Although we may disagree, let us do so as rational friends! |
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Finding consensus in a heated environment |
Always assume it's possible there's an ambiguity in the text that makes sense one way to you and makes equally good faith sense in a completely different way to someone else. When others try to make it personal don't shoot back. Instead....
Can you respectfully repeat your opponent's viewpoint, without negating it? Often a magic bullet is to ask the other editor for permission to try to repeat back their own argument as neutrally as possible even if you don't agree with it. That instantly tells them you are listening and does 99% of what is possible (at least on your part) to cool things off. The exercise often uncovers simple misunderstandings. see the related essay writing for your opponent. If you try that and they just stay hot and bothered, there's a good chance they've got some compulsory emotional stuff or else lack good faith. In that case, stay calm, don't shoot back, and get some outside help from WP:DRN, WP:ANI, or WP:AE. Feel free to copy reuse trash change distribute. Your mileage may vary. |
11Y |
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25-50-25
- 25% of people will be mad at you (or unteachable) no matter what you do, so don't waste your time trying to change them.
- 25% of people will be thrilled with you (or self-directed learners) so don't waste your time trying to change them.
- Just focus on the 50% where you can make a difference.
DS Alerts I already know about
If you've stopped by to DS Alert me.... I already know about the following.... NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 18:34, 11 June 2022 (UTC)
DS review process 2021
Entirely by accident, I just stumbled across this when I saw it on someone else's talk page. I would have contributed in the "consultation" phase, but I was wikihibernating and didn't know about it. Wikipedia:Arbitration_Committee/Discretionary_sanctions/2021_review. In case anyone else doesn't know about it and happens to come by my talk, I thought I'd put this here and invite you to start following that process also. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 00:48, 14 June 2022 (UTC)
Apologies
Just wanted to say please forgive my blathering. As you might suspect, we wandered into an area of interest for me. All the same, you make good points, and as I say, happy to go wherever consensus takes us. Cheers. Dumuzid (talk) 23:46, 18 June 2022 (UTC)
- Please don't apologize, it was much more valuable than many (most?) content discussions I have here! There's nothing more boring as an occassional so called "nontraditional" (read= old) student that to sit in a potentially awesome class with a bunch of dullards who won't ever speak or raise their hand. If we disagree then I'll learn in the process, so the only apology I'm willing to accept is if sometime you realize you had something constructive to add, even if to disagree, but didn't. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 00:04, 19 June 2022 (UTC)
- Very well said and worthy of being framed and hung on the wall. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 06:29, 19 June 2022 (UTC)
- Hmmmm.... dartboard? Face of a faux coo-coo clock? My the ideas are endless. When my kid was in gradeschool one day I used a big 10-penny nail to hammer a walnut to the kitchen wall. I mean, where ELSE would you store your walnuts? NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 10:09, 19 June 2022 (UTC)
- LMFAO! If your kid had a strong philosophical streak, that nailed walnut might have been the trigger to a great work of philosophy. A hook to hang ideas on. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 10:37, 19 June 2022 (UTC)
- You know how things like this become familiar and sort of disappear in our awareness? The mangled nut with the two inches of nail shank protruding captured their attention a couple years later. Shaking their head they said, "Even when I was really little I knew you were a nut, but MY GOD you have truly cracked up!!" NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 10:43, 19 June 2022 (UTC)
- LMFAO! If your kid had a strong philosophical streak, that nailed walnut might have been the trigger to a great work of philosophy. A hook to hang ideas on. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 10:37, 19 June 2022 (UTC)
- Hmmmm.... dartboard? Face of a faux coo-coo clock? My the ideas are endless. When my kid was in gradeschool one day I used a big 10-penny nail to hammer a walnut to the kitchen wall. I mean, where ELSE would you store your walnuts? NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 10:09, 19 June 2022 (UTC)
- Very well said and worthy of being framed and hung on the wall. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 06:29, 19 June 2022 (UTC)
Apologies
Apologies for this edit (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard&oldid=1095216173), I didn't see it that you unarchived it yourself in the edit summary. Somehow, my browser was still at an older version which I opened hours ago and somehow didn't update. Thanks and sorry for the mistake! VickKiang (talk) 07:27, 27 June 2022 (UTC)
