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From: petrich@netcom.com (Loren Petrich)
Subject: Re: Creation VS Evolution Survey Now Complete
Message-ID: <petrichDvrHID.8u0@netcom.com>
Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest)
References: <Pine.SOL.3.91.960529130037.7029A-100000@logo.eng.umd.edu> <NEWTNews.839226303.25248.inbal@dialup.netvision.net.il> <4u5pnk$rv3@nnrp1.news.primenet.com> <4u7o0h$din@skipper.netrail.net>
Date: Wed, 7 Aug 1996 09:39:49 GMT
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Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu sci.skeptic:195559 sci.lang:59189


	This is rather absurdly crossposed, but...

In article <4u7o0h$din@skipper.netrail.net>, KAZ Vorpal <kaz@upx.net> wrote:

>	Well, you don't live in the same universe as the socialist 
>bureaucracies of the world...but then who does?

	How do they differ from capitalist bureaucracies?

	As far as I can tell, {}

>	Government "science":
>If a model is consistently proven to fail in predicting the correct 
>results, it is assumed to be true. 

	Pure stereotype. Mr. Vorpal, I'm surprised that you haven't been 
truck-bombing Federal office buildings. And given the personality you 
have displayed ("I'll destroy all my enemies, and I'll enjoy every bit of 
it!!!")...

>Example: 
>         Global warming models -- ALL of the major global warming models 
>fail in EVERY serious attempt to predict results in past or future model 
>testing, and of course are therefore declared to be correct.

	This is a classic example of right-wing antiscience -- one of the 
difficulties of predicting climatic change is that our atmosphere is a 
rather complicated system, and one counter-effect is a haze of sulfate 
droplets that reflects sunlight, thus *cooling* the Earth.

>If something is true under one condition, it is always true under any 
>inductively related conditions. 
>Example: 
>         Toxicology -- [...]

	It is true that a lot of assessment of risk is irrational, but
saying that this is some special depravity of "government" is absurd. 
Consider those people who are more afraid of airplanes or trains than 
cars -- even though cars are 10 times more deadly as a function of 
passenger-miles traveled.

-- 
Loren Petrich				Happiness is a fast Macintosh
petrich@netcom.com			And a fast train
My home page: http://www.webcom.com/petrich/home.html
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