan by sticking to his withdrawal schedule, instead of adapting to circumstances. But the evidence I've seen hasn't yet convinced me that he should be considered Lenin or Stalin.

As for socialist conferences in college, the amount of socialism on university campuses is remarkable. It is the trendy thing for pseudo intellectual youth to be. I've been amazed to see fairly conservative youth go to NYU or Yale and become slightly lefty. It's their behaviour after university that I'm more interested in - whether they grow out of it or not.

My rhetoric is perhaps too moderate. I would say Obama and others like him in the U.S. and the West generally have policies that appeal to the naivety of the liberal left wing. I think it's a good thing to have people like you keep an eye on people who pursue a form of leftist populism though - just in case one of them does become more dangerous.

CaptainBeowulf
Posts: 498
Joined: Sat Nov 07, 2009 12:35 am

Post by CaptainBeowulf »

Anyway - case in point. We just turned this back into a political discussion. I'll play nice with the lefties and avoid using rhetoric. But people shouldn't whine when someone does call them a name.

Jccarlton
Posts: 1747
Joined: Thu Jun 28, 2007 6:14 pm
Location: Southern Ct

Post by Jccarlton »

CaptainBeowulf wrote:As for rhetoric, yes, the rhetoric gets quite strong at times. This usually happens in political conversations these days.

I've already stated on here that I'm right-wing. However, I do accept that calling Obama a Communist is like calling people like me Nazis. I don't think Obama is Joseph Stalin. But, I believe in freedom of speech. If people want to throw around epithets, we're all grown up - we should be able to deal with it.
One of the most effective things the Progressives have done is to be able to smear those who disagree with them. It's almost impossible to call them out and expose them for what they are without being courageous enough to stand up to the lies and crocodile teared expressions of righteous indignation whenever a progressive is called to account. Look how Ed Murrow, Communist(I have his signature on front group letterheaded paper to prove it) successfully smeared Joe Macarthy for daring to suggest that the Truman and Eisenhower Administrations tighten the State Department's security and maybe fire a few of those who were so actively selling us and the Chinese people to the wolves. The book "Blacklisted By History" makes for interesting reading.
http://books.google.com/books?id=vz42rD ... q=&f=false
Frankly I'm tired of the endless lies, ad hominum attacks, distortions, smears and just plain making stuff up.

CaptainBeowulf
Posts: 498
Joined: Sat Nov 07, 2009 12:35 am

Post by CaptainBeowulf »

Well this is why I say that when people smear Obama and other "liberals", it's free speech. Leftists, especially on university campuses, have been throwing epithets such as "Nazi" at people on the right for years. Nevermind that Hitler and company were socialists (as in the name of their party - National Socialist). My personal experience of this extends from the 1990s onwards. But I have heard from older colleagues and relatives about how leftist youth came into lecture halls in the 1960s yelling "running dogs of capitalism" and other such garbage. So, conservatives are only doing the same thing back to them.

Nonetheless, I prefer to engage in low-rhetoric argumentation. Then if someone does calls me an exploiter of the masses, heartless, cruel, fascist etc. it is easier for me to demonstrate who is being irrational. And I can understand some people on the forum getting flustered about it. But once again: if you engage in debate, accept that you may get burned.

Edit: I put liberal in quotation marks, since a true 18th-19th century liberal would be more akin to a small government conservative today - while liberal generally now refers to socialists, progressives, and left-leaning moderates.

CaptainBeowulf
Posts: 498
Joined: Sat Nov 07, 2009 12:35 am

Post by CaptainBeowulf »

Come to think of it, a good example of leftists starting it is the guy who shows up here every few weeks and yells "I bet you're all creationists!" I would say people on this forum have actually been quite mature by just ignoring him.

Josh Cryer
Posts: 526
Joined: Sun Aug 31, 2008 7:19 am

Post by Josh Cryer »

You can take General off of "View new posts since last visit" by modifying the permissions for that forum. I can't tell you how to do it exactly in phpBB2 because it is archaic and no longer supported by anyone, but if you look around it's in there.

I see no whining, just a functional complaint.
Science is what we have learned about how not to fool ourselves about the way the world is.

MSimon
Posts: 14334
Joined: Mon Jul 16, 2007 7:37 pm
Location: Rockford, Illinois
Contact:

Post by MSimon »

CaptainBeowulf wrote:Come to think of it, a good example of leftists starting it is the guy who shows up here every few weeks and yells "I bet you're all creationists!" I would say people on this forum have actually been quite mature by just ignoring him.
We have had a couple of them in the last month. Maybe the DU posting.

I suggested they wouldn't last two weeks. And what do you know.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

Post Reply