- Heh... I didn't even notice until you said something. No worries, it was MY mistake after all. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 03:43, 27 June 2022 (UTC)
Michael Shellenberger TEd Talk
However, I did want to ask you an honest question since it relates to a topic you seem to be very active in. I saw this recently (literally within the last day or two): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-yALPEpV4w Now, my question (again an honest question) is this guy full of bs? I mean this is a Ted Talk, so I would give what he says some credence and I have heard some of the issues he has touched upon bought up before. Public policy in the US is being built around this issue so the question is whether or not these elements should be a part of the discussion. You can delete (undo) this and answer at my talk page if you want but I was curious as to your opinion on this as someone who presents as very involved in the topic.71.190.233.44 (talk) 18:29, 2 July 2022 (UTC) I deleted a bit of this IP's opening words, which involved a different thread, so they won't confuse anyone now that I gave this a separate heading. The IP had invited me to delete the whole thing, so I took the liberty of only partial deletion, to make it easy to read.NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 19:47, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
- Well we don't blog or soapbox or do a lot of WP:FORUM discussion on our talk pages but I do have an academic background (BS level) in EVST so here's what I think.... the stuff Shellenberger talks about is (A) vitally important (B) hugely multi-faceted. I agree with him on some things, and not on others. To make my point here, allow me to bring Greta Thunberg into the mix. These two are on opposing sides of an environmental/economic debate..... can we have perpetual economic growth without breaking nature so badly that nature can not support our current civilization?
- Before we get to the debate, what do the two sides agree on, for the most part? (Yeah I know, there are loads of people who do not perfectly fit my generalization here). Well lets go back in time a bit.... the classic debate is between Cornucopianism (believing that human ingenuity will always figure out how to keep increasing economic growth and the human condition) versus Malthusianism (believe that limiting factors prevents perpetual growth in these things)
- Now I'm going to say a personal belief.... it would make a good literature review paper, if anyone reading is looking for an idea. (And if you know of a paper on point please send a link my way).... A few decades back, the Cornucopians never seemed to admit that limits existed. The philosophy's advocates spoke of the next new untapped resource and the next new technology like there would always be the next one, and we would never run out of the potential "next one". Any problem, the resource or tech solution was right around the corner. Eco collapse was Cinderella fantasyland to these folks. This seems to have changed over the last 20-40 years. Now the cornucopians will(usually) admit that if we are dumb we will suffer Ecological overshoot and increasing symptoms of Collapse of civilization. So the two sides of this debate have sort of come to something of recognition of the problem. We need an economic/industrial/political system that improves the human condition without breaking nature.
- Something else the two sides agree (in very rough approximate terms) is the scale of change needed for a fossil fuel phase-out primarily due to Climate change. Suppose we properly air sealed against stack effect and insulated (i.e., ) every single residence in the US? How much fossil fuel would that save? The "wise" answer looks to Life cycle assessment and Energy return on investment but we'll keep it simple and just ask about energy savings at these homes during the lifetime of the upgrades? Its a lot right? Well, if we were to try to do fossil fuel phase out without nuclear, we'd probably have to do this everywhere, not just in the US. And then we'd need to do it to commercial buildings as a second piece of the puzzle. And build that much wind power, that much rooftop solar, that much industrial concentrated solar, and the list goes on. So the two sides agree that the earth's global population needs a heap of energy and building what we need dwarfs the economic retooling necessary to fight WWII, globally. This is the idea of Climate stabilization wedge, if what we need to do is a pizza, we need equal energy output from multiple energy sources, one "slice" each, to make up the whole pizza. I'm not saying Shellenberger wants to build that stuff, only that both sides of the debate agree that its a HEAP of energy, and without nuclear each pizza slice is bigger.
- I also think most on the two sides are unsatisfied with our progress.
- So those are some of the things the two sides agree on, at least as far as my current understanding goes.
- So, what are things the two sides disagree on?
- The most important difference is their answers to the question what economic/industrial/political system will best improve the human condition without breaking nature?
