|
Diploid
Cuban


Registered: 01/09/03
Posts: 19,274
Loc: Rabbit Hole
|
Re: The Weather is Officially FUCKED [Re: Madtowntripper]
#5132245 - 01/02/06 05:44 PM (18 years, 29 days ago) |
|
|
Guess God is making nice after all those damned hurricanes. Fort Lauderdale Beach here.
Today was up near 80F, clear and sunny with a light breeze. I spent most of the day Shroomering on the beach with my laptop, a cooler full of beer and a friend.
Neener neener!
-------------------- Republican Values: 1) You can't get married to your spouse who is the same sex as you. 2) You can't have an abortion no matter how much you don't want a child. 3) You can't have a certain plant in your possession or you'll get locked up with a rapist and a murderer. 4) We need a smaller, less-intrusive government.
|
Phluck
Carpal Tunnel


Registered: 04/10/99
Posts: 11,394
Loc: Canada
Last seen: 3 months, 5 days
|
Re: The Weather is Officially FUCKED [Re: Phluck]
#5132261 - 01/02/06 05:48 PM (18 years, 29 days ago) |
|
|
I want to make it clear I'm not downplaying climate change. It's a very serious issue.
What I'm saying is that if you want to be taken seriously, you have to be scientific about it. You can't present completely unscientific information, and then when it's criticized, complain that people are being brainwashed or something. Any decent scientist knows that even when they're onto something good, some of their ideas and information will prove to be wrong or to be red herrings.
If you are going to make a decent argument, you need to check and double check ALL your facts before claiming them to be truths.
For example, you said that this is the worst hurricane season ever. I've been trying to find a definitive source that says this, and I can't. I've found a few people making this claim, but I haven't found a decent, and easy to review list of recorded hurricane seasons.
It's certainly been the biggest media frenzy over hurricanes in recent years, but sometimes media coverage is controlled by many other factors than simply what is happening.
So this could very well be the worst hurricane season, but I don't know for sure until I've compared it against all the others.
There's nobody easier to fool than the person who thinks he's immune to trickery. If you aren't fully expecting to be wrong about everything at all times, then you're going to follow a lot of wrong paths for as far as they'll take you.
If you want to win, you can't just believe firmly that you're right. You have to have better information, that's been more conclusively validated and that can be tested and rechecked than those who oppose you. If you don't, no matter how positive you are that you're right, the people who really matter will be convinced by those who can make a better case than you can. And assuring people that "the weather is fucked" isn't evidence, that's a claim. Same with "it's not supposed to be cold in july". That's also a claim, evidence would be a collection of information that demonstrates that it's not supposed to be cold in july.
-------------------- "I have no valid complaint against hustlers. No rational bitch. But the act of selling is repulsive to me. I harbor a secret urge to whack a salesman in the face, crack his teeth and put red bumps around his eyes." -Hunter S Thompson http://phluck.is-after.us
|
Shroomism
Space Travellin


