This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Frankly, I was saying that your prior comments are basically incoherent.
...lol, you don't know what my profession is.
Look, I didn't want to wave credentials around, but the reason why I got into this discussion is because you were showing that you are ignorant of the physics involved. What I'm arguing is that you need to learn a little bit about it before you make claims about it. Especially before you make dismissive claims where you say that we don't even need to consider the physics involved. That we don't even need to think about concepts like the rocket equation, specific impulse, thrust, delta-v, etc.
My claim was that we already had pretty decent published literature on various not-yet-existing propulsive methods, that this literature uses the standard physics and the standard methods of analysis and standardized performance metrics. You were saying that we should just ignore all that. That it was wholly irrelevant.
Nah, dawg. You need to have a basic understanding of the domain you want to speak on. If you're going to now agree that we can go look at the published literature (at least I think this is what you want to go for; you just called out an "internet search", so maybe you're going to crackpot sites) and that doing so is not wholly irrelevant, then one requires a sufficient understanding of the basic physics and terminology to have any clue what it is, and is not, saying.
I don't care what your profession is. The point I am making is extremely simple and straightforward and you still have not understood it.
The physics has already been worked out! We do not need to go over it. It is totally pointless nitpicking.
Read my comments again, understand them. You will find this is not a line of argument that helps you! My point is not 'Mini-Mag Orion is the One True Path to the outer solar system' that requires a specific technical justification but a general point that using a massively more efficient power source is superior for long-range spaceflight, even though it will take a long time to develop such rocketry.
This really does not require incredible reading comprehension to understand, I am quite surprised that a self-declared aerospace engineer cannot grasp it. I highly doubt you are a real aerospace engineer, since if you were you'd know that a fair range of fusion designs are vastly superior to conventional rockets, something that is so obvious laymen would know it. So there really wouldn't be any point of making this silly argument.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link