- Shellenberger is on one side of this, where the notions of Green economy Ecological modernisation and ecomodernism are closely related. (In fact, on my to do list is to research sources to see if a disinterested scholar with no dog in the fight would conclude they are synonymous). These ideas embrace the idea that the human condition will be improved with perpetualeconomic growth but to avoid breaking nature, we need a revolution in technology and urban development that achieves "eco-economic decoupling". They think we can have economic growth and development without increasing our human impact on the environment. One way to get this growth, they say, is to do more with the raw materials we consume from the earth. That would include being more efficient, and adding jobs in service sector, and economic activity in the world of finance. I don't know what Shellenberger thinks of the Commodification of nature. Regardless, advocates (at least in the US) of this school of thought are usually strongly suppportive of capitalism and frame their messages within that economic model.
- Greta Thunberg might be a celeb example from the other camp. Different advocates call for various things like a steady state economy, degrowth, population stabilization, and green politics. In broad strokes this school thinks there is only so much we can squeeze out of a given amount of resources doing all those things, and once we max it out the only way to get still more growth is to again increase the amount of resources consumed. Rinse and repeat. Many in this camp believe that earth's finite limits means that perpetualeconomic growth is impossible, and they cite lists of signs that they say indicate nature is already showing signs of breaking. Its common to hear these folks assert that capitalism depends on growth and we can't have perpetual growth so we can't have perpetual capitalism. Some also complain that ecomodernism, etc, only makes room for things of value to humans without placing value, say, on ecosystems, or species and it doesn't seem to address the sixth mass extinction.
- Enter nuclear power. Shellenberger says yes, others say no, still others say all of the above. And different people do different calculations to claim what is and what is not feasible. But the question remains, how much of this energy source or that? How much efficiency improvements? Etc. I'm really uninterested in the debate about who is right. I don't think we know enough to know who is right, and in the meantime we should be engaging all of it like it was D-Day. And we're not. But even if we were, what's the end goal? And that's what I'm most interested in, personally.
- This gets me to the Jevons paradox which I'll illustrate with make believe "Bob". He is on a fixed budget and has enough cash to buy one pack of smokes every other day. Naturally he is addicted to 1/2 per day. Miraculously the price drops 50%. Hooray! Now Bob can spend more on vegetables, or college kid tuition or savings!!!! But what tends to happen is Bob starts smoking a full back per day. When things become more efficient, we do more of it so in the end we're more or less where we started. If we design the world according to Shellenberger's vision, including abundant nuclear power (and it comes off without making things worse through accidents, leaks, waste disposal, terrorism and weapons proliferation) well that would solve a limiting factor, the one of limited energy. It's a principle of ecology that when a species overcomes a limiting factor, its population and resource consumption will increase until it runs into some other limiting factor. Shellenberger promises the next untapped resource or technology is always just around the corner waiting to solve our next big problem, to overcome the next limiting factor or whatever. For example, Earth is also made up of a lot of ecosystem services on which our civilization depends. In contrast to raw materials these are things like storm water management (wetlands) or oxygen production (photosynthesis). We need those things, but they're not part of the commodities markets. Shellenbergers answer to overwhelming ecosystem services is technology. Desalinizsation, GMO foods... is he into asteroid or deep ocean mining? If we design the world his way and he's right that perpetual economic growth through technology and urban development can be truly decoupled from harmful impacts, then we can look forward to a world like Star Trek or Jetsons. If he's wrong, it may be more like the Hunger Games or Soylent Green.
- I'll observe that his academic credentials are about people: Peace studies and anthropology. His professional experience is PR... marketing ideas to people. So far as I am aware he has no academic credentials in EVST or Enviro science. In the end I agree with some of what he says, and don't agree with some of what he says. Your mileage may vary.
- I hope I helped. Comments reopened. What did you think? Meanwhile here are a few reading items
- Asafu-Adjaye, John; Blomqvist, Linus; Brand, Stewart; Brook, Barry; DeFries, Ruth; Erle Ellis; Foreman, Christopher; Keith, David; Lewis, Martin; Lynas, Mark; Nordhaus, Ted (2015). "An Ecomodernist Manifesto". doi:10.13140/RG.2.1.1974.0646.