Registered: 02/13/00
Posts: 66,015
Loc: 9th Dimension
|
Re: The Weather is Officially FUCKED [Re: Phluck]
#5132311 - 01/02/06 06:03 PM (18 years, 29 days ago) |
|
|
Yes I have checked. Since we suck as a species, our accurate weather histories only go back to about the 1930s. Everything before that is hearsay from personal accounts.. hmm imagine that. See but the thing is I don't need to pull up old weather charts, because I don't need to prove anything to myself.. I checked once or twice to satisfy my curiosity.. but my intuition tells me what I need to know. Are you saying I need to do a bunch of research and collecting and compiling information so that I can prove some scientist dude with degrees wrong? Because I'd probably get shot.
You make it like I am against science or something. That's far from reality. Science was one of the subjects I excelled in during school.. when I was paying attention, along with English and Math. I was fascinated by science, I love to learn.. however I hate to have my mind controlled so school and me didn't mix at all. It was sad because I was a straight A, AP honor student. AP physics and trig in the 8th grade, drop out in 10th. I don't hate science. I hate the system that controls it. The system that tells you this is this way even though we don't know for a fact and haven't experienced it for ourselves. Science, I have no problem with whatsoever. My ideal science is the type of science practiced with devout spiritual awareness of the essence of life and responsibility as a sovereign being, as the aliens who are laser surgeons and beamcraft builders
When you have science practiced without awareness of.. or even worse.. denial of soul, and the subsequent spiritual realm.. well you are not factoring in half of the equation in the first place. You are not considering the spiritual implications of your thoughts or actions. You are not considering the LAWS OF THE UNIVERSE/NATURE. This leads to science things like weapons of mass destruction, internal combustion engines, landmines, satellites, atomic weapons, microwaves.. etc.
Sure... science is great at first for helping you figure out how to swing what dense rock at what less dense rock at the right angle to make it break off to form a point..... but when you start having scientists who don't believe in god tell you about the morals of cloning and stem cell research, things get a little more complicated.
I mean don't get me wrong, I love computers just as much as the next guy.. and all this fancy health care everyone is talking about sounds great.. but I'll believe it when I experience it myself ... but what I am getting at is there is no doubt that science does great things, but it reaches a point in civilization where science and technology reaches a point where it outgrows the planets own spiritual maturity.. as in we have nuclear weapons when we don't even know who we are as a planet.. dangerous shit. We are not united as a species, and that is our fatal flaw, science's fatal flaw.
As a default, science says God doesn't exist. Why? I say God does exist. I say God and Science can exist side-by-side just fine. God's Science. You say God does not exist? Prove it. I see nothing but existence of God, of a central design. When I look at humans, I see god. When I look at a tree, I see god. When I look into the stars, I see god. Reflections everywhere. Why should I invest my time into a science that creates guns that destroy my fellow God, a part of myself. My science is the science of humans playing music in the trees, the science of stacking wood in the right pattern to burn smooth, the science of liberating myself from myself, the only proper science I know.
When I say evolution, I am talking about.. wisdom.. gained through experience.. and pragmatically applied. Like... I do something wrong, I learn from my mistake. Next time, I don't do it wrong. I have evolved. Evolution is something or someone adapting to better suit their environment. You don't want to not flow with nature. Now as above, so below.. so let's assume evolution occurs on every scale, from molecule to universe.. it would have to follow some sort of pattern. Random patterns? Organize chaos? Sure why the fuck not. God isn't some magical dude in the sky. God is the universe and everything in it and outside of it , including the N button on your keyboard made out of bean paste
So I don't follow the 'rules' of "conventional" science, it's just not my bag. Evolution is totally not random to me, I think that the universe and evolution and this includes human evolution follows a distinct pattern woven from a single 'print'.. and can take many different variations but will always generally follow the original pattern... if you don't agree, that's cool too.. but a room full of scientists and 500 well made charts and diagrams wouldn't convince me otherwise. Diversity is key.
All I know, is that if I were to communicate with you via my ego, it would say that evolution sure as hell seems random to me. But then why is it always a total coincidence and why is it always exactly what I need. Something doesn't add up. but I'm no quantum physicist.. or am I......
--------------------
|
Silversoul
Rhizome


Registered: 01/01/05
Posts: 23,576
Loc: The Barricades
|
Re: The Weather is Officially FUCKED [Re: Shroomism]
#5132322 - 01/02/06 06:08 PM (18 years, 29 days ago) |
|
|
Quote:
Shroomism said: Yes I have checked. Since we suck as a species, our accurate weather histories only go back to about the 1930s. Everything before that is hearsay from personal accounts..
Wrong. See, in the arctic, they have these things called ice caps, and each year there's another layer of ice. Each layer of ice contains information about the global climate from that year. So we can know more about the climate from about 2,000 years ago by looking at the ice than we can about the climate today by walking outside.
--------------------
|
Shroomism
Space Travellin


Registered: 02/13/00
Posts: 66,015
Loc: 9th Dimension
|
Re: The Weather is Officially FUCKED [Re: Silversoul]
#5132334 - 01/02/06 06:12 PM (18 years, 29 days ago) |
|
|
so what was the weather like today, 3,600 years ago?
--------------------
|
Shroomism
Space Travellin


Registered: 02/13/00
Posts: 66,015
Loc: 9th Dimension
|
Re: The Weather is Officially FUCKED [Re: Shroomism]
#5132339 - 01/02/06 06:13 PM (18 years, 29 days ago) |
|
|
It's tough going against public opinion.. but someone's gotta do it.
I'm taking a break for now. Someone take over for me. NIGHT SHIFT!
I love you guys.. thanks for disagreeing with me
--------------------
|
Silversoul
Rhizome


Registered: 01/01/05
Posts: 23,576
Loc: The Barricades
|
Re: The Weather is Officially FUCKED [Re: Shroomism]
#5132347 - 01/02/06 06:14 PM (18 years, 29 days ago) |
|
|
Quote:
Shroomism said: so what was the weather like today, 3,600 years ago?
If I had the ice sheet data, I'd tell you. Sadly, I'm not a meteorologist, so I don't dabble in such things.
--------------------
|
Shroomism
Space Travellin