{{cite journal}}
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(help)
- Asafu-Adjaye, John; Blomqvist, Linus; Brand, Stewart; Brook, Barry; DeFries, Ruth; Erle Ellis; Foreman, Christopher; Keith, David; Lewis, Martin; Lynas, Mark; Nordhaus, Ted (2015). "An Ecomodernist Manifesto". doi:10.13140/RG.2.1.1974.0646.
- And a response... Crist, Eileen (2016-05-01). "The Reaches of Freedom: A Response to An Ecomodernist Manifesto". Environmental Humanities. 7 (1): 245–254. doi:10.1215/22011919-3616452. ISSN 2201-1919.
- On the theme of limits means perpetual economic growth is impossible) Bradshaw, Corey J. A.; Ehrlich, Paul R.; Beattie, Andrew; Ceballos, Gerardo; Crist, Eileen; Diamond, Joan; Dirzo, Rodolfo; Ehrlich, Anne H.; Harte, John; Harte, Mary Ellen; Pyke, Graham (2021-01-13). "Underestimating the Challenges of Avoiding a Ghastly Future". Frontiers in Conservation Science. 1: 615419. doi:10.3389/fcosc.2020.615419. ISSN 2673-611X.
- NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 01:55, 3 July 2022 (UTC)
- Seriously, thank you for taking your time out to elucidate! It’s fascinating really. Personally, I’m more of the opinion the human race is an invasive species as the increase in temperature mirrors population growth but, you bring up interesting points and provide avenues I would not have thought to explore which is great. I do appreciate it. (of course now I’ll be going down more internet rabbit holes looking into some of the things you’ve touched on) 71.190.233.44 (talk) 13:23, 3 July 2022 (UTC)
- Watch out! Like Gandalf said, there are fouler things than rabbits in the deep places of the world! NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 13:51, 3 July 2022 (UTC)
- Seriously, thank you for taking your time out to elucidate! It’s fascinating really. Personally, I’m more of the opinion the human race is an invasive species as the increase in temperature mirrors population growth but, you bring up interesting points and provide avenues I would not have thought to explore which is great. I do appreciate it. (of course now I’ll be going down more internet rabbit holes looking into some of the things you’ve touched on) 71.190.233.44 (talk) 13:23, 3 July 2022 (UTC)
Mobile view
At the bottom of every page there's a toggle button to go back and forth between mobile and desktop. Moxy- 17:07, 4 July 2022 (UTC)
- Well, who knew? Next time I lose my keys I'll scroll down and see if those are lurking down there, too. I've since realized my desktop browser (firefox) has a built in "responsive design mode" allowing one to make the monitor behave like a long list of mobile devices. By combining both that link and this feature I'm able to do what I had hoped.
- I'm curious.... I see the info box at Donald Trump behaving like you recently described, i.e., pretending to be on a iphone it appears after the lead first paragraph. However, at United_States_House_Select_Committee_on_the_January_6_Attack_public_hearings the similar box in the lead simply does not appear, at least it doesn't intefere with the lead. does not behave that way. The box on Donald Trump derives from
- {{Infobox officeholder | (many parameters)}}
- {{2021 United States Capitol attack|expanded=Investigations and charges}}
- From the user's point of view these two boxes look pretty much alike. So why doesn't the code treat them the same?
- And last, is there a place in wikiworld where one can get training or help to be better a better responsive design savvy editor?
- NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 17:42, 4 July 2022 (UTC)
- sidebar Navboxs are not seen in mobile view because they just spam overlinking...but an infobox has real data that is usefull to readers. In Canada articles we use {{if mobile}} alot. See Wildlife of Canada or Culture of Canada in both views. Moxy-
21:13, 4 July 2022 (UTC)
- sidebar Navboxs are not seen in mobile view because they just spam overlinking...but an infobox has real data that is usefull to readers. In Canada articles we use {{if mobile}} alot. See Wildlife of Canada or Culture of Canada in both views. Moxy-