Registered: 02/13/00
Posts: 66,015
Loc: 9th Dimension
|
Re: The Weather is Officially FUCKED [Re: Phluck]
#5132529 - 01/02/06 06:57 PM (18 years, 29 days ago) |
|
|
Night shift here 
Ok Phluck.. you make a good point. People want scientific evidence before they will believe something. The problem is.. I am a lazy stoner. And when I am not being a lazy stoner.. I am working all the time. The amount of data to process on this subject is MASSIVE. I simply don't have the time and energy to research it all and organize it and present it. Well not right now anyway.
I did, however.. find a few things:
http://home.att.net/~thehessians/disasterwatch.html Massive database of global disasters with many 'valid' links
http://www.research.noaa.gov/spotlite/archive/spot_sunclimate.html This link investigates the link between increase in solar output and climate change
http://www.mapreport.com/subtopics/d/w.html#2005 World Flood Timeline of the past couple years
http://www.unesco.org/science/earth/disaster/about_disaster.shtml About Natural Disasters and the human connetion..
http://www.nrel.gov/surviving_disaster/documents/coming_storm.html the government says you should prepare
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/mg18825315.300 Scientists say... "Climate is going crazy"
http://irevolution.info/forums/index.php?showforum=53 link to a million links
.. and that is what I could come up with in about 10 minutes.. there's about 590 billion links I didn't look at. The summary is that there are definitely 'Earth Changes' occuring very rapidly on many scales compared to previous years, and general consensus is that humans are aggravating it and just making it worse by consuming so many resources and butt-fucking the earth, and that humans are dying more and more not only to increased natural disasters, but the population keeps growing and more and more people are moving to disaster prone areas, which are being struck with harder and more frequent disasters, in stupidly built houses built in stupid places.
and that's my scientific research for the evening.
--------------------
|
Phluck
Carpal Tunnel


Registered: 04/10/99
Posts: 11,394
Loc: Canada
Last seen: 3 months, 5 days
|
Re: The Weather is Officially FUCKED [Re: Shroomism]
#5132555 - 01/02/06 07:04 PM (18 years, 29 days ago) |
|
|
Shroomism, I know this is a very long post, but please, please read it. You're a very smart guy, but you've got some strong biases and misconceptions. You really could use your smarts to do some cool shit, but you believe that your intuition is more powerful than the intuition as well as the intelligence and hard work of many scientists? Does that not sound a little odd to you?
Is assuming that you're right about everything just because you feel right really that spiritual? Isn't there something spiritual about admitting that we're imperfect, and that accepting the criticism and reviews others give us can help us refine our knowledge? Because that's really what science is based on. Looking at the way the universe works for answers, finding ways to test things by creating actual examples of the situation.
If I want to find out how high a ball will bounce, will I get a more accurate answer by using intuition, or by bouncing the ball and measuring how high it bounces?
The second method is science.
Are you saying I need to do a bunch of research and collecting and compiling information so that I can prove some scientist dude with degrees wrong? Because I'd probably get shot.
No, you certainly wouldn't.
I don't know why people think that the scientific community is some dark society clouded in secrecy and mysterious evil. The only people making this claim are people who have no real connection to it. I know a lot of scientists in various fields, and I'll let you in on a secret:
Most of them are left leaning nerds, very normal people.
People don't get shot for presenting dissenting information. Scientists CONSTANTLY come up with information that goes against the grain. It happens ALL THE TIME. When the information is good, and there's a strong basis behind it, it usually causes a lot of debate and controversy. Some scientists refuse to take it seriously, but when the information is good, over the course of a few years, it starts to become widely accepted. Despite what people say in the pseudoscience and paranormal communities, this really is something that happens all the time. Scientists disagree about all kinds of shit.
If you don't believe me, I can dig up quite a few examples for you.
The scientific community isn't completely closed off, it just seems that way to people who refuse to take any criticism of their work seriously. No study is perfect, they almost all have a few flaws, and usually it requires a few revised studies to get conclusive information. The best way to revise a study is to listen carefully to the criticism you get, and to revise your information accordingly.
Assuming that your intuition is just as good as a good study that's been done carefully, criticized, and revised several times according to criticism is very arrogant. That's like saying "I'm so smart that I can just assume something and it's even more accurate than the information that teams of people get by carefully studying things."
I checked once or twice to satisfy my curiosity.. but my intuition tells me what I need to know.
What information did you get when you checked? Can you show it to me? People used intuition for ages. That's where they came up with the earth being flat and all kinds of odd ideas. Someone's intuition came up with (and this is for real) the idea that a good way to deal with serious illness was to strap someone down, saw their heads open, remove their brain, wash it off, replace it, and sew them back up. This never worked, obviously, but they swore by it. Because of science, it was decided that we need to test things thoughouly, no matter what intuition tells us. That's why we suddenly came up with all these amazing new technologies.
My ideal science is the type of science practiced with devout spiritual awareness of the essence of life and responsibility as a sovereign being
That's religion, not science. Science is not supposed to make any assumptions. If you assume something, you're going to make all kinds of errors. Like the example of the guy sawing open people's heads to cure them... he had certain assumptions that he made that he wouldn't question, and it obviously led him to believe things that were blatantly untrue.
Believing in spiritual things doesn't make you a more ethical or nice person. I've met many religious people who are jerks, and many people who don't believe in anything at all that are some of the kindest and most considerate people around. Making assumptions about god or spirituality won't make the application of scientific discoveries any more ethical.
Sure some technology has been used for bad things. But this isn't science, that's the application of discoveries made through science. The discovery of the atomic properties that allowed for the atomic bomb to be made was not a bad thing. That was just some information. When someone discovered that a rock could be used to crack things open, he wasn't doing anything bad. It's once someone decided to use that information to take a rock and crack open a skull that something bad was done.
Some people say that science needs to factor in spirituality... but this doesn't really make a lot of sense. This is like saying "brushing your teeth is great, but it doesn't take religion into account". Well, no, of course it doesn't because it has nothing to do with that. Yes, once you have some powerful information, you need to use that information ethically, but this has nothing to do with science.
But you can't study biology and factor in the soul. Why? Because what's a soul? How the fuck do you study a soul? The only people making this claim are the people who aren't actually conducting the studies. Science now really is the same as the simple experiments you've learned about yourself, only with more information surrounding it.
When Archimides discovered how to use displacement to discover the volume of things, he used a simple experiment. Placing the gold crown in water increased the water level by the equal volume of the crown. How would he have applied spirituality to that bit of science? It doesn't really make any sense. Same with our study of DNA, what we know about DNA has nothing at all to do with what people say about God or souls, but for some reason people are claiming we need to factor them in. Like I said, these people don't know anything about genetics, they're just telling people who do that they're doing it wrong and that they should be doing it differently, only what they're suggesting doesn't make any sense.
If I told you to brush your teeth in a more spiritual way, what would you do? It doesn't make much sense, does it?
As a default, science says God doesn't exist. Why? I say God does exist.
No, it doesn't. It doesn't say any such thing. Science says nothing about god. Science is information, it makes no claims that cannot be validated. There are some scientists who have the opinion that God doesn't exist, but there are also scientists who would disagree. If you can't study it, science says nothing about it.
but then why is (evolution) always a total coincidence and why is it always exactly what I need.
But it isn't always a total coincidence, and it certainly isn't always exactly what you need. I'm not sure what you're talking about there. That's the danger about making judgement based entirely on how things "seem" off the top of your head, it's often incorrect.
-------------------- "I have no valid complaint against hustlers. No rational bitch. But the act of selling is repulsive to me. I harbor a secret urge to whack a salesman in the face, crack his teeth and put red bumps around his eyes." -Hunter S Thompson http://phluck.is-after.us
|
RandalFlagg
Stranger
Registered: 06/15/02
Posts: 15,608
|
Re: The Weather is Officially FUCKED [Re: Phluck]
#5132566 - 01/02/06 07:06 PM (18 years, 29 days ago) |
|
|
Shroomism doesn't like football, therefore he can't be rational. There is no reasoning with him.
|
HELLA_TIGHT
Madge the Smoking Vag


Registered: 08/19/03
Posts: 84,387
Loc: Afghanistan
|
Re: The Weather is Officially FUCKED [Re: RandalFlagg]
#5132570 - 01/02/06 07:06 PM (18 years, 29 days ago) |
|
|
Worst.response.ever.
--------------------
|
RandalFlagg
Stranger
Registered: 06/15/02
Posts: 15,608
|
Re: The Weather is Officially FUCKED [Re: HELLA_TIGHT]
#5132588 - 01/02/06 07:11 PM (18 years, 29 days ago) |
|
|
Quote:
HELLA_TIGHT said: Worst.response.ever.
Biggest.penis.ever.
|
Phluck
Carpal Tunnel


Registered: 04/10/99
Posts: 11,394
Loc: Canada
Last seen: 3 months, 5 days
|
Re: The Weather is Officially FUCKED [Re: Shroomism]
#5132607 - 01/02/06 07:16 PM (18 years, 29 days ago) |
|
|
I'm not saying that there isn't a serious problem with climate change. It probably is.
There is TONS of good data on this... but there are also quite a few dubious claims being made.
I'm saying that some things people think have something to do with climate change actually don't. The unseasonably warm weather in the past few weeks is probably just that, a bit of unseasonably warm weather.
It's actually quite likely that we haven't really seem many problems that have anything to do with climate change... yet.
A lot of what people are saying about it are loose theories, these things are not definite. We've got to be careful about what we claim to be solid information.
It's just that it's really important not to look at things from the black and white perspective. Not all information that claims to be evidence in favor of climate change is valid or accurate. A bunch of it is, but each individual claim needs to be evaluated. But if you believe that climate change is happening, that doesn't mean you should believe every claim that purports to prove climate change is happening.
-------------------- "I have no valid complaint against hustlers. No rational bitch. But the act of selling is repulsive to me. I harbor a secret urge to whack a salesman in the face, crack his teeth and put red bumps around his eyes." -Hunter S Thompson http://phluck.is-after.us
|
Shroomism
Space Travellin


Registered: 02/13/00
Posts: 66,015
Loc: 9th Dimension
|
Re: The Weather is Officially FUCKED [Re: Phluck]
#5132689 - 01/02/06 07:32 PM (18 years, 29 days ago) |
|
|
Ok just for the record, in regards to the science with spirituality statement.. I'm not talking about religion.. religion is in the same (but different) fuckhole that science is in. I'm just talking about the spirituality (of being human). Not religion.
Ok so I've said some rash things about science in my rant. And religion. Sorry science, sorry religion. They both have their good qualities, just as they have their bad.. and once again it is the people behind them who are doing it. I'm not perfect either, didn't think I was.
I now make it my lifelong obsession to bring science and religion to some sort of middle ground where they are in harmony with one another. The "one human religion" of earth science. ahh.
--------------------
|
Phluck
Carpal Tunnel


Registered: 04/10/99
Posts: 11,394
Loc: Canada
Last seen: 3 months, 5 days
|
Re: The Weather is Officially FUCKED [Re: Shroomism]
#5132764 - 01/02/06 07:50 PM (18 years, 29 days ago) |
|
|
I understand... when I used the word "religion" I was probably referring to spirituality in general.
My point really is that mixing science and spirituality doesn't make a lot of sense. They really don't have anything to do with one another.
Using technology ethically is a good idea, definitely, but discovering information, which is what science is all about, has nothing to do with spirituality at all.
Like my example about bouncing a ball. You want to figure out how high the ball would bounce, so you use science. You set up a video camera and a big ruler, drop the ball next to the ruler with the camera watching it, then freeze frame the film at the moment when the ball is at its highest and you've got your info. How am I to incorporate spirituality?
All science is really like this, even the crazy genetic stuff. You ask questions then devise tests to figure out the answers. Obviously it gets pretty complicated with some things, but the basics aren't that different.
So I don't get how you're supposed to mix the spirituality with that.
Of course it's quite possible you'll figure out how to do something dangerous, and that's where the ethics come into play, after the science is done and we're moving onto technology.
-------------------- "I have no valid complaint against hustlers. No rational bitch. But the act of selling is repulsive to me. I harbor a secret urge to whack a salesman in the face, crack his teeth and put red bumps around his eyes." -Hunter S Thompson http://phluck.is-after.us
|
Shroomism
Space Travellin


Registered: 02/13/00
Posts: 66,015
Loc: 9th Dimension
|
Re: The Weather is Officially FUCKED [Re: Phluck]
#5132821 - 01/02/06 08:04 PM (18 years, 29 days ago) |
|
|
Yes the technology is what I have problems with mostly. Discovering information is cool. Like shouldn't we be using our energy to create and distribute crazy machines that clean pollution from the ocean instead of the latest chemical weapon or tank armor technology? I just think we need to 'think spiritually' with our science.. like.. hmm if we create this plutonium bomb.. is this flowing in harmony with nature?.. like considering the implications of our actions. Like hmm if we create a machine that cleans the ocean what's the worst case scenario? It wouldn't work and the oceans would still be dirty. If we create a plutonium bomb what's the best thing that can happen? It doesn't explode and everbody doesn't die and hopefully they can find a place to disarm it where the radiation doesn't kill everyone who works on it and then what town are we going to bury it under. See? Like maybe we could create devices that neutralize nuclear radiation and clean the oceans at the same time. Ok that's probably not very practically applied, but you get my point.
Doesn't science create the technology? We should be responsible for the technologies we make.
--------------------
|
Silversoul
Rhizome


Registered: 01/01/05
Posts: 23,576
Loc: The Barricades
|
Re: The Weather is Officially FUCKED [Re: Shroomism]
#5132841 - 01/02/06 08:11 PM (18 years, 29 days ago) |
|
|
Quote:
Shroomism said: Yes the technology is what I have problems with mostly. Discovering information is cool. Like shouldn't we be using our energy to create and distribute crazy machines that clean pollution from the ocean instead of the latest chemical weapon or tank armor technology?
That's more a matter of politics and the economy than of science and technology.
--------------------
|
Shroomism
Space Travellin


Registered: 02/13/00
Posts: 66,015
Loc: 9th Dimension
|
Re: The Weather is Officially FUCKED [Re: Silversoul]
#5132850 - 01/02/06 08:13 PM (18 years, 29 days ago) |
|
|
are you saying politics doesn't have it's hand in science and technology? Politics dictates where the most money and research goes. And what doesn't get researched. And who says what. And who doesn't say what. That's where the media comes into play. And why the shroomery rocks more on its worst day better than cnn ever will.
--------------------
|
Silversoul
Rhizome


Registered: 01/01/05
Posts: 23,576
Loc: The Barricades
|
Re: The Weather is Officially FUCKED [Re: Shroomism]
#5132941 - 01/02/06 08:34 PM (18 years, 29 days ago) |
|
|
Quote:
Shroomism said: are you saying politics doesn't have it's hand in science and technology?
Absolutely not. What I'm saying is that your real gripe should be with the politics behind the technology, rather than technology itself.
--------------------
|
Phluck
Carpal Tunnel


Registered: 04/10/99
Posts: 11,394
Loc: Canada
Last seen: 3 months, 5 days
|
Re: The Weather is Officially FUCKED [Re: Shroomism]
#5133035 - 01/02/06 08:55 PM (18 years, 29 days ago) |
|
|
Well, there actually are a lot of people researching things to try and help the environment. But feasiblity also controls things.
A machine that cleans the pollution out of the oceans certainly would be nice... but how possible is that?
Politics do play a role in science, but there is a certain amount of freedom for the scientists as well. Quite a few universities have scientists that are freely researching a lot of interesting and very good things.
The plutonium bomb is actually a fairly simple invention compared to a lot of things, so it's not too big a suprise that it was invented as opposed to something that cleans the oceans. It's easy to say that we SHOULD have invented an anti-pollution machine, but such a device would have to process A LOT of air/water, and how much energy would it use? Would it actually be able to clean faster than it pollutes itself?
Sometimes some of the most amazing inventions are stunningly simple. Things can blow us away with what they do without using any concepts that revolutionize the way we see the world. From the sidelines, science looks quite a bit different than it does from the inside.
I really don't know for sure how much is being spent researching all different fields, but it might actually suprise you to see what's being researched in regards to environmental safety.
Also, sometimes something from a suprising field ends up being applicable to something else entirely. The people who are working on environmental studies are researching biology, the effects of pollution on the ecosystem, etc...
But a device that cleans the environment wouldn't come from this kind of study. Such a device would probably require an innovative technique for extracting various chemicals from the air/water, and the kind of discovery that would help for that would probably come from physics or mechanical engineering. A lot of discoveries are accidental, while searching for something else, so it can be a good idea to fund all kinds of different fields.
People with a completely different idea of what they're looking for are often caught off guard when a chemical they synthesize has some suprise properties... many drugs, for example, are invented this way (LSD, Viagra to name a few).
The best way to ensure we discover technologies that can better humanity isn't necessarily to provide huge amounts of funding to say, an alternative energy source project, or an environmental cleanup project, but to try and increase our knowledge in all kinds of things. Not to say that we shouldn't be studying those things individually as well, but they'd likely benefit from discoveries elsewhere.
-------------------- "I have no valid complaint against hustlers. No rational bitch. But the act of selling is repulsive to me. I harbor a secret urge to whack a salesman in the face, crack his teeth and put red bumps around his eyes." -Hunter S Thompson http://phluck.is-after.us
